the institution of meter 99
bury’s three-volume A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to
the Present Day (1906–10), in which the issue, for Saintsbury, was no longer
explicitly the contest between Anglo-Saxon or classical measures but rather
how the blend of these two metrical heritages could constitute a characteristic
English meter and, more importantly, could most accurately measure the ideal
English character. Saintsbury’s dependence upon an essential Englishness,
which could be deduced from masterful poetics and instilled in the masses
through prosodic acuity, would only deepen his drive toward commandeering
the culture’s understanding of the “foot.”
The English Ear
Saintsbury wanted it both ways. On the one hand, he wanted to popularize
the foot-based system as natural for those with an English ear, and on the
other hand wanted all Englishmen to possess an ear precisely like his own,
despite his bitter awareness that they did not. In his introduction to Loring’s
1905 The Rhymer’s Lexicon, Saintsbury lays out his metrical principles:
“lines” . . . possess a definite rhythm based on what is called double and
triple time; that these integers (the lines) are made up of correspond-
ing or proportionate fractions to which it has been usual to give the
name of “feet,” though some object; that they are as a rule tipped with
rhyme, whether in simple sequences or pairs or in more complicated
sets called stanzas. It is upon the nature and constitution of these frac-
tions that the hottest and most irreconcilable difference prevails among
prosodists. Some prefer to regard them merely from the point of view of
the accented syllables which they contain, while others consider them
as made up of “long” and “short” syllables precisely as classical feet are,
though not combined on quite the same systems; and yet others hold
different views.^57Saintsbury insists on the portability of the “foot” across time. And yet, for
those without a classical education, these feet may still seem foreign. Saints-
bury finds a way around this dilemma by promoting a kind of national metri-
cal intuition over formal training : the English ear. He writes, “the ear recog-
nizes for itself, or is made to recognize by the sleight-of-hand of the poet, one
broad distinction of value between syllables—the distinction which is de-
noted, in classical prosody, by the terms ‘long’ and ‘short.’” But Saintsbury de-
mands that issues such as time in utterance, sharper or graver tone, lighter or
heavier weight, louder or softer sound, and thinner and denser substance do not
matter in terms of the distinction between English and classical prosody.
Saintsbury instead simply suggests that “everybody (if he would only admit it)
recognizes the fact of the broad difference”(xvi). We hear them, he says, but we