s’|sš|ss|sទំ|sé |

to indicate that we expect a line with five accents, dissyllabic feet, and a rising rhythm. Then, for the exhibition of the different formation of actual verses, we shall need three more symbols, for a displaced, for a × supernumerary, (-) for an implied accent; and we get results such as the following:

Thùs at their shád y lódge | arrived, | both stood';

'And cór pòreal to in corpór|eal túrn';|

(Prof. Saintsbury, missing the beauty of this line, believes that one of the 'reals' must be syncopated and has no doubt that corporeal' is misprinted for 'corporal.')

'On Lemnos the Aegaélan ísle. | Thùs they reláte.'|

Feet of four syllables, which Prof. Saintsbury disallows, are surely quite common; how, for instance, could such a line as this be scanned without them

'Whose hand unwear|iable and|untír|ing wing'|?

A companion line in the same stanza with the above seems even to show a four-syllable foot of which the fourth syllable is missing:

‹Ŏ lífe|im̃méas|urable and imminent lóve.'|

A metrical hiatus is clearly perceptible after the three syllables of the third foot, and it is in this hiatus that the accent falls. Yet those to whom such an explanation seems extravagant may call the third foot trisyllabic and accentless if they will. The Charge of the Light Brigade,' written, as we saw, in trisyllabic falling rhythm, has a notable instance of quadrisyllabic substitution, while the normal feet lift supernumerary accents and even rhymes with them in the splendid onrush of the galloping cavalry:

'Théirs not to reason why,
Théirs but toldó or die,
Into the valley of death

Róde the Six | Hundred.'|

The metrical scheme of a poem will often conceal itself until the poem is studied as a whole. Shelley's exquisite

'Hymn of Pan,' for example, only yields up the secret of its harmony and of its throbbing delights when we observe that every line has or implies four accents, a fact which could not be discovered from the lines taken by themselves. The three-beat lines, of which for the most part the poem is composed, all end with an implied or silent accent, and in the opening stanza four lines of two accents each are taken as equivalent to two lines of the metrical scheme. In one famous passage, a unique device is adopted; the smooth flow, as of dimpled water, is momentarily checked and thwarted in a line where every accent is displaced:

'And then I changed my píp¦ings () |
Singing how down the vale of Maènalus,'

but the stream at once resumes its melody:

'I pursued a máid en and clasped a réed|
Gods and mén we are áll delúd|ed thús |

It breaks in our bós om and then we bléed.'|

Displacement of accent is, of course, constantly employed to secure special emphasis:

'Whose in sight név er has borne fruit in deeds,|

Whose weak resolves | never have been fulfill'd.']

And the subject is full of delightful intricacies which space forbids us to explore.

One last consideration. The quantity of the syllables, it will be seen, is neglected in these scansions. It is not on that account to be supposed that the reader or composer of English verse neglects it. On the contrary, the music of English, like that of classical, verse depends to a great extent on the relations of the accents to the quantities, only that that relation is reversed. That quantitative verse is possible in English, that an exotic joy, like that of the orchid-fancier, is obtainable from it, no one who cares to train his ear a little and to read Mr Stone's admirable pamphlet can doubt. And if it is to appreciate truly our native methods and the subtler harmonies which are to be drawn from them, the ear must undergo such training.

While many of us consider that our verse is normally composed of iambs and spondees, we necessarily remain

deaf to iambs and spondees where they really occur. The constant use of a nomenclature in which essential distinctions are ignored closes the mind to the very existence of those distinctions. Stress, as a rhythmical agent, is in any case so much more powerful than quantity, that quantitative distinctions are only too easily obscured by it. That is the danger. But it is only by a violation of every principle of true quantitative verse that English metres can be scanned quantitatively. The iamb and trochee are mutually repulsive feet. Prof. Saintsbury has an Appendix headed, 'Is the base-foot of English Iamb or Trochee?' S and s s are, of course, freely interchangeable; and the tendency in English is towards s ś, for the simple reason that an accent has more influence over the syllable which precedes than over that which follows it. Every musician will understand this, and with it the reason why trisyllabic falling rhythm (é s s) is so rare in English and trisyllabic rising (s s s) so common-another of Prof. Saintsbury's problems.

