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2 ORTHOMETRY.
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highest achievements of our poets are constructed without them.
The words of Dr. Guest may appropriately be quoted here.* He says : " Rhythm in its widest sense may be defined as the law of succession. It is the regulating principle of every whole that is made up of proportionate parts, and is as necessary to the regulation of motion, or to the arrangement of matter, as to the orderly succession of sounds. By applying it to the first of these purposes we have obtained the dance, and sculpture and architecture are the results of its application to the second. The rhythmical arrangement of sounds not articulated produces music, while from the like arrangement of articulate sounds we get the cadences of prose and the measures of verse. Verse maybe defined as the succession of articulate sounds, regulated by a rhythm so definite that we can readily form the results which flow from its application. Rhythm is also met with in prose, but in the latter its range is so wide that we rarely can anticipate its flow, while the pleasure we derive from verse is founded on this very anticipation. As verse consists mainly of the arrangement of certain sounds according to a certain rhythm, it is obvious that neither poetry nor even sense can be essential to it. We may be alive to the beauty of a foreign rhythm though we do not understand the language, and the burden of many an English song has long yielded a certain plea- |
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• Dr. Guest't " History of English Rhythms." |
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