ARTICLE. APRIL, 1911. No. 436. I. LORD ROSEBERY'S CHATHAM. II. THE ORIGIN OF LAND PLANTS. III. THE BRITISH ARMY AND MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF WAR THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, JANUARY, 1911.* No. CCCCXXXV. ART. I.-ENGLISH PROSODY. A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day. By GEORGE SAINTSBURY, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh. Three vols. London: Macmillan and Co. 1906-10. Απ T the outset of his work on English Prosody, Professor Saintsbury tells us of the hesitations which he had in choosing a title. Should he call his book a history of English metre or of English versification? The title A History of 'English Rhythm' has been preoccupied by Guest's well-known volumes. As a rule, such questions of nomenclature are of secondary importance. In the present case they suggest an initial difficulty which needs to be cleared away. 'History of Rhythm,'' History of Metre,'' History of Versification,'' History of Prosody' all these have in them the seeds of misunderstanding. They imply, or they seem to, a certain independent existence in the things specified, rhythms, metres, and so forth, from the poetry which they contain-as distinct as the winejar is from the wine. But the relation of these two, poetry and the forms of poetry, is organic not mechanical; and it is the distinctive merit of Professor Saintsbury's book that he rises to the truer view in this matter: though we are not sure that even he reaches the full height of the argument.' Guest's History of English Rhythms,' which is the only treatise we can bring into comparison with Professor * All rights reserved. VOL. CCXIII. NO. CCCCXXXV. B Saintsbury's, is rendered in the sum almost worthless by Guest's absurd attempt to treat Early English or Anglo-Saxon versification as one and the same with true English verse. Nobody, who listened unbiased to the counsels of his own ear, could fail to see the difference between the recitative character of Anglo-Saxon poetry and the true rhythmic character of English verse. The differences of [between] English verse of 1000 and 'English verse of 1300 are differences of nature and kind; the 'differences of English verse in 1300 and 1900 are mere differences of practice and accomplishment.'t Nothing material would, we think, have been lost had the author of this history of 'prosody after once indicating divergence from Guest, left the matter there: nor insisted so frequently on his own method of scansion by feet, and of equivalence and so forth, as if they were something utterly new and of themselves of vast importance to the understanding of 'poetry; whereas they are in part a logomachy only. There is no theoretic obligation for applying terms taken from Greek and Latin prosody to English verse feet in the true, the classic sense we have not got and cannot have, when our vowel sounds have no fixed value in verse. And that a poet with such a delicate ear as Coleridge should have been contented with a nomenclature different from that of our author is evidence, not so much of a mental defect or of obstinacy in error on the part of Coleridge, as of the truth that there is no expressing in words the niceties of sound, which the trained ear can detect. Bubbling,' for example, is neither a complete spondee bubb-ling' nor a complete dactyl bubble-ing,' but something between the two. Again, if we are to use Greek names for feet we ought in strictness to apply them more or less in the classic manner to the words as they are usually pronounced in prose. Thus 'land-owner' is clearly (in prose) a bacchius (--); and such, too, is 'Almighty'; but such a foot as (-) is impossible in English verse; wherefore in verse, at any rate, in exact scansion 'land-owner' or 'Almighty would have to become a cretic (UU) or a dactyl. Let us see, however, how these words are dealt with in our English prosody. Whoso repeats as they should be repeated Milton's lines, 6 *Mr. Omond's interesting Study of Metre' (1907) cannot be reckoned among histories, any more than can similar treatises by Ruskin and by Lanier of Boston ('The Science of English Verse '), both written some thirty years ago. † Saintsbury, vol. i. p. 79. |