CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers,
743 and 745 Broadway, New York.
THE
Science of English Verse.
By SIDNEY LANIER.
1 vol., crown 8vo.—$2.00.
This work marks a distinctly new phase in the study of English literature—a study to which it is certainly the most noteworthy American contribution made in many years. It embodies opinions thoughtfully held, and the results of a well-known thorough scholarship; and, in spite of its striking originality, it is not in any sense the mere putting forth of a theory.
Mr. Lanier combats vigorously the false methods which have become traditional in English prosody, and exposes them in a study of our older poetry which, with all the peculiar charm of Mr. Lanier's clear style, is not less attractive to the general reader than valuable for its results. But the most striking and interesting portion of the book to every student of letters is the author's presentation of his own suggestions for a truer method; his treatment of verse almost entirely as analogous with music—and this not figuratively, but as really governed by the same laws, little modified. His forcible and very skillful use of the most modern investigations in acoustics in supporting this position, makes the book not only a contribution to literature, but, in the best sense, to physical science; and it is in this union of elements that the work shows an altogether new direction of thought.
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