Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, Vol. 5: Collected by Oliver Elton, 1914
But this extraordinary fiction about the two rhythms still prevails; it governs Mr. Bridges' prosody, and is repeated as accepted truth in Mr. Edmund Gosse's article on 'verse in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth edition, 1911. In this, the only article dealing with verse-rhythm, Lanier's name does not appear, and there is only a vague slighting reference to musical theories.
But the protagonist on the anti-musical side is Professor Saintsbury. He is the author of an Historical English Prosody and of a History of English Prosody in 3 volumes (1906 The latter is the most substantial performance on the subject since Guest's History of English Rhythms, and may be taken to represent the prevailing view in the schools. Before attacking what I must con sider its shaky theoretical foundations, I would pay my tribute to its wide learning, the unfailing vigour and interest of its pages, and to the justice and discrimination that are rarely absent from its appreciation of the ejects of rhythm the principles of rhythm indeed occupy but a small part of the book. It is not likely, I may add, that the quarrel lies between different hearings of verse; it is a question of how we account for what we hear. Taking, then, Professor Saintsbury's account as more than any other the established or official doctrine, I propose to compare it with Lanier's.
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