ON RHYTHM IN ENGLISH VERSE 151 



Dr. Guest pays no regard to scansion such as this. In 

 dealing with modern verse he never mentions feet, but substi- 

 tutes for the old-fashioned scansion a wholly different method of 

 analysis based on the final and middle pause. According to 

 him, the rhythmical element in all English verse is a section or 

 group of syllables bounded by a pause at either end. The 

 shortest section must, he says, contain at least two, and the 

 longest section at most three, accented syllables. It is, for Dr. 

 Guest, a self-obvious axiomatic law for all forms of English 

 verse that two consecutive syllables cannot both be accented. 

 Each accented syllable must be separated by one or by two un- 

 accented syllables, and the section may begin or close in three 

 ways with an accented syllable, with an unaccented syllable, 

 or with two unaccented syllables. These laws admit of thirty- 

 six forms of the section, no one of which is called better or 

 worse than its neighbour. Each line of English verse is said to 

 be built up of two out of these thirty-six sections ; and very 

 numerous examples are given to show that all metres can in 

 this way be analysed and classified. At first one is inclined 

 to think the method at least novel ; but the novelty is less 

 obvious on further consideration. Stripped of disguise, Dr. 

 Guest's analysis, applied to the heroic line, amounts to this. 



Each line of blank verse has five accented syllables, and 

 usually five unaccented syllables separating the others ; but 

 now and then an extra unaccented syllable is added, and at 

 other times one is left out. Moreover, a pause occurs between 

 the second and third accents, or between the third and fourth. 

 We think these statements neither new nor wholly true. Three 

 hundred and twenty-four distinct verses of five accents can be 

 built by combining two of the thirty-six permitted sections ; 

 but even the author of the theory does not venture to say that 

 all these will form good heroic lines, or good lines of any sort, 

 nor can he give us any clue as to which will or will not be 

 successful ; he merely notes which of these combinations have 

 been used by poets with success, and in these we easily discover 

 our old friends the iambs and the trochees. Dr. Guest has 

 observed no new fact ; he simply offers us a new and complex 

 notation by which we may name and classify many varieties of 

 verse. Critical examination is not aided by this new notation, 



