THE FOOT-RULE IN PROSE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1563, 5 October 1912, Page 9

THE FOOT-RULE IN PROSE.

•The "Westminster Gazette" thus reviews Professor Saintsbury's '.'History of English Proso Rhythm":— Many years ago the present reviewer endeavoured to team tho art of writing Plautine iambics from a scholar of great erudition. He found, if ho remembers rightly, that there were'about a hundred and hfty rules for this accomplishment, and the tamo number of exceptions to every .rule, At this point he abandoned the art of writ-'ng. Plautine iambics, and has never resumed it. With Professor Saintsbury's book before .him on "A History of English Pioso Rhythm" he was in a scrkus perplexity about continuing the .profession of journalism, when fortunately tho comfortng reflection came to his resciia that it was not necessary for him, at all events, to Write' rhythmical prose. For those, however, who are under this necessity, Professor Saintsbury's discoveries aro invaluable, and we.must endeavour to give a brief outline of them. In rhythmical pr,ose_there are twenty-two feet commonly employed—the iamb, the pyrrhic, the spondee, the trochee, the amphibrach, tho anapaest,, the antiBacchic, the Bacchic, tho erotic, the dactyl, tho molossus, tho tribrach, the entispust, the choriamb, the diamb, the dispondee, tho ditrochee, the epitrite, the ionic, the paeon, the piocleusmatic, and .the dochmiac. Sonic of these have four forms, and the dochmiac as fauny forms an you like. Any five syllables which cannot bo split up into one of the other kinds of feet is a dochmiac; and when any of the splittiug-up gives you a foot over, you may use a single-syllablo foot to start again. This is ono of the leading characteristics of rhythmical English prose, and most providentially so, for otherwise it would never be able to get on at all. Professor Saintsbury cites a (Treat many famous and beautiful passages of EngKsh prose, and shows by scansion tho extraordinary skill and cunning with which the molossus, tho nntispast, the epitrite, and dochmiac, and the rest of them are employed. The only difficulty is to know what syllables are long or short; but this is really a help, for if yon are in doubt you can make them either, and so get your molossus cr antispast. into its right place. For the rest, we can only respectfully follow Professor Saintsbury, when he pr.oeeeds to scon, -for whereas an inexpert person might suppose that there were a dozen ways of playing this game, he is always quite sure that there is only one. Jeremy Taylor, he says, "like Hooker, 'scans himself (in more than the French sense of the reflexive) with singular iuevitablencss." Here, it seems to us, the Professor is a little too modest, for we should never, without his aid,-have had the slightest notion how to do it or even to begin on it; and, unless we arc-much mistaken, there are even professors of literature who would be in (he same plight. It is positively uncanny to see familiar passages, in which we had never' Rusnected this secret, working out into dochmiacs- and choriambs and Bacchics nnd tribrachs at Dr. Saintsbury's touch. The Baconian cipher is nothing to it. But let us tiirn now to a passage in tho concluding chapters of this book which throws further light on the subject:

"One great principle we can perhaps lay down, as pstablifihod beyond possibility of contradiction. It is not new—there is no doubt Hint Hie proper correction of the famous sa.vins? of Pococurante Junior is 'There is nothing true except what not new: and this matters very much.' But the principle has not been exactly F reclaimed from the house-tops, and lyncher proclaimed or not. it has been very little attended to, and never, to . my knowledge, worked out. at all till the present, occasion. As the essence of versemetre is its identity (at least in equivalence) and recurrence, so the essence of prosc-rhvthm lies in variety and <liver<rence. As the identity of recurrence in verse is, in the best 'examples, tempered

