On Quantitative Metre

The Reason of Past Failures

A

DEFINITIVE verdict seems to have been pronounced
by the critical mind on the long-continued attempt to
introduce quantitative metres into English poetry. It is
evident that the attempt has failed, and it can even be affirmed
that it was predestined to failure; quantitative metre is something
alien to the rhythm of the language. Pure quantity, dependent
primarily on the length or brevity of the vowel of the syllable, but
partly also on the consonants on which the vowel sustains itself,
quantity as it was understood in the ancient classical languages,
is in the English tongue small in its incidence, compared with
stress and accent, and uncertain in its rules; at any rate, even
in the most capable hands it has failed to form a practicable
basis of metre. Accentual metre is normal in English poetry,
stress metres are possible, but quantitative metres can only be
constructed by atour de force; artificial and incapable of nor-
mality or of naturalisation, they cannot get a certified right of
citizenship. If quantity has to be understood in that and no other
sense, this verdict must stand; all attempts made hitherto have
been a failure, and not usually a brilliant failure. And yet this
does not dispose of the question: an appeal is possible against
the sentence of illegitimacy and banishment on the ground that
from the very first the problem has been misunderstood and
misstated, the methods used either a deviation from the true line
or, even when close to it, a misfit; a better statement may lead
to a solution that could well be viable.
At the very beginning of these attempts a double thesis was
raised; two separate problems were closely associated together
which are in their nature distinct, although they can be brought