466 Transactions. 



Art. XLII. — Metre. 

 By Johannes C. Andersen. 



[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 6th November, 1907.] 



CHAPTER I. 



1. Rhythm in music or poetry is an uninterrupted succession 

 of equal divisions of time, each more or less filled with sound. 

 Speech, as it becomes exalted or emotional, tends to become 

 rhythmical. Rhythmic speech is intended to please rather 

 than to instruct ; to convince through the emotions rather 

 than through the intellect. Therefore, the praises of their 

 patrons were sung by the sagamen of old ; prose would have 

 insured ridicule rather than reward : so, too, a lover is allowed 

 greater latitude when he sings his rhapsodies than when they 

 fall from his lips in prose. 



2. Apart from its audible nature, rhythm has a distinct 

 form when written or printed as poetry. As distinguished 

 from prose, its chief characteristic to the eye is that it is written 

 in lines of definite lengths, each, as has been usually asserted 

 by prosodists, containing a definite number of syllables. That 

 the number of syllables is not everything, however, is implied 

 when it is said above that the equal divisions of poetry are 

 more or less filled with sound. This theory has of late years 

 been amply set out by T. S. Omond, and need not now be further 

 spoken of, as it must recur in the course of this essay. The 

 external form of verse has not been so exhaustively treated as 

 the internal, but forms almost as interesting a study, seeing 

 that it is the external and visible expression of the internal and 

 invisible spirit. Scansion studies the regularity of " feet,'' 

 the component parts of verses, or, as they are more commonly 

 called, lines ; but little attention has been paid to the regu- 

 larity of the lines themselves. 



3. The length of the lines is supposed to have been given 

 by their users, the poets, and to have been fixed by their usage. 

 This study will be confined to the absolutely rhythmical lines 

 that followed the alliterative and comparatively rhythmical 

 staves of the old Scandinavian or early Saxon bards. Is it 

 possible that the length of the lines could have been fixed 

 arbitrarily ? If one poet were great enough to fix them, another 

 could arise great enough to alter them. In " Chambers's En- 

 cyclopaedia," under the beading "Metre," it is stated that 



