MISCONCEPTION of this subject is still so
general that it may be useful to clear the ground
by some consideration of its elements. Not only many
school rhetorics, but certain textbooks of prosody insist
that the rhythm of English verse is, as they put it, "ac-
centual," in contradistinction to the rhythm of classic
verse, which they pronounce "quantitive." Even George
Saintsbury, in his ponderous three-volume History of
English Prosody, refuses to take sides "in the battle of
Accent versus Quantity," which is as if one should preface
a treatise on astronomy with a refusal to decide whether
the earth goes around the sun or the sun around the
earth.

Since Sidney Lanier, musician and analyst as well as
poet, wrote his Science of English Verse, there is no longer
any excuse for persistence in the old error. Rhythm is
rhythm, and its laws are unchangeable, in poetry, in
music, in the motion of tides and stars, in the vibration
of sound-waves, light-waves, or the still more minute
waves of molecular action. Always and everywhere
rhythm is measured movement, a regular succession of
time-intervals more or less marked off by stresses.
English verse is as quantitive as Greek verse, because
its primary rhythms depend quite as essentially upon
the time-values of its syllables, upon its marshalling
of long and short syllables in feet of a given length;
while its secondary rhythms, its phrase-movements,

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