On Quantitative Metre 323
any English metre, yet for the hexameter, perhaps for any classi-
cal rhythm, the discovery and management of true quantity is an
intimate part of its technique; to neglect or to omit it is to neglect
or omit something essential, indispensable. Accentual pitch gives
beat, but its beat does not depend on quantity except in so far
as the stress ictus creates a genuine length valid for any rhythm
which is native to the language. To find out what does constitute
true quantity is the first need, only then can there be any solution
of the difficulty. Tennyson, like Harvey, missed this necessity; he
was content to fuse long syllable and stress and manage carefully
his short quantities conceived according to the classical law; this
he did admirably, but two or three efforts in this kind of tight-
rope acrobatics were as much as he cared to manage. But true
quantity in English must be something else; it must be something
inherent in the tongue, recognisable everywhere in its rhythm,
— not an artifice or convention governing its verse forms alone,
but a technique of Nature flowing spontaneously through the
very texture of the language as a whole.
Metre and the Three Elements of English Rhythm
There are three elements which constitute the general exterior
forms of rhythm in the English language, — accent, stress, quan-
tity. Each of them can be made in theory the one essential basis
of metre, relegating the other indispensable elements to the po-
sition of subordinate factors which help out the rhythm but
are not counted in the constitution of the metrical basis. But
in practice accent and stress combining with it and aiding it
have alone successfully dominated English verse-form; intrinsic
quantity has been left to do what it can for itself under their
rule. The basis commonly adopted in most English poetry since
Chaucer is the accentual rhythm, the flow of accentual pitch and
inflexion which is so all-important an element in the intonation
of English speech. In any common form of English poetry we
find all based on pitch and inflexion; the feet are accentual feet,
the metrical “length” or “shortness” of syllables — not their
inherent quantity — is determined by natural or willed location