THE TIME-ELEMENT IN ENGLISH VERSE[49]

Nearly all modern writers on the theory of verse have admitted that English words have no fixed syllabic quantities such as are postulated for the classical languages, but that English quantities, so far as they exist, are variable and (in part at least) subjective in character. To this it is true there are exceptions, chiefly among the poets, like some of those considered in the preceding section on Imitations of Classical Metres.

Writers who have agreed that English words have no fixed quantities, are still at variance as to the relation of the element of syllabic time to the element of accent in English verse. Two extremes may at once be distinguished: that represented by the familiar statement that our rhythms differ from those of classical poetry in being based wholly on accent, and that represented most notably by the late Sidney Lanier, who held that syllabic time-values in English verse are as exact and regular (hence as accurately measurable) as the notes of music. Lanier applied his theory with admirable consistency, and represented all sorts of English verse, even that of the Anglo-Saxon period, in musical notation. He is almost universally regarded, however, as having been led by the analogy between music and poetry to carry his method to quite impossible lengths. The most characteristic example of this is his representation of the familiar "blank verse" measure in "three-four" time, each accented syllable being given a time-value twice as long as that of the adjacent unaccented syllable—a method of reading which can easily be shown to be contrary to all common practice. It should not be forgotten, however, that a debt of gratitude is owed Mr. Lanier for having been one of the first to emphasize adequately the fact that verse, like music, is rhythmical sound.

Besides those who make English verse to depend wholly on accent, and those who give it time-values equally regular and measurable with those of music, there is a third class disposed to confuse the two elements of quantity and accent. Of this class was Edgar Poe, who in his essay on The Rationale of Verse constantly spoke of accented and unaccented syllables as "long" and "short," respectively, and was even disposed to carry the identification into Latin verse itself. This essay of Poe's has lately been defended by Mr. John M. Robertson, in the interesting Appendix to his New Essays toward a Critical Method (1897). Unfortunately Mr. Robertson seems to have perpetuated deliberately the confusion which he found in Poe in the use of the terms "accent" and "quantity." He even says that the attempt to distinguish them is ill-founded, "that quantity in speaking must amount substantially to the same thing as stress," and, again, that "Poe's identification of stress with length is perfectly sound." Whatever be the fundamental fact here, the use of terms cannot be commended. If quantity is swallowed up in accent, so that accent alone dominates our verse, that is one thing; if the conditions are such that a heavy stress and a long quantity nearly always coincide, that is also a possible doctrine; but that is not to say that the two things should be identified. If all tall men wear long coats, or if all men—tall and short—wear long coats, it follows in neither case that tallness and long-coatedness are the same thing. It is a mere matter of physics that duration of sound and intensity of sound are perfectly distinguishable, and that they have no necessary connection with each other. The problem is: how are they related in practice?

It has already been observed that Mr. Lanier did good service in emphasizing the analogy between music and poetry, but that he carried the analogy too far. It may, therefore, be worth while to consider at just this point the elements of likeness and of difference in the two forms of art. Both are forms of rhythmical art: music and verse are alike rhythmical sound. Lanier showed with sufficient certainty that rhythm is dependent upon both time and accent. He said, to be sure, that "time is the essential" element;[50] but this does not seem to have been altogether what he meant, for he himself pointed out that the ear insistently marks off time-elements by the sense of variation of stress, even when there is no real variation, as in the tick-tack of the clock. He also pointed out that accent marks the rhythm of music quite as truly as that of verse, the rule being that ordinarily the first note of each measure shall receive a special stress. It seems, then, that the rhythm of music is based on the recurrence of accented sounds at equal time-intervals. The same thing is true of the rhythm of verse. For every kind of metre there is a normal verse-rhythm which is present in the mind as the basis on which the verse is built up, no matter how many variations may constantly occur. This normal rhythm is formed by a succession of accents at exactly equal time-intervals,[51] such as can be marked off by a metronome, or by the mechanical beating of the foot on the floor. We realize that the verse as commonly read frequently departs from this regularity of intervals; but without the regularity as a norm to which to refer it, we should not recognize it as verse. The normal accent-interval we call a "foot."