by an equivalence which must lie pretty exact, so the variety in proso-rhythm is tempered, in the same sentence and in (littcrent sentences, by a second principle of association which will be further expounded shortly." Now, this really is one of those discoveries which ono hails with a cheer. "Tho essence of verse-metro is its identity" and "the essence of prose-rhythm lies in variety and divergence." The proposition carries convict ion at first siclit; ft is an incontrovertible, obvious truth. Bat llicn, having grasped it, one must go on to ask whether anything is to be gained by attempting to measure pro.-:o with the foot-measure which has been invented for verse-metres. The foot is a perfectly arbitrary tiling which serves tho convenient purpose of dividing up recurrent verso forms, and it is an afterthought relatively to tho verse ilself. Men, wo may be sure, did not invent iambs and then arrange them in iambics; they wrote iambics and found that they consisted of long and short syllables, which they proceeded to divide into feel. The usefulness of tho division was that it enabled them to check by rule what Was written by ear, and to see that it conformed to a' recurrent identical type. But when there is no regular type, and when the essence of thothing is, as' Professor Saintsbury says, variety and divergence, what can the footrulo tell you? The - Prufessor scans his passages, but he deduces nothing from the scansion which a man with any sense of rhythm could not deduce without it. fie makes admirable remarks about tho styles of the different writers, but they would almost all bo equally apposite, if he had never started on the business of scansion. We grope in vain among tho scanned passages to find any hint about the of dochmiacs, eoitrites, and the rest, which would be of any service to an apprentice desiring to learn tho art of writing ryhthmical prose. 'Prose," said Bcntham in his immortal definition, "is when tho words go on to the margin except at the end of a paragraph; poetry is when they stop short of it. * ■ We arc not certain whether any of tho professors have really got beyond this, and at all events wo know of no definition which is less open to objection. But may wo not say that if the foot is tho unit of verse, tho phrase or. even the sentence is the unit of prose? Let the read-, cr_ try to read almost any of Professor Saiutsbury's passages with an eye on tho scansion, and ho will find, wo think, that tho beat is pinch tco short and quick. Tho emphasised syllables' are in reality far fewer than the syllables marked lon-' and though every word needs to bo properly accented, the important thing is not the accents on the words, but tho progress of tho words to a point of/ stress, 6-, inversely, their recession from it. These processes are so subtle a combination cf sound and sense that .-if seems to us "inpossible to isolate tho "one from the other and speak of the rhythm of prose as if • it wero something detached from its manning. The' windiest verbosity may be perfectly beautiful according to any a'jskact theory of rhythm, yet the ear, which vr.derstands as well as hears, steadily rejects its claim to ba thought beautiful. Let any man of moderate good taste try to select, a passago of good rhytimical prose, and he will iind himself inevitably ruling out all passages in which the words aro mean or the syntax crabbed, even though as puro sound they may be iho most charming concatenation of -ylta'olos. Professor Saiutsbury's book itself illus-. trates this. It is a delightful anthology and abounds in admirable and most illuminating criticism. We would not hove missed reading it for a great deal, and we shall certainly go to it again and .many times, lint whenever ho lets himself go, the Professor gets miles away from t'.is subject of rhythm, and is exploring Tith ripo knowledge and excellent taste 'no structure of sentences, the appropriateness of phraseology, tho introduction of ornament, the differences between Iho romantic and the classic styles, tho association of ideas, the use of long and short sentences, and other things which aro essential to the appreciation of good iiv-ra-rure, hut which havo nothing or next to nothing to do.with his scheme of mansion by the verse foot-rule. Again, he talks admirable good sense about the invasion of prose by real verse forms, such as tho frequent iambics to be found in Luskin (or the hexameters in the Authorised Version), ahd analyses the conditions on which thev mav and mr which tli»v may not be tolerated.. -Then byan effort ho has to null up and 'remind himself that lie started out to write about rhythm, and so we aro .brought back fo the cpitrites and dochmiacs. Knowing tho formidable risks which a reviewer runs who falls into 'argument with a mctricist, wo desire always to sneak with respect of those entities, but we are-heartily glad that Professor Saintsbury allows himself a wide liberty of digression.