[21] It is difficult to see how this effect can be avoided by those who think that accents or stresses, governing prosody, vary in Milton from _eight_ to _three_.
[22] Having already called it "an odious piece of pedantry," the critic (_Blackwood's Magazine_, April 1849) adds: "What metre, Greek or Roman, Russian or Chinese, it was intended to imitate we have no care to inquire: the man was writing English and had no justifiable pretence for torturing our ears with verse like this."
[24] For cautions and additions, as well as explanations, see Glossary, especially under "Foot," "Stress-unit," "Quantity," etc.
(_These_ Rules _are not imperative or compulsory precepts, but observed inductions from the practice of English poets. He that can break them with success, let him._)
[Sidenote: Feet composed of long and short syllables.]
#1. English poetry, from the first constitution of literary Middle English to the present day, can best be scanned by a system of _feet_, or groups of syllables in two different values, which may be called for convenience _long_ (̄) and _short_ (̆).#
#2. The nature of these groups of syllables is determined by the usual mathematical laws of permutation; but some of them appear more frequently than others in English poetry, and some hardly occur at all.#
[Sidenote: Differences from "classical" feet.]
#3. Although, in the symbols of their constitution, these feet resemble those of the classical prosodies, it does not follow that they are identical with them, except mathematically,[25] the nature of the languages being different; and, in particular, their powers of combining in metre are far from being identical, so that combinations of feet which are successful in Greek and Latin need by no means be successful in English. Success is indeed almost limited to instances where the metrical constituents are restricted to iambs (̆̄]), anapæsts (̆̆̄]), and trochees (̄̆), with the spondee (̄̄) as an occasional ingredient.#
[Sidenote: The three usual kinds--iamb, trochee, anapæst.]
#4. The iamb (̆̄), the trochee (̄̆), and the anapæst (̆̆̄) are by far the commonest English feet; in fact, the great bulk of English poetry is composed of them.#
#5. The spondee (̄̄) is not so unusual as has sometimes been thought; but owing to the commonness of most syllables, especially in _thesis_, it may often be passed as an iamb, and sometimes as a trochee.#