Exception must therefore be taken, it seems to me, to another contention of Mr. Robertson's; namely, that "there is no time-unit." "Our feet," he says, "are a pure convention, and the sole rhythmic fact is the fluctuant relativity of long and short, or stress and slur." I am glad to be able to believe that the fundamental rhythmic fact is something more definite than this.[52] But the latest writer on the subject, Mr. Mark Liddell, in his Introduction to the Scientific Study of Poetry, joins Mr. Robertson in finding no feet in English verse. Nay, he represents the metrist who makes use of the old conventions of rhythmical measurement as one who will "flounder ceaselessly amid the scattered timbers of iambuses, spondees, dactyls, tribrachs, never reaching the firm ground of truth"! Mr. Liddell points out that we do not pronounce English words, even in verse, with mechanically regular alternations of stress; and he rejects the explanation that there is nevertheless a typical form in the poet's and the reader's mind, on the ground that it is "a strange state of affairs that the Æsthetically imperfect should produce a greater pleasure than the Æsthetically perfect." Strange, perhaps, but as familiar as sunrise, if by "Æsthetically perfect" we mean absolutely regular. Here we need to recur to the analogy of music, where the phenomenon in question is so obvious. Let any one attempt to follow a symphony with a metronome in his hand, and he will soon discover that if the metronome represents the Æsthetically perfect rhythm, the orchestra represents a more pleasurable imperfection. Its accelerations and retardations carry on a continual conflict with the typical time of the music, yet that typical time is not only printed on every sheet, but is in the mind of every player. It is precisely so with verse.

It is true, of course, that the variations from regularity of rhythm are more numerous and conspicuous in verse than in music. The reason is obvious: the sounds of verse have constantly to effect a compromise between the typical rhythm to which they are set and the irregular stress-and time-variations of human speech, while music has no such complicated task. Lyrical verse, being closest to music, keeps the typical rhythm freest from interruption; and it is worthy of remark that Mr. Liddell's study of English rhythms is based very largely on those of a non-lyrical character, although he himself points out (p. 271) that these are the least regular. The drama is dominated, most of all forms of verse, by the necessity of representing natural human speech; hence it is not the place to look for the fundamental laws of verse at their purest.

There is, then, a unit of time on which all verse-rhythms, like all musical rhythms, are based; and this is what we commonly call in music the measure, and in verse, the foot, I shall recur to this matter a little later in considering the terminology of the subject; for the present let us return to the relations of verse and music. Both, we have seen, are based on the recurrence of accented sounds at equal time-intervals. There is some difference, however, in the emphasis which one naturally places on the respective parts of the statement. In music we feel that the fact of chief importance is that the measures shall be equal in time, while the recurring accent seems a mere means of marking this equality; but in verse we feel that the chief fact is that the accents shall recur, the equality of time-intervals being in a sense a secondary source of pleasure. In music, therefore, as we have seen, we treat departures from regularity of time-intervals as somewhat more exceptional than in verse. But the rhythm would suffer, would even disappear, were either element wholly removed.

If we look for further distinctions between verse and music, we find them in the separate sounds which go to make up the unit-measures. Not only are the measures of music of mathematically equal length, but all the sounds bear exact time-relations to each other: each is either half as long, or twice as long, or a quarter as long, or four times as long, as its neighbor. On the other hand, the number of separate sounds in the measure constantly varies; it is sufficient that the total length be that of the full measure. In verse these conditions are reversed. The separate syllables, while they doubtless vary in length, are not mathematically coÖrdinated as to duration by the ordinary reader. It is almost as difficult to say just what the time-relation of any two adjacent syllables is, as to be sure that one is stressed just twice as strongly as the other. On the other hand, the number of syllables in the foot (in good modern English verse) is tolerably constant.

For the sake of completeness, one may add two other fundamental distinctions which, apart from the elements of rhythm, differentiate verse from music. Music, apart from rhythm, characteristically depends on variation of pitch, and only incidentally (as in the case of the use of different instruments in orchestration) on variation of sound-quality; whereas verse, apart from rhythm, characteristically depends on variation of sound-quality,—that is, on the different sounds of the different words,—and only incidentally on changes of pitch. Finally, the changing sounds of music are only vaguely symbolic, while the changing sounds of verse are symbolic of definite ideas.