Finally, the whole course of the development of our verse-the marked adherence by most of our masters of harmony to regular dissyllabic feet, and its culmination in the rigid dogmatism of the school of Pope-becomes intelligible when we recollect that the danger of accent to the poet is the danger of allowing it to run away with him. The rhythmical tyranny of the beat draws the unwary craftsman towards those dangerous slopes down which he runs violently into the seas of doggerel. The steady, determined gait of Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, the stern curb of the eighteenth century, explain themselves. For the rider of a fiery horse soon learns that he must govern its paces if he is not to be governed by them. 'Ars est celare artem.' Accent, at least, serves the artist best when it is concealed most artfully.

Art. 5.-PRIMITIVE MAN ON HIS OWN ORIGIN.

1. Totemism and Exogamy: A Treatise on certain early forms of Superstition and Society. By J. G. Frazer, D.C.L. Four vols. London: Macmillan, 1910.

2. The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion. By J. G. Frazer, D.C.L. Third edition. Part I. The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings. Two vols. London: Macmillan, 1911.

3. The Native Tribes of Central Australia. By Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen. London: Macmillan, 1899. 4. Social Origins. By Andrew Lang. Primal Law. By J. J. Atkinson. London: Longmans, 1903.

5. The Secret of the Totem. By Andrew Lang. London: Longmans, 1905.

HISTORIANS are wont to distinguish two classes of evidence that of the contemporary written word, whether it be on stone or parchment or papyrus; and that which is of later date, whether it be biography or history or any other form of record. To the former class they rightly attribute a higher value than to the latter, which is apt to be vitiated by lapse of time and the mental bias of the writer. Speaking relatively, neither class of evidence carries us far back in the history of a community, since their existence points to an advanced state of civilisation; and their importance, as guides to prehistoric conditions, depends on the degree to which, like the embryos of the higher animals, they preserve traces of early stages of development. The difficulty is not lessened when research is extended to the origin and history of institutions among races preserving only vague traditions and practising bewildering customs. As an example of this, we may instance the modern savages of the Congo basin, who have no history of any kind, no written language, and apparently make no attempt to perpetuate any epoch in their lives by means of earth or stone erections. The only events that their memory holds are tribal fights or elephant hunts.*

Only since the discovery of material relics witnessing to the vast antiquity and savage condition of so-called

* A Voice from the Congo,' by Herbert Ward, pp. 227, 253. Vol. 215.-No. 428. H

'primitive man' has attention been directed to the significance of the great body of non-material relics surviving in ritual and ceremony. Discussing antiquarian research in the eighteenth century, Boswell reports Johnson as saying, 'All that is really known of the ancient state of Britain is contained in a few pages. We can know no more than what the old writers have told us.' But there is no need to travel back a century or more to seek the high-water mark reached by students of the past. In his 'Memories of My Life,' the late Sir Francis Galton tells us that

'the subject of prehistoric civilisation was novel even so late as the early fifties, and was discussed independently from two different sides. The line of approach that Maine followed was to investigate the customs of the so-called Aryan races. The other line was by the study of living savage races, and of such inferences regarding the past as might be drawn from implements and bones preserved in prehistoric graves and caverns. The horizon of the antiquarians was so narrow at the date of my Cambridge days, that the whole history of the early world was literally believed, by many of the bestinformed men, to be contained in the Pentateuch. It was also practically supposed that nothing more of importance could be learnt of the origins of civilisation during classical times than was to be found definitely stated in classical authors' (p. 66).

How reluctant the best-informed' were to admit the significance of the evidence focused by Huxley in his 'Man's Place in Nature' (1863) and by Lord Avebury in his 'Origin of Civilisation' (1870), is seen in the refusal of the British Association for the Advancement of Science to accord to Anthropology a section to itself until 1884. But the stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner'; and a multitude of workers are supplying materials from all quarters of the globe towards a structure whose completion is not yet. Among the unwearying labourers in what, for convenience of division, may be called psychical anthropology, Dr Frazer maintains that foremost place which was assured him twenty years ago on the publication of 'The Golden Bough.' In that treatise there was gathered and sifted a mass of customs, a large number of which, as Mannhardt was among the earliest to show, had their