Abstract

In writing on a subject in which the most significant words have been used in quite different senses by modern authors, I think it most prudent to begin by defining my terms. By rhythmical prose I mean all prose in which the writer consciously follows a definite scheme in order to obtain particular cadences at the close of the period or within it, and this whether the favoured cadences are marked by quantity or by accent. I subdivide rhythmical prose into metrical and accentual. The latter term explains itself. In spite of Aristotle's familiar opposition of ṕÅθμóσ and μτρ¿ν, I use the word ‘metrical’ of quantitative prose, both because the term ‘quantitative prose’ seems to me cumbrous, and because to the speakers of any modern language metre is the natural opposite of stress accent, whether in prose or in verse; and Aristotle's terminology, which takes no account of stress accent, may reasonably be displaced by the modern distinction. (For the beginnings of this later usage in post-classical theoreticians cf.