For the sake of easy comparison we may put these observations in a rough sort of table:

Music	Verse
Rhythmical Sound, i.e.
Recurrence of accented sounds at equal time-intervals.	Recurrence of accented sounds at equal time-intervals.
Separate sounds mathematically related in length, and constantly varying in number and arrangement.	Separate sounds not mathematically related in length, and generally with unchanged number and arrangement.
Apart from rhythm, dependent on variation of pitch (incidentally on sound-quality).	Apart from rhythm, dependent on variation of sound-quality (incidentally on pitch).
Sounds vaguely symbolic.	Sounds symbolic of definite ideas.

Let us now consider more closely the time-values of the separate syllables of verse, asking just what we mean by a "long" or a "short" syllable in English. It has already been indicated that the ear recognizes no such fixed proportions in the length of our syllables as are recognized for musical notes, or as are postulated for the syllables of Greek and Latin verse. It must also be remembered that the terms "long" and "short," as commonly used of English vowels, are of little significance for the matter of real quantity. They are applied for historical reasons, and do not describe present facts. Thus we call the o in "hotel" long, and that in "cot" short; but it is fairly clear that the o of "cot" takes rather more time, as commonly uttered, than that of "hotel." The so-called "short o" is, in fact, a sound so open that it has lost the o-quality. In the same way what we call "long a" is a short-e sound diphthongized. We cannot be said to preserve in modern English any single vowels with fixed long quantity, such as we hear in German words like Saal and See,—sounds which obviously take more time in utterance than others.

Can we speak accurately, then, of long syllables and short syllables in modern English? It may be said that we have a large number of genuine diphthongs; and such double sounds, especially where they are so open as to require unusual effort on the part of the vocal organs (like -ow, for example), may be assumed to take a longer time in utterance than monophthongs. Even such a sound as is represented by -au or -aw, though it has but slight diphthongal quality, seems to sound longer than most monophthongs. But in none of these cases does ordinary pronunciation make the sound-length at all conspicuous, except where it coincides with strong stress; and it requires a moment's reasoning to convince one's self that the vowel in fine is any longer than that in fan. It is more than doubtful, then, whether our vowel sounds can be regarded as of significance for metrical time. A word like "saw" or "now," occurring in such a place in the verse as to be passed over with the briefest and lightest utterance, would be pronounced with rapidity by the ordinary reader, with no thought that the vowel-sound was too "long."

But in the earlier languages a syllable might be long, not only from the presence of a long vowel, but also from the presence of two or more consonants following the vowel. May this be said to hold good for modern English? In general, prolonged consonantal sounds seem to be avoided, as in the case of vowels. We pass over them rapidly, and have, for instance, no such clearly stopped syllables due to double consonants as are heard in Italian words like madonna. Yet we cannot doubt that two or three consonants require more time than one, and in words like strength, flushed, fists, and the like, every one would find the consonantal length perceptible. More than this, two consonants often serve to "close" the preceding syllable, by making it impossible to run the consonant at the end of it over into the following syllable, and hence really lengthen it. This, of course, is the reason why the first syllable of the Latin avis is said to be short, but that of alvus to be long. The Elizabethan metrists tried to apply these Latin rules of "quantity by position" to all English words; and many modern English writers, who have been trained from childhood in the appreciation of Latin quantities, easily perceive the differing consonantal quantities of English words. These quantities may, then, certainly be said to exist; but in ordinary English pronunciation, and to the ordinary, untrained English ear, they must be strongly marked in order to attract attention. When thus strongly marked, they doubtless play some part in the structure of verse. In some lines attributed to Raleigh,

the syllable trust-occupies the time of two syllables; the typical metre would require something like

Now, the fact that trust-is a noticeably long syllable, especially when closed by the following l, makes it well fitted to fill the place of two syllables; and we should find the line distinctly less pleasing if a short syllable were there instead. Boundless would do as well, because equally long; trusty would not be quite so good; silly would be very bad. Conversely, when a noticeably long syllable occupies the place of a light syllable, in rapid tri-syllabic verse, we feel that the verse is injured. Mr. William Larminie criticises a line of Mr. Swinburne's on this ground,—

the combination -ange, with its final -nj sound, made still longer by the following r, and preceded, too, by the combination n-st, has too much quantity for the place where it stands in the verse. In the verse of inferior writers many worse cases could easily be found. These illustrations, then, may serve to show that while we do not coÖrdinate our consonantal syllable-lengths as absolute "shorts" and "longs," we perceive certain degrees of length, and find these playing a part in our verse.

