In the last twenty or thirty years there has been an increasing number of books on prosody, the names of the most important of which will be found in the [Bibliography]. The most important of all is perhaps Mr. Robert Bridges' Prosody of Milton, increased in subsequent editions to something like a manual of Stress Prosody, and containing material also for estimating the recent attempts, by Mr. Bridges himself and by the late Mr. W. J. Stone, to revive the writing of English hexameters on a quantitative, not an accentual, basis. There have also been many attempts (of which perhaps the most remarkable is a treatise on monopressures, taken up and applied by Professor Skeat) which would reduce prosody to a branch of medical physics or physiology, by basing it on the mechanical action of the glottis or larynx. And strong and repeated efforts have also been made to bring the subject entirely under the supervision of music—using musical notation, musical terms such as "bar," and the like. The most widely influential of these was the work of the American poet and critic Sidney Lanier; the most recent, that of Mr. William Thomson of Glasgow. On the other hand, the writings of Mr. Omond, though some doubt may be entertained as to details, have the merits of absolute soundness on the general principles of the subject, and may be studied with ever-increasing advantage.
Summary.
These principles—general, and in relation to the methods of treatment more especially dealt with in the last paragraph or two—may be briefly summarised before this sketch of our prosodist history is closed. Systems of stress prosody are unsatisfactory, because the unstressed syllables of the line, and their connection or grouping with the stressed ones, are of quite as much importance to total effect as stresses themselves, and because attention to stress seems to beget the notion that regularity of time and time-interval is of no importance.[152]
Physiological-mechanical systems are altogether insufficient, even if not wrong, because they only refer to the raw material of prosody; because, in their nature, they must be applicable to verse and prose alike, and to all kinds of verse; with the additional disadvantage that, as actually explained by their advocates, they usually make verse-arrangements of the most inharmonious and unpoetical character.[153]
This latter objection applies with even greater force to the musical theorists, whose explanations of verse invariably confuse rhythm or overturn it altogether, while their whole system ignores the fact, that music and prosody are quite different things—that they may perhaps be accommodated in particular cases, but that this accommodation is by no means frequent.
In some cases, chiefly those of foreigners who have undertaken the study of English verse, return has been attempted to the rigid syllabic methods of Bysshe and his followers. But it is usually admitted by these persons that the method does not suit nineteenth-century poetry, and they are open therefore to the fatal charge of having to suppress part, and a most important part, of the historical life of the subject.
On the other hand, the system of corresponding foot-division, with equivalence and substitution allowed, which has been followed in this book, is open to none of these objections. It neither neglects nor suppresses any part of the line in any case, but accounts fully for all parts. It applies to poetry only, and, to a large extent at least, explains the difference between good poetry and bad. It adjusts itself to the entire history of English verse, since the English language took the turn which made it English in the full sense. It requires no metrical fictions, no suppression of syllables, no allowance of extra-metrical ones, no alteration in pronouncing, no conflict of accent and quantity. No period or kind of English poetry is pronounced by it to be wrong, though it may allow that certain periods have exercised their rights and privileges more fully than others. In short, it takes the poetry as it is, and has been for seven hundred years at least; bars nothing; carves, cuts, and corrects nothing; begs no questions; involves no make-believes; but accepts the facts, and makes out of them what, and what only, the facts will bear.
FOOTNOTES:
[150] For examples of all these see Scanned Conspectus.
[151] Especially one which the student should apply for himself, that Shakespeare's incomplete lines are mostly regular fractions of complete ones, scanning correctly on the same system (v. sup. p. [130]).