PROBLEMS IN STUDY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE 223 



and so, and with certain quantities and accents in reasonably fixed 

 positions. All of these facts may be significant with regard to the 

 meter; many of them must be significant. How far all or any part 

 of them suffice to pluck out the heart of the mystery is a debatable 

 question. The objection that an ancient scop cannot have had all 

 these types and sub-types in his head when he took harp in hand is 

 merely ludicrous. It is much as if one were to contend that the 

 musician's crotchets and semiquavers are perverse nonentities because 

 a boy can whistle a tune without ever having heard of them. It is 

 about on a level with the child's inquiry as to how Adam found out 

 the animals' names. There may be there probably is a good 

 deal about Anglo-Saxon meter that is not yet discovered ; but that is no 

 reason for rejecting the information which we have already acquired. 



While this particular subject is under our eyes, and before you 

 have had time to describe me in your own minds as either a philistine, 

 or a partisan, or a shuffler, it may be well to say a word on the history 

 of English meter in general, of what we may call Modern English 

 meter in distinction from that of pre-Conquest times. Here there are 

 certainly problems enough. The whole matter is one enormous 

 puzzle. We do not really know how far English meter is Germanic , 

 how far it is Latin, and how far it is French. Individuals know: there 

 are theorists in plenty who feel certain about the influence exerted 

 on the native versification by the hymns of the church and the 

 secular poetry of the foreign invader. But I am not speaking of the 

 views of those who know because they have made up their minds, 

 but of what can actually be proved to the satisfaction of an unbiased 

 scholar. Again, the whole subject of quantity in modern English 

 meter is as good as terra incognita. Of course quantity plays its 

 part as well as accent. Our ears tell us that, and our common sense. 

 Besides, we have the testimony of the poets themselves. But how 

 great is the quantitative function, and what are its relations to 

 accentual rhythm? Further, we are in no sort of agreement as 

 to pauses in metrical writing. Most metricians tell us, for instance, 

 that in Shakespeare's blank verse a pause may take the place of an 

 unaccented syllable, some even assert that it may stand for one 

 that is accented. To me, however, such statements appear to have 

 no meaning. They seem to belong to mathematics, not to poetry. 



Again, we are at sword's points about ictus and rhetorical accent. 

 Everybody knows that the same verse may often be singsonged 

 with five accents and read with three or four, and that it satisfies the 

 ear when uttered in either way, though it appeals to the intellect 

 in only one of its two renditions. What are we to make of this 

 phenomenon? And what of pitch-accent and stress-accent? What 

 of feet or measures? How far are they real divisions and how far 

 mere fetches of scansion? 



