ELEMENTS OF HEBREW RHYTHM 125
opinion we ought to do, that much of the poetical
contents of the Old Testament has suffered serious
textual corruption, we might well view with sus-
picion any metrical theory that found all parts
of the existing text equally metrical ; for though
a textual corruption may accidentally at times
have the same metrical value as the original
reading, this is the kind of accident that cannot
happen regularly. On the other hand, a metrical
theory which finds innumerable passages corrupt,
though they show, metre apart, no sign of corrup-
tion, has this disadvantage: given the right to
make an equal number of emendations purely
in the interests of his theory, another theoriser
might produce an equally attractive theory; and
we should be left with the uncertainty of choice
between two alternatives both of which could not
be right, but both of which might be wrong. A
sound metrical theory, then, must neither entirely
fit, nor too indiscriminately refuse to fit, the
present text of the Old Testament. A third
serious difficulty lies in our imperfect knowledge
of the vowels with which the texts were originally
intended to be read. This last difficulty may,
perhaps, always leave a considerable degree of
detail ambiguous, even if the broader principles
of rhythm become clear.
In spite of these difficulties, how far is it
possible in the first instance to determine the
exact rhythmical relations between, let us say,