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'Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts,' {3}
is, with all its eccentricities, a good heroic line; for though it
scarcely can be said to indicate the beat of the iamb, it certainly
suggests no other measure to the ear. But begin
'Mother Athens, eye of Greece,'
or merely 'Mother Athens,' and the game is up, for the trochaic
beat has been suggested. The eccentric scansion of the groups is
an adornment; but as soon as the original beat has been forgotten,
they cease implicitly to be eccentric. Variety is what is sought;
but if we destroy the original mould, one of the terms of this
variety is lost, and we fall back on sameness. Thus, both as to
the arithmetical measure of the verse, and the degree of regularity
in scansion, we see the laws of prosody to have one common purpose:
to keep alive the opposition of two schemes simultaneously
followed; to keep them notably apart, though still coincident; and
to balance them with such judicial nicety before the reader, that
neither shall be unperceived and neither signally prevail.
The rule of rhythm in prose is not so intricate. Here, too, we
write in groups, or phrases, as I prefer to call them, for the
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