104 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



considered it to be an axiom that the rhythm of music and of poetry are 

 essentially the same, being fundamentally based upon the dance, the march, 

 and the beat of the drum. True, the matter has been recently much discussed, 

 not always with complete assent to this proposition ; but I consider that 

 the dissentients have too often confused rhythm with the tone-music or 

 with the phone-music so closely interwoven with it. As I have certainly 

 recognised since 1881, the metrical foot is really the same as the smaller 

 units of musical time, such as the quaver or crotchet, while the metrical 

 line is the equivalent of one or two bars — " rests " being taken due account of. 

 Much has been written on the matter, as, for instance, by S. Lanier, William 

 Thompson, and Theodore Reinach {Greek Rhythm) — though I think these 

 writers make the mistake of identifying the foot with the musical bar. As 

 I have argued elsewhere, I think that we are tending to lose our sense of rhythm- 

 melody in consequence of our love of tone-melody and tone-harmony. Many 

 races deal chiefly with rhythm-melody — as anyone who has been in " bar- 

 barous " countries will recognise. I remember that once in the Egyptian 

 town of Ismailia a beggar passed our house every morning at the same time 

 playing the same and a most exquisite rhythm on his timbrel. The so-called 

 howling dervishes at Constantinople really perform a wonderful oratorio of 

 rhythm-melody to the words of the Koran ; and it is we — we supermen — 

 who think that they are howling. If one educates one's ear this fading music 

 will be restored." 



In giving his examples he said that, just as in music we may have only 

 one note to the crotchet, or two quavers, or four semiquavers, and so on, 

 while two consecutive notes may be replaced by three notes (called trip- 

 lets), so in verse each crotchet-foot may contain one syllable, two syllables, 

 three, or four, or more syllables. If crotchet-feet containing different numbers 

 of syllables are scattered arbitrarilj'- anyhow throughout a Une-bar, we have 

 what he called an arbitrary rhythm. In a true rhythm a crotchet-foot of 

 a given number of syllables should occupy the same position in the line- 

 bar, or at least in the stanza, which corresponds to the interval in music 

 contained between two sets of double bars. He recognised, however, that, 

 apart from the rhythm-music, the phone-music requires a recognition of 

 long and short syllables in English, much as in Latin and Greek verse. But 

 this long-and-short is in EngUsh connected with euphony rather than with 

 rhythm. If a foot contains only one or two syllables, these must be long ; 

 if it contains more, these must be short. " Of course, feet of one, two, 

 three, and four syllables (interspersed with corresponding rests) are found 

 everywhere in EngUsh verse. In ' regular ' verse all the feet tend to contain 

 the same number of syllables ; but mixed feet are common, especially as the 

 result of elisions used in quite an arbitrary manner. Many of our finest 

 lyrics, however, such as the great choruses of Swinburne and of Mr. Bridges' 

 Demeter, have the feet mixed in true rhythm, but this true rhythm is usually 

 broken, or at least changed, after a short stanza or two. I wish (by the way) 

 that in such cases more indication could be given of the rhythm, because 

 different rhythmic readings of the same lines are frequently possible. It 

 is as absurd to print verses written in any out-of-the-way rhythm without 

 any indication as to what that rhythm should be, as it would be to print 

 music without separating the bars or indicating the time. EngUsh blank 

 verse, usually described as a pentameter, is really seen to consist, if we count 

 the rest at the end of the line, either of two bars of three crotchets each, or 

 of three bars of two crotchets each — the final result being much the same 

 owing to the feeble stress given to the first note of the bar in both cases." 

 He said that he had made many trials of several schemes of blank rhythm, 

 especially with a view to finding the one which should be most suitable for 

 the translation of the Iliad, and finally decided that the blank verse metrical 

 scheme would sufi&ce if the dissyllabic feet were to be more frequently sup- 



