The Rise and Fall of Meter

the discipline of meter 133

gression in the continuum. While Newbolt seems to embrace his version of
English national meter as the culmination of this evolution, Bridges wants to
keep each strain of the tradition alive, always evolving, and part of a variety of
choices available to English poets.
There are no more technical prosodic discussions in their correspondence
until 1912, when Bridges asks, “did you ever ask anyone to test the ordinary
scholar’s theory of classical prosody by reading hexameters in true longs and
shorts with the initials of the feet accented? It is a truly effective demonstra-
tion” (617). It is in this same letter that Bridges offers to return Newbolt’s copy
of Mayor’s English Prosody to him.^66 In an undated letter that is most likely
from 1912 (because of a reference to Saintsbury’s book on English prose
rhythm), Bridges educates Newbolt about the fallacies of Saintsbury’s system
(“I really think that the average ass would understand this form of demonstra-
tion” [921]). Their correspondence shows that both Bridges and Newbolt,
who were involved in poetics, politics, and pedagog y in complex ways, were
keenly aware of the struggles over what prosody in English meant, not only for
their own practice but for that of generations of schoolchildren whom they
meant to keep on proper footing. Whereas Bridges was against Saintsbury’s
hegemony of the foot, preferring to diversify and destabilize any notion of
traditional meter with multiple metrical systems, Newbolt merged his classi-
cism with patriotism and chose to promote the national meter (read: rhythm)
that would appeal to a public already accustomed to the practice of learning
patriotic verses by heart.
Newbolt’s influential report on national education, The Teaching of English
in England, shows that he espoused the same values for English education that
he did for English poetry. Yet, despite his personal interest in the specifics of
English prosody, Newbolt shies away from suggesting the adoption of any one
prosodic system in the classroom. He is pleased to find that children “can

1 Quantitative prosody

2 Syllabic prosody

Syllabic verse

giving way to stress

Quantitative verse

becoming syllabic

3 Stress prosody

Figure 3.