London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. Glasgow: 50, WELLINGTON STREET. Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. [All Rights reserved.] OF MODERN ENGLISH METRE by JOSEPH B. MAYOR Hon. Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge Cambridge at the University Press 1903 PREFACE. N calling my book "A Handbook of Modern English Metre," I wish to denote that it does not profess to treat, otherwise than incidentally, of metre before the time of Henry VIII. My chief object in the first eight chapters is to give a methodical and uncontroversial statement of the principles, which are alike the foundation and the outcome of my former work on English Metre, the second edition of which was published in 1901. In the later chapters I have gone on to treat of metre from the aesthetic side, and have ventured to put forward some suggestions as to the connexion between sound and sense in poetry. The theory of metre here propounded, which assumes the foot as the unit of verse, is, in its main features, no new invention of my own: it has been held and acted upon by the great majority of English metrists previous to Dr Guest, whose learned but impracticable work appeared in 1838. Since then there has been a kind of epidemic of metrical theories, mostly ignoring or contradicting one another. No doubt the elaboration of these theories has been of value and interest to their authors, and may have served in some cases to call |