notes to chapter 3 223
- His appendices to the 1901 version included: Appendix A, The Extrametrical
Syllable; Appendix B, On Elision; Appendix C, Adjectives in able; Appendix D, On
Recession of Accent; Appendix E, Pronunciation in Milton; Appendix F, On Metrical
Equivalence; Appendix G, On the Use of Greek Terminolog y in English Prosody;
Appendix H, Specimens of Ten-Syllable Verse; (Appendix I is somewhat cleverly
elided so we go straight to) Appendix J, Rules of Stress-Rhythms, which includes a
second part on Accentual Hexameter. - Bridges, Robert Seymour and William Johnson Stone, Milton’s Prosody, 1901,
- Bridges, Milton’s Prosody, 1921, 94.
- Stanford, In the Classic Mode, 90.
- Bridges, Milton’s Prosody, 1921, 113.
- From the introduction to the Society for the Purification of English, which was
founded in 1913 but suspended its proceedings due to the “national distraction” and
resumed them again in 1918:
Literary education in England would seem in one grave respect to lack effi-
ciency, for it does not inspire writers with a due sense of responsibility towards
their native speech. . . . The ideal of [this] proposed association is both conserva-
tive and democratic. It would aim at preserving all the richness of differentiation
in our vocabulary, its nice grammatical usages, its traditional idioms, and the
music of its inherited pronunciation: it would oppose whatever is slipshod or
careless, and all blurring of hard-won distinctions, but it would no less oppose
the tyranny of schoolmasters and grammarians, both in their pedantic conserva-
tism, and in their ignorant enforcing of newfangled ‘rules,’ based not on principle,
but merely on what has come to be considered ‘correct’ usage. The ideal of the Soci-
ety is that our language and its future development should be controlled by the
forces and processes which have formed it in the past; that it should keep its
English character, and that the new elements added to it should be in harmony
with the old; for by this means our growing knowledge would be more widely
spread, and the whole nation brought into closer touch with the national medium
of expression. (SPE Tracts, [London: Clarendon Press, October 1919]), italics
mine.- Bridges had his own reservations about Skeat’s crusades; in a 1909 letter to
Henry Bradley, Bridges writes: “I think Skeat is an ass” and “Skeat is worthless.” - Mayor, Chapters on English Metre, 98.
- (Emphasis mine). This letter and its response are both unpublished. Dep.
Bridges 36, folios 16–31, Modern Papers. Bodleian Library, Oxford. Bridges’s letter is
dated November 26, 1915 and Mayor’s reply is dated November 19, 1915. Bridges’s
letter begins “Dear Sir,” and Mayor’s begins “My Dear Sir,” showing that their relation-
ship was strictly professional and perhaps antagonistic. - Ibid., November 29, 1915 response (unpublished):
My Dear Sir, My reason for writing my book on “Modern English Meter” was to
see how far the rules laid down by metrists, such as Dr. Guest and, in a lesser
degree, by Dr. Abbott, are borne out by facts. For Ch. II and again, in Ch. X,
variations from rules are to be found in our best poets from the time of Shake-
speare onward, and are felt by the lovers of poetry to enhance its beauty. I have