gradations of stress, the modulations of voice, what have been well called the "tunes of speech,"1 dominate our most trivial conversation; in serious and impassioned oratory they become still more inevitable and conspicuous.

Now poetry is speech, of a specially ornate kind. All verse is supposed to be read aloud, and in considering it we must study sound rather than sight, phonetics rather than orthography. Serious poetry demands proper expression; comic, of course, aims at burlesquing this. The "tunes of speech," therefore, as well as the mere syllable-stresses, go to the construction of English verse; and this at once introduces an element of uncertainty. Such uncertainty may even affect metrical pattern.

The line

How happy could I be with either! 2

actually varies in metre according as we emphasize the word "I" or leave it unimportant. Similar doubt attends Browning's line in “Cristina,'

She should never have looked at me.

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Probably few persons on first reading Tennyson's

1 This phrase was familiar to me before reading Sidney Lanier's "Science of English Verse" (Boston, 1880), chapter x., where, however, it receives unusually full exposition, though Lanier seems to approach verse too exclusively from the side of music.

2 Gay, "Beggar's Opera" (1728), Act II., Sc. 2. 3 "Selections " (as before), p. 152.

O great and gallant Scott,

True gentleman, heart, blood, and bone,1

will take

up

the intended measure of the second line.

His verse in “Enoch Arden,”

Take your own time, Annie, take your own time,

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can be read differently according as we put the main stress on 'own," or on "time," or on both. The first line of "Paradise Lost" varies in accentuation with the importance given to "first," to the "dis-" of " 'disobedience," and so forth. How can any stable structure be reared on a foundation like this? How can exact "feet" be framed from material so elusive and illusory? It is trying to make ropes of sand. To base prosody on accentuation seems hopelessly futile, so long as our word-accent is thus at the v mercy of our sentence-accent, and the latter is a thing capricious and fugitive and chameleon-like in its changes.

Other arguments might be added, but the foregoing seems sufficiently to show that no prosody building on stress alone can be definite or exact. This, however, must not lead us to underestimate the value of accent. It is a feature of vast importance in our speech, and therefore in our verse. It shapes everything else to its use, except only the conditioning element of time. It moulds syllables like wax, altering their resonance and weight. And its alternations are habitually used by the poet to signalize time. Their approximately uniform recurrence impresses on us the absolute recurrence of

1 "The Death of Oenone, and other Poems" (1892), p. 48.

periods. Accent is truly our ictus metricus, empha✓✓sizing rhythm. We do not require to beat time with hand or foot; the words themselves do it for us. But those who make accent the constitutive principle of English metre seem to confound this ictus with the structure it illustrates, the "period" with the bell which calls attention to it.

This may be put more plainly and practically. Every period usually contains one and only one syllable of stronger accentuation, and these usually alternate with others of weaker accentuation. But this is far from being an absolute law. The word "usually" must not be read as "always." Milton's blank verse normally carries five accents, yet all critics agree that there are lines in "Paradise Lost" with only four. How do such lines remain metrical ? They remain so because each line consists of five periods, though in the case assumed not every period is signalized by accent. Periodicity is the essential quality, accentuation its usual but not invariable exponent. To identify these is to confuse essence with accident, the thing illustrated with the thing which illustrates.

To get a clear idea of how accent affects periods, and perhaps incidentally rid ourselves of erroneous conceptions of its working, it may be well to consider for a moment its precise relation to a group of syllables. This can be done without going far into technicalities. Speech involves successive emissions of voice. The flow is never continuous. Every syllable contains one vowel, but it usually also contains consonants which check and break up the vocal

stream. Even when speech contains vowels alone, the flow is interrupted; each vocal sound is separated from its neighbour by a slackening of voice, as will appear if we repeat any consecutive series of pure vowels. These increases and decreases of pressure, these diminutions and augmentations of the vocal current, constitute a large part at least of what we have agreed to call "accent." Can we find any law determining their progress, any fact pointing to a unit of accentuation, as the "period" creates a unit of verse?

A bold attempt to answer this question was made by the anonymous author of "Accent and Rhythm explained by the Law of Monopressures" (Blackwood, 1888), a book whose argument has been adopted and amplified by Prof. Skeat, first in his "Chaucer" (introduction to vol. vi., pp. lxxxii-xcvii), more lately in a paper published in the Philological Society's "Transactions" (1895-1898, pp. 484-503). Both writers declare the limit of a single pressure to be three syllables. One, two, or three syllables-but not more-may be included in a “monopressure." When it embraces only two syllables, the maximum pressure (identified with accent) may be on either syllable; when three, this must be on the mid-syllable. It is not meant that a separate breath is required for each monopressure; very many of these can be rattled off in one breath by fluent speakers. But each is distinct and distinguishable, a definite exertion of vocal force, of which we may note the beginning, middle, and end. Such a word as tremendous, for example, can be uttered on one pressure; a word like intervene

requires two, on the first syllable and the last. All words of more than three syllables require two pressures. There are therefore only four possible varieties of monopressure; one on a monosyllable, two upon dissyllables, one on the form of trisyllable instanced above. A simple sign being devised for each of these varieties, it is claimed that all units of speech can be indicated by these, and that for verse a system of notation is created which supersedes division into "feet."

The theory is ingenious and striking, and no doubt in the main illustrates and explains our habit of speech. But, with all deference to the high authority of its supporter, one may doubt whether it is not expressed much too absolutely. Does the limitation to three syllables really hold good? Can four never be uttered on one pressure? The original author quotes no words of four syllables, but jumps at once from three to five, and easily establishes that words like accommodation, reverberating, etc., require more than one pressure. But what of a host of words like memorial, superfluous, imagining? Is it so certain that these require two pressures? The theory also necessitates two pressures on trisyllables like unity, memory, cynical, fugitive, devious, trumpeter. Is this quite beyond doubt? Refinement would be a word of one pressure; why need indolent have more? Such words must of course be considered, not in isolation, but as they occur in a sentence-memory asserts, unity demands, and the like. Surely phrases like these last can be embraced in two pressures? That three unaccented syllables cannot come together is a