Anti-ifias: an Essay in Isometry. By R. J. Walker. 2
vols. (Macmillan and Co. 21s. net.)—We must be content with explaining what Mr. Walker has attempted to do. The metrical law of Greek lyric verse, as it is found in Pindar and the Greek tragedians, is the absolute correspondence of the strophe and the antistrophe. This correspondence is a comparatively recent discovery. Horace says of Pindar, for instance, that "numeric: fertur lege soh:tie," whereas the poet was bound by a very strict lea. So we have in English the word "Pindaric," used in the eighteenth century to describe verse of a quite irregular kind, of the sort which Byron had in his mind when he said that "startled metre fled from Thalaba." After the discovery had been made it was supposed that the strictness of the rule was mitigated by the concession that two short syllables might stand for one long. Mr. Walker doubts whether such a licence ever existed. He has gone through the whole of Pindar, of Bacchylides, and of the Attic tragedians, and has endeavoured to correct the text by emendations wherever he has found an example. The general result has been that he has been able to satisfy himself except with regard to certain plays of Euripides. He still holds to his theory, but owns that some of his conjectures "cannot possibly by themselves carry conviction." But is it not the case that the later tragedies of Euripides show a metrical license as far as the iambic verse is concerned which is not found in the earlier? If he came to allow himself the "anti-rajas" license in his iambics, why not in his lyrics ?
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