[195]. See p. 77, where he chooses “die Freiheit des declamirten Rhythmus gegenüber dem allgemeinen rhythmischen Princip der Regelmässigkeit.” See also pp. 82, 87, 101, and especially 91.
[196]. For example, classical rendering of verse, and even modern recitation, as among the Italians. “La plupart des Italiens ont, en lisant les vers, une sorte de chant monotone, appelé cantilene, qui détruit toute émotion,” says Mme. de Staël, Corinne, Chap. III.; but the “elocutionary” emotion is usually an impertinence in simple and cadenced lyric.
[197]. Compare Lessing’s different but analogous antithesis in the Laokoon, XI.: “Bei dem Artisten dünkt uns die Ausführung schwerer als die Erfindung; bei dem Dichter, hingegen, ist es umgekehrt.”
[198]. See his article in Kuhn’s Zeitschr. f. vergl. Sprach., IX. 437 ff.; and the second volume of his Metrik der Griechen. For the four-accent verse as popular measure, see H. Usener, Altgriechischer Versbau, Bonn, 1887, a suggestive book. For the same verse in Russian, see Bistrom in the Zeitsch. f. Völkerpsychol., V. 185.
[199]. Wilmanns thinks the case for this “original” verse has not been made out in any convincing way.
[200]. F. D. Allen, in Kuhn’s Zeitsch. f. vergl. Sprach., XXIV. 558 ff., showed that this Iranian syllable-counting verse, one of the oldest of metres, is not merely counting, but a rhythmic affair, and that the rhythm lay in successive equal intervals marked by verse accent.
[201]. Zur althochdeutchen Alliterationspoesie, 1888, pp. 109 ff., particularly 146 ff., “über den Takt.”
[202]. Beiträge zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen Litteratur, III., “Der altdeutsche Reimvers,” Bonn, 1887, pp. 141 f.
[203]. Sievers, Altgermanische Metrik, 1893, pp. 172 ff.
[204]. That strophic hymns were known in earliest Germanic poetry is shown, Sievers points out, by the fact that Middle High German liet is the same as Old Norse ljóð, “strophe.” For the old choral poetry, he says, “wird ein im gleichen Takte fortschreitender Sangesvortrag ohne weiteres zuzugeben sein,” Ibid., p. 20.