London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. Glasgow: 50, WELLINGTON STREET. Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. [All Rights reserved.] PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. My attention was first drawn to the exact study of English prosody many years ago in lecturing on Shakespeare to classes both male and female. As a rule I found those who attended the classes devoid of any but the vaguest idea of metre; and I knew of no book which I could recommend to them as giving an entirely satisfactory account of the matter, the books of the highest authority seeming to me to start from assumptions which were inconsistent with the practice of English poets from the time of Shakespeare downwards. I endeavoured to point out these inconsistencies and, at the same time, to give the outline of what I thought to be a truer system, in three papers, which were read before the London Philological Society between the years 1874 and 1877. The substance of those papers, greatly modified and expanded, appears in the chapters which follow, numbered I. to V. VIII. XI.; the remaining chapters are altogether new. My own views have naturally undergone some change in the interval which has elapsed since the first paper was written. For instance, I have now no doubt (see examples from Shelley în p. 242) that we must recognize the substitution of tribrachs for iambs in English blank verse, a point which was still an |