English Metrig13. By T. S. Omond. (Clarendon Press. 103. 6d.
not.)—A Study of Metre. Same author. (The De La More Press. 7s. 6d. net.)—There is a perennial fascination about the study of the architecture of language, and Mr. Omond, in the new edition of his learned book on the English metrists, has not succeeded in completely destroying it. This is higher praise than may appear at first sight. The study of English prosody is at this time of day beset with such terrible barbed wire entanglements of technical controversy that it is no longer possible, when treating of the subject, to wander joyously in the wide spaces of great and general truths as did Sidney, for instance, in his Defense of Poesie. At every step the student has now to meet, greet, and defeat some well-armed antagonist already before him in the field. It is not possible here even to touch on the many vexed questions with which Mr. Omond grapples with scholarly conciseness, but we are especially interested to find him breaking a friendly lane with Mr. Bayfield over the trochaic " heresy " propounded and elaborated by him in The Measures of the Poets, the origin of which Mr. Omond attributes mainly to some confusion of thought as to the real difference between iambic and trochaio metres and to over- emphasis of the significance of the " bar line " in scansion. In his less momentous publication, A Study of Metre, Mr. Omond is on more open ground, and all lovers of English poetry, to whom he dedicates his little volume, will find it a treasure- house of interest and enlightenment.
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