So much for intrinsic quantity as found in English syllables. But there is much more to be said for syllables made long or short at the will of the speaker, under certain conditions. If we address a friend in surprise, saying, "Why, John!" we not only throw a heavy stress on both the words, but also perceptibly prolong them. In like manner, we realize that unimportant words, especially proclitics (like the italicized words in the phrase "The land of the free") are not only unstressed, but are hurried over in shorter moments than the accented words. Examples like this suggest what may in fact be expressed in a general statement, that accented syllables are very commonly prolonged. This is not, as we have seen, from any essential connection between the nature of accent and the nature of quantity. In certain cases, unaccented syllables even show a tendency to length beyond that of those bearing the stress, as in words like follow, dying, and others where the final sound is easily prolonged. The coincidence of stress and length, then, is due simply to the operation of the same cause—the grammatical or rhetorical importance of the syllable in question. This fact, that the important (stressed) syllables are likely to be held a little longer than the others, will not warrant us in representing them as twice as long, in the exact mathematical relations of musical notes; but it may explain why a musician like Lanier tried to represent them in such notation. It must also be the cause of Mr. Robertson's attempt to identify quantity and stress. His statement that "quantity in fact, in spoken verse, consists of stress and of the consonantal total of syllables," may be regarded as much more satisfactory than those already quoted from his essay. It is, however, not quite accurate.

Still another kind of relative syllable-length remains to be considered, and for metrical purposes it is probably the most important. The accents of English words not only vary in degree according to the different stresses which they receive in different prose sentences, but in verse they are made artificially to vary also so as to conform as closely as possible to the scheme of the metre. Thus the first syllable of the word over is accented far more strongly when it occurs at the opening of a dactylic verse,

than when it occurs at the opening of an anapestic verse,

This being the case with accent, which tends to be strongly fixed in English words, we might naturally expect that it would be still more clearly the case with the element of time; and so it is. Syllables will be lengthened and shortened by the reader in order to preserve as nearly as possible the fundamental equal time-intervals between the principal accents. This is most easily recognized, and most commonly practised, in the case where syllables are shortened because there are more of them than the normal scheme of the verse would imply. The old "tumbling verse" of our ancestors depended on this principle, and so did the revival of it in Coleridge's Christabel. For example:

Here the rhythm of the last verse is brought into the four-beat measure of the first verse, by passing lightly and rapidly over all syllables save the four that mark the metre. In prose, the word marched would be stressed quite as much as the word out, but there is no difficulty in reducing the stress in reading the verse.[54] It cannot be said, however, that there is no difficulty in reducing its length, for the final consonant combination -cht takes up considerable time, and the whole word follows a syllable (had) which has been closed and so lengthened by the d + m. Sensitive readers would probably agree, therefore, that the quantity in this verse is too much for the smoothness of the rhythm. On the other hand, the long syllable ironed helps us to fill the place of the light syllable which is missing after it, and we find the rhythm easier than it would be in this form:

Once more, for the sake of convenience, let us attempt to put our conclusions into the form of a summary. An English syllable may be said to be long, not absolutely but relatively, from:

[1. The naturally long character of its vowel-sound, due either
to open quality or diphthongization.]
2. The presence of two or more consonants which require a
perceptible time for utterance.
3. Prolongation by the speaker
(a) because of the importance of the syllable, or
(b) because of the time which it ought to occupy in
the scheme of the verse.

The artificial lengthening and shortening of syllables, then, is constantly and naturally practised in the reading of verse which has a strong lyrical swing such as guides the reader into a sense of its structure. In verse more subtle and less lyrical in character the time-intervals are not so strongly marked, and by the ear not trained to listen for rhythm they are not so easily observed. The five-stress iambic line, especially when unrimed, has developed far more freedom and subtlety in English poetry than any other measure, and it is to this that one finds these writers invariably turning who wish to prove that our verse is not based on regular time-intervals. A verse like this:

