This older and simpler school, however, represented by Johnson, has been largely supplemented by another, whose members use the term "stress" or ictus in preference to "accent," and to a greater or less extent give up the attempt to establish normality of line at all.
Its various sects and supporters.
Some of them[8] admit lines of four, three, or even two stresses, as, for instance—
His mìn|isters of vèn|geance and pursùit. |
Others[9] break it up into "bars" or "sections" which need not contain the same or any fixed number of "beats" or "stresses," while some again[10] seem to regard the stresses of a whole passage as supplying, like those of a prose paragraph, a sufficient rhythmical skeleton the flesh of which—the unaccented or unstressed part—is allowed to huddle itself on and shuffle itself along as it pleases.
This school has received large recent accessions; but even now the greater number of accentualists do little more than eschew the terms of quantity, and substitute for them those of accent, more or less consistently. Many of them even use the classical names and divisions of feet; and with these there need not, according to strict necessity, be any quarrel, since their error, if it be one, only affects the constitution of prosodic material before it is verse at all, and not the actual prosodic arrangement of verse as such.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Or, it may be added, on its terminology; whence it results that there is no subject on which it is so difficult to write without being constantly misunderstood. It is perhaps not surprising that some people almost deny the existence of English prosody itself, and decline at any rate to take it seriously; while others talk about it in ways which half justify the sceptics.
[4] It is inevitable, in dealing with this subject, that technicalities, historical and literary references, etc., should be plentifully employed. To explain them always in the text would mean endless and disgusting delay and repetition; to give notes of cross-reference in every case would bristle the lower part of the page unnecessarily and hideously. Not merely the Contents and Index, but the various Glossaries and Lists in the Fourth Book have been expressly arranged to supply explanation and assistance in the least troublesome and most compendious manner. But special references will be given when they seem absolutely necessary.
[5] See on this in [Book III].