So the foot means, not a unit of measure for the words, but for the syllables viewed as rhythmical sound; and the attempt has already been made to show that it represents the time-interval between the regularly recurring accents of the normal metre. When there are two syllables in the interval, it is convenient to call the foot an iambus, a trochee, a pyrrhic, or a spondee; when there are three, it is convenient to call the foot an anapest or a dactyl. According to this system, the number of feet in the metre will always depend on the number of regularly recurring accents, which of course is not the case in classical prosody. For the same reason, all exceptional feet can be named by one of the six terms indicated, except where (as in Swinburne's "Choriambics") some classical metre is deliberately imitated. There is no sufficient reason for speaking of the choriambus as occurring in Shakspere's verse, because where four syllables occur in such succession as to form a sort of choriambus, they will be found to fill the place of two ordinary feet, not of one; hence it would be irrational to combine them into one exceptional foot. But on this matter of convenience in the terminology of verse, one cannot do better than to refer the reader to Mr. Mayor's Chapters on English Metre, where a refreshingly simple system is set forth, such as will not break down under any reasonable test.
There is one defect, it may be freely admitted, in these classical names of feet. They provide no place for the secondary accent. A foot made up of a fully accented plus a slightly accented syllable must be called either a spondee (the second syllable being thought of as approaching the stress of the first) or a trochee (the syllable being thought of as approaching no stress). The abundant use of secondary or compromised accents—and one might say, too, of secondary or compromised quantities—is a Germanic characteristic, for which no classical terminology can provide. There is, theoretically, room for some new names of feet recognizing these ambiguous syllables. Yet since degrees of accent are purely relative, and no two readers would be sure of agreeing as to which syllables are fully stressed, and which are half-stressed, it is not likely that such additional terms would make our terminology any more exact for practical purposes. The present system does, in fact, represent a characteristic feature of modern English as distinguished from early English verse; namely, that our metres strive after a regular alternation of stress and no-stress, and that the ear imagines this alternation even where (if it were a matter of prose utterance) it can scarcely be said to exist.
It would be absurd to strive with any warmth for the classical system of terminology in English prosody. It is undoubtedly not an ideal system, nor such a one as we should adopt if we were naming everything anew; few existing terminologies are. The only object of the present defence of its carefully limited use is to show that it does stand for some fundamental facts in our verse, and to suggest that it is usually wiser to make the best of the vocabulary we have than to fly to one we know not of. The important thing, in any case, is not the question of terms, but the end that we should not lose hold of the musical rhythms of our verse, made up of delicately adjusted elements of accent and time.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] This discussion is in part a reproduction of an article with the same title originally published in Modern Language Notes, December, 1899.
[50] Science of English Verse, p. 65.
[51] On the nature of our sense of rhythm, see Mr. T. L. Bolton's account of his experiments relating to the subject, given in the American Journal of Psychology, vol. vi, p. 145. He reaches the conclusion that, in order to awaken the sense of rhythm, it is necessary that "the accents in a line shall recur at regular intervals."
[52] Similarly, so distinguished a scholar as Professor Skeat has lately opposed the scansion of English verse by feet, in the Transactions of the Philological Society for 1897-1898. For an ample examination of his views the reader must be referred to the new edition of Mr. Mayor's Chapters on English Metre, chap. vii.
[53] See Mr. Larminie's article on "The Development of English Metres" in the Contemporary Review for November, 1894. In this article there is one of the clearest statements of the place of quantity in our verse that one can easily find. Mr. Larminie seems disposed, however, to place too much stress on the element of fixed or natural quantity, and sometimes to use the terms "long" and "short" with merely traditional meanings. The most characteristic feature of his discussion is, that he establishes certain principles of quantity, and judges the poets by their conformity to these principles. The inductive method is less pretentious and perhaps safer: to inquire what the poets do, and how in the reading of their verse we may preserve the rhythm which they undoubtedly had in mind. Both methods are legitimate. One will lay down rules for the poet, another for the reader; and there is perhaps as much chance of one being followed as of the other.
[54] At least no difficulty has generally been found; but Mr. Liddell marks the word as one which must be stressed from its grammatical importance. He even finds Coleridge untrue to the metre in putting where in an unstressed place in the verse, on the ground that it means "through which." It would perhaps be safe to guess that no unsophisticated English reader has ever found difficulty in the accents of the line in question. The matter is worthy of remark as illustrating the tendency of one class of readers to emphasize sense-reading at the expense of rhythm. On the other hand, for an illustration of the opposite extreme see Professor Bright's article on "Grammatical Ictus in English Verse," in the Furnivall Miscellany (1901), where we are told, in effect, that the metrical accent must always triumph over the sense-accent. As usual, the truth seems to lie somewhere between the extremes.