if read as an ordinary prose phrase, has no obvious metrical character. The second foot ("couch of") inverts the normal order of accent and no-accent, and in common speech the second and third syllables would be long and followed by a phrase-pause, while the fourth and fifth syllables would be made very short and jointed closely to what follows. There is no rhythm in such a group of words. But when we know that they are part of a poem in five-stress verse, we can readjust them so as to approach more closely to the rhythmical scheme in our minds. We cannot accent either of or his, without destroying the sense; nor can we deprive either lone or couch of its accent; but we can lengthen the words of his beyond their natural time in speech, pronouncing them more deliberately, and we can also, perhaps, diminish the phrase-pause after couch. This would tend to equalize the five time-intervals to which the verse, as a verse, should fit itself. It would be too much to say that this is what the ordinary reader would do, because the ordinary reader is likely to have his mind fixed on expressing the sense, neglecting the rhythm which is equally an element of the poetry; but it is what the careful reader could do without difficulty.

The first line of Paradise Lost,

always a favorite specimen for metrists to dissect, is of like character. Mr. Robertson, in the essay already cited, makes considerable use of this verse as showing the vanity of the usual method of dividing verses into equal feet. He quotes approvingly Professor Shairp's account of the way in which Clough analyzed the line: "The two feet 'first disobe-' took up the time of four syllables, two iambic feet: the voice rested awhile on the word 'first'; then passed swiftly over 'diso-,' then rested again on 'be-' so as to recover the previous hurry." Now this seems to be merely a description of the way in which the words would be uttered in prose, and to neglect the rhythm of the poem in which they stand. In the second foot one can and should give the syllable dis- full syllabic time, instead of hurrying over it as in prose speech,—a rendering made easy by the fact that it frequently has a marked secondary accent. Conversely, one can give first somewhat less time than it would occupy in prose, without thereby diminishing its accent. The word and, in the fourth foot, would in prose utterance be allowed almost no time-value; and it may be treated in the same way in the verse, by permitting the pause at the comma to fill up the normal time of the foot. It would seem to be better, however, to give and a fairly distinct utterance for metrical purposes (without, of course, adding any stress), and thus to approach more closely to the scheme of time-intervals. It is highly improbable that any one would read this verse—or almost any other verse of Paradise Lost—with such exact observance of the equal time-intervals as would appear in regular lyrical poetry. We have already seen that blank verse departs more constantly from the typical scheme of the measure than any other of our verse-forms. Nevertheless, the reader with a well-trained ear listens always for the flow of the typical metre underneath the surface irregularities, and, by a delicate adjustment of syllable-lengths, can bring the poet's words into far more rhythmical utterance than they would find in prose.

There is one other method of varying the time-elements in verse which has already been suggested by what was said of the pause at the comma in the line of Paradise Lost. It will be seen very generally that light syllables, such as one wishes to utter in brief periods of time, are found on either side of the phrase-pauses in our verse.

is a typical line in this respect. The natural pause, indicated by the comma, takes up part of the time of the third foot, which there are no syllables fitted wholly to fill. It might almost be said that, in ordinary five-stress verse, such verses are quite as numerous as those with five complete feet. The pause satisfies the ear, so far as the time-intervals are concerned, quite as well as a long syllable.

Pauses not only fill up the incomplete time of a foot containing only short syllables, but they also fill the time of wholly missing syllables. In the verse

we start out with trisyllabic rhythm, but have only two syllables in the second and in the third foot. It does not seem certain whether the missing syllable after dying is to have its place filled by a pause or by a prolongation of either or both of the syllables dy-ing—perhaps by all three means combined. In the same way the missing syllable after moon may have its place filled either by the prolongation of the oo, or by the pause indicated by the comma, or by both. But in other cases the pause occupies the entire syllable-moment; for examples, see under Pauses in pages 20-22 above. The whole matter was well summed up in Lanier's saying that "rhythm may be dependent on silences" as well as on sounds.

Let us now try to gather what we have been considering into the form of definite statements regarding the place of the time-element in our verse.

1. In the normal verse, accents appear at equal time-intervals. This, of course, does not preclude all manner of variations; the unit of measure is not the distance between the accents as they are found in each verse, but between the points where they belong in the typical metre.

2. There is a tendency toward the coincidence of long and accented, and of short and unaccented, syllables. This we have seen to be true in two different senses. In the first place, an accented syllable is likely to be lengthened for the same reason that it is accented—because of its relative importance in the place where it stands. In the second place, syllables noticeably long are avoided in those places in the verse where the accent does not fall, and are preferred where the stress is heavy.

