156 LITERATURE AND DRAMA 



should be considered as the primary elements of the English 

 metrical foot. Victory appears to have declared for the school 

 which puts accent in the place of quantity ; but the controversy 

 was rather about terms than facts. No sane man ever pro- 

 nounced English verse by the ancient rules of quantity ; and, 

 on the other hand, those who classify by accents are fain to call 

 many syllables accented whose sole claim to that honour is 

 given by their length. We doubt whether the nominal scanning 

 of a single line was altered by those who fought most violently 

 for accent against quantity. The difficulties of scansion are not 

 to be removed by a mere change of names. 



Probably no new statement about verse will be found to be 

 true ; but some important truths have been imperfectly stated, 

 and others have met with neglect, so that no one complete 

 theory is now generally accepted. Instead of wearily picking 

 out small modicums of truth from this or that half-forgotten 

 author, let us search for the main laws of rhythm by listening 

 to the actual sound of prose and verse as spoken nowadays. 

 Both in prose and verse we habitually run words together, so as 

 to form a group of sounds as continuous as those in any single 

 word. The pause dividing these groups sometimes separates 

 the members of a sentence ; sometimes it is used for purposes 

 of emphasis ; but in many cases the pause we speak of is invo- 

 luntary, being made while we rearrange the organs of speech, so 

 as to allow a fresh word to begin with a clear, well-cut sound. 

 We make the pause, in fact, to avoid what Mr. Melville Bell 

 calls a glide. This continuous group we will call a section. The 

 letter ' r ' is a great cem enter of words, and perhaps the meaning 

 of this term section may be best explained by examples of faulty 

 sections, such as ' Mariar Ann,' or ' idear of,' where words which 

 ought not to form a continuous group are nevertheless welded 

 by the vulgar into a section with a distinct rhythmical character. 



We will first consider the function or properties of these 

 sections in prose, for prose has its rhythm as well as verse ; and 

 if we can find the simpler laws of rhythm in prose, we shall 

 then more easily ascertain the precise difference between prose 

 and verse. To our ear the following prose passage falls into 

 eight sections, separated by seven pauses, of which the second and 

 sixth are very short, and would in rapid speech be omitted : 



