Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/629

 12 s. vm. JUNE 25, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 519 " Dairy " painted on the lintel of the window of the room where the milk stood for the cream to rise. In three or four it was carved in the stone. In one case, however, the words " Dairy Room " appear painted in large letters across the front of the building. One of the painted ones will probably disappear shortly as the building is about to be pulled down. In one case the stone-cutter gave us the rendering " Dairey." ABM. ME WELL. Longfield Road, Todmorden. J9ote on English Metrists : Being a Sketch of English Pro- sodical Criticism from Elizabethan Times to the Present Day. By T. S. Omond. (Claren- don Press, 10s. 6eZ. net.) THESE pages bear witness to the abundance of thought and ingenuity which has been expended on the nature and true scheme of English verse. Mr. Omond, as all lovers of poetry know, has himself contributed much to this study, and he now sets himself to analyse the contribution of fellow-enthusiasts from the sixteenth century to the present day. The first chapter gives us plenty of substantial and entertaining detail upon the old attempt to make English verse conform at least in principle to classical models. Mr. Omond has little difficulty in showing the intrinsic falseness of the conceptions underlying the hopelessly mechanical treatment of a really intricate problem. Under the idea of* quantity, Latin and Greek verse implied temporal measure : but, by the theorists who wrested English syllables into caricatures of hexameters or sapphics, no effec- tual account was taken of time and of the pecu- liar relation in English verse between time and measure. ' The Old Orthodoxy ' the theory and prac- tice of the first half of the eighteenth century and ' Resistance and Rebellion ' the poetical history of the other half furnish excellent dis- cussions, especially the second with its criticism of Monboddo, Steele and Sheridan. The nine- teenth century saw the rise of a new principle as a rule of verse that of counting accents instead of syllables. This might well seem as easy to understand and apply as it was illu- minating, but, though it has revolutionized Eng- lish prosody, it has aroused as many questions as it has laid to rest. Mr. Omond gives a spirited and well-balanced view of the progress of lively controversy on this topic throughout the nine- teenth century. It might be foreseen that when accent in whatever exact sense we use the word became the determining factor in verse, the questions of rhythm and then of prose rhythm were npt far off. In this connexion it seems to us that some of the studies considered are somewhat impaired by too nearly exclusive an attention to the feet, or component parts of the verse, to the neglect of the verse as a whole. To the poet himself each verse is much more a length of furrow, after which comes the joy of starting again : an inhalation and exhalation of breath. There are verses of longue and verses of courte haleine ; verses that go fast as it were shallow furrows through light soil : and verses that go slow the furrow being sunk deep in a rich but 1 reluctant field. The longest we can recollect, i kept up through a considerable work, is the ! secret, sinuous verse which yet comes duly in ! and starts again, of ' Lorna Doone ' a peculiarity giving the book, in many pages, a curious charm and more often a certain tiresomeness. We have never been able to form a decided opinion as to whether or no it was intentional. There are two further references of which we think writers on prosody make too little. On all questions of the scansion of dramatic verse the competent actor ought to be appealed to ; and where music is brought in as it must be to elucidate metre, the system of bars and triple and common time should often give place to the musical phrase. So far as the writer of these words can tell from experience, most verse which can be supposed to count for anything rises in the mind to the accompaniment of a distinct musical phrase or motive which actually deter- mines the metre of the verse but is by no means always divisible into bars. Some of the efforts here made at reducing beautiful but irregular verses into measured parts remind one of a passage in Marcus Aure- lius, which, though it applies only to visible beauty of a humble kind, seems to contain the true philosophy of the beauty of all circum- scribed things : " We ought," he says, " to observe also that even the things which follow after the the things which are produced according to nature contain something pleasing and attractive. For instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker's art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating. And again, figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open ; and in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to rotteness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit." We must not forget to say, in conclusion, that besides the stimulating and scholarly chapters which are the bulk of the book, Mr. Omond gives us two full bibliographical Appendices, arranged in chronological order : the one on books and articles dealing with quantitative verse and pseudo-classical poems ; the other on those dealing with the analysis of ordinary English The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Edited by Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch, and John Dover Wilson. (Cambridge University Press, 6s. net.) WE have here the second volume of the new Cambridge text of Shakespeare. ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona ' is a play which gives the scholarly editor a maximum of thankless trouble. The problems raised by the Folio text go down into the very structure of the play and the heart of the characters : but they remain by then-
 * than a succession of feet it is a unity in itself :