THE END
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.
A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY
FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
By Dr. GEORGE SAINTSBURY
Three Vols. 8vo.
Vol. II. From Shakespeare To Crabbe. 15s. net.
Vol. III. From Blake To Swinburne. 15s. net.
SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME I.
THE ATHENÆUM.—"A thing complete and convincing beyond any former work from the same hand. 'Hardly any one who takes a sufficient interest in prosody to induce him to read this book' will fail to find it absorbing, and even entertaining, as only one other book on the subject of versification is: the Petit Traité de poésie française of Théodore de Banville.... We await the second and third volumes of this admirable undertaking with impatience. To stop reading it at the end of the first volume leaves one in just such a state of suspense as if it had been a novel of adventure, and not the story of the adventures of prosody. 'I am myself quite sure,' says Prof. Saintsbury, 'that English prosody is, and has been, a living thing for seven hundred years at least.' That he sees it living is his supreme praise, and such praise belongs to him only among historians of English verse."
THE TIMES.—"To Professor Saintsbury English prosody is a living thing, and not an abstraction. He has read poetry for pleasure long before he began to read it with a scientific purpose, and so he has learnt what poetry is before making up his mind what it ought to be. It is a common fault of writers upon prosody that they set out to discover the laws of music without ever training their ears to apprehend music. They theorise very plausibly at large, but they betray their incapacity so soon as they proceed to scan a difficult line. Professor Saintsbury never fails in this way. He knows a good line from a bad one, and he knows how a good line ought to be read, even though he may sometimes be doubtful how it ought to be scanned. He has, therefore, the knowledge most essential to a writer upon prosody.... His object, as he constantly insists, is to write a history, to tell us what has happened to our prosody from the time when it began to be English and ceased to be Anglo-Saxon; not to tell us whether it has happened rightly or wrongly, nor even to be too ready to tell us why or how it has happened."
Professor W. P. Ker in the SCOTTISH HISTORICAL REVIEW.—"The history of verse, as Mr. Saintsbury takes it, is one aspect of the history of poetry; that is to say, the minute examination of structure does not leave out of account the nature of the living thing; we are not kept all the time at the microscope. This is the great beauty of his book; it is a history of English poetry in one particular form or mode.... The author perceives that the form of verse is not separable from the soul of poetry; poetry 'has neither kernel nor husk, but is all one,' to adapt the phrase of another critic."
A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY
By Dr. GEORGE SAINTSBURY
SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME II.
THE ATHENÆUM.—"We have read this volume with as eager an impatience as that with which we read the first, for the author is in love with his subject; he sees 'that English prosody is and has been a living thing for seven hundred years at least,' and, knowing that metre, verse pure and simple, is a means of expressing emotion, he here sets out to show us its development and variety during the most splendid years of our national consciousness."
THE STANDARD.—"The second volume of Professor Saintsbury's elaborate work on English prosody is even more interesting than his former volume. Extending as it does from Shakespeare to Crabbe, it covers the great period of English poetry and deals with the final development of the prosodic system. It reveals the encyclopædic knowledge of English literature and the minute scholarship which render the Edinburgh professor so eminently suited to this inquiry, which is, we think, the most important literary adventure he has undertaken.... It is certainly the best book on the subject of which it treats, and it will be long indeed before it is likely to be superseded."
THE CAMBRIDGE REVIEW.—"It is the capacity of being able to depart from traditional opinion, the evidence shown on every page of independent thought based upon a first-hand study of documents, which make the present volume one of the most stimulating that even Professor Saintsbury has written. The work, as a whole, is a fine testimony to his lack of pedantry, to his catholicity of taste, to his sturdy common sense, and it exhibits a virtue rare among prosodists (dare we say among scholars generally?)—courtesy to opponents."
THE PALL MALL GAZETTE.—"This volume is even more fascinating than was the first. For here there are even greater names concerned—Shakespeare and Milton.... It appears to us that Professor Saintsbury hardly writes a page in which he does not advance by some degree his view of the right laws of verse. We cannot imagine any one seriously defending, after this majestical work, the old syllabic notion of scansion.... The book is written with all the liveliness of style, richness of argument, and wealth of material that we expect. Not only is it a history of prosody; but it is full of acute judgments on poetry and poets."
OTHER WORKS
BY
DR. GEORGE SAINTSBURY
A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE RHYTHM. 8vo. 14s. net
A HISTORY OF ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
A HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE (1780-1900). Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. Also in five parts. 2s. each.
HISTORICAL MANUAL OF ENGLISH PROSODY. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
A FIRST BOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Globe 8vo. 1s. 6d.
DRYDEN. Library Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. net. Popular Edition, Crown 8vo, 1s. 6d. Sewed, 1s. Pocket Edition, Fcap. 8vo, 1s. net. [English Men of Letters.