3. In the reading of verse, the length of the syllables is varied artificially, so as to tend to preserve the equal time-intervals.

4. In like manner, pauses are introduced where syllables are short or wanting, to preserve these intervals.

It is quite possible that these laws might be stated more fully and definitely. In Anglo-Saxon verse the conditions were perhaps not so different from those of modern English as we are likely to think; there we know that the principal stresses of the verse always fell on long syllables, and scholars like Sievers, by analyzing the remains of our early poetry, have formulated certain other laws as to the position and relations of the short syllables. If similar laws were to be formulated for our modern verse, we should probably find them no more perplexing than our ancestors would find those we have formulated for their verse. In every case the "law" is only an attempt to express what the ear has long known and obeyed. Mr. Goodell, in an article on "Quantity in English Verse," in the Proceedings of the American Philological Society for 1885, attempted to do for our verse what has just been suggested. He stated such laws as these:

"The thesis becomes a triseme if the next syllable bears the ictus. No syllable can be placed in this position which is incapable of prolongation."

"If the arsis is monosyllabic, a short vowel in the thesis followed by a single consonant is not lengthened by the ictus; the arsis is instead prolonged."

"With arsis monosyllabic, the strong tendency is to make the thesis short."

Perhaps these rules are on the right track; the terminology is somewhat difficult, and makes one hesitate to criticise carefully. But since, as we have seen, the terms "long" and "short," as applied to English syllables, have come to be so purely relative, since our syllabic quantities vary so much at the will of the reader, and since the whole matter of the reading of our verse is in good measure one of subjective interpretation, it seems very doubtful whether any statements more explicit than those already laid down would be found of practical service.

Finally, we come back to the question whether we shall use for English verse the classical terminology which has for so long been applied to it. Those who object to such terminology do so either on the ground that it implies that English accented and unaccented syllables are equivalent respectively to Latin long and short syllables, or on the still more fundamental ground that there is nothing in our verse which can properly be called a "foot." It is undoubtedly true that the use of terms based on quantity has given rise to some confusion when applied to phenomena based on accent, yet the terms are now understood with as fair a degree of clearness as any terms relating to so disputed a subject as English verse; and it seems very doubtful whether it is not easier to explain them than to introduce new ones. Experiments in the latter direction have not been very successful. The latest writer on the subject objects, with considerable severity, to the classical nomenclature "hardly pressed and barbarously misapplied." Our current prosody, he says later, "ignores" the frequent occurrence of an accented syllable at the beginning of a line of Shakspere's verse, "turning it off with the statement that 'a trochaic foot may begin an iambic verse.'" Yet when we reach the summary of the author's discussion of the subject, we find the same phenomenon "turned off" with this statement: "In rising rhythm a thought-moment may begin with a falling wave-group." One cannot avoid querying whether this interesting combination of words conveys any simpler and better idea to the normal English reader than the familiar statement that "a trochaic foot may begin an iambic verse." The case is instructive as to the danger of attempting a new terminology where one is already established, and of imagining that one has thereby made the discussion of the subject more scientific.

The second of the objections to the usual terminology, that there is no real foot in English verse, has already been considered. If there are no regular units of measure in our verse, then to attempt constantly to find such units, and to use terms that imply their existence, is certainly a mistake. But those are on the wrong track who would find the divisions of the verse in the natural phrase-divisions of English speech.[55] In "arma virumque cano" the syllable vi- is far more closely connected with the syllable -rum, for all prose purposes, than with the preceding syllables; but in the verse the Romans thought of it as being in the same foot with arma; and later in the verse the last syllable of cano is rhythmically connected (over the barrier of a comma) with the first of TrojÆ. Indeed, the Latin poets instinctively avoided the regular coincidence of metrical units with word or sentence units. Precisely the same thing is true of English verse. It has been suggested more than once that the great preponderance, among English dissyllables, of those accented on the first syllable, goes to explain our preference for iambic over trochaic measures; and that one reason why the rhythm of Hiawatha, for example, so soon wearies the ear, is because its metrical divisions and word divisions so frequently coincide. The fundamental principle of verse is that it sets up a new order of progress which constantly conflicts with, yet without destroying, the order of progress of common prose speech.

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.

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