Writers who have agreed that English words have no fixed quantities, are still at variance as to the relation of the element of syllabic time to the element of accent in English verse. Two extremes may at once be distinguished: that represented by the familiar statement that our rhythms differ from those of classical poetry in being based wholly on accent, and that represented most notably by the late Sidney Lanier, who held that syllabic time-values in English verse are as exact and regular (hence as accurately measurable) as the notes of music. Lanier applied his theory with admirable consistency, and represented all sorts of English verse, even that of the Anglo-Saxon period, in musical notation. He is almost universally regarded, however, as having been led by the analogy between music and poetry to carry his method to quite impossible lengths. The most characteristic example of this is his representation of the familiar "blank verse" measure in "three-four" time, each accented syllable being given a time-value twice as long as that of the adjacent unaccented syllable--a method of reading which can easily be shown to be contrary to all common practice. It should not be forgotten, however, that a debt of gratitude is owed Mr. Lanier for having been one of the first to emphasize adequately the fact that verse, like music, is _rhythmical sound_.
Besides those who make English verse to depend wholly on accent, and those who give it time-values equally regular and measurable with those of music, there is a third class disposed to confuse the two elements of quantity and accent. Of this class was Edgar Poe, who in his essay on The Rationale of Verse constantly spoke of accented and unaccented syllables as "long" and "short," respectively, and was even disposed to carry the identification into Latin verse itself. This essay of Poe's has lately been defended by Mr. John M. Robertson, in the interesting Appendix to his _New Essays toward a Critical Method_ (1897). Unfortunately Mr. Robertson seems to have perpetuated deliberately the confusion which he found in Poe in the use of the terms "accent" and "quantity." He even says that the attempt to distinguish them is ill-founded, "that quantity in speaking _must_ amount substantially to the same thing as stress," and, again, that "Poe's identification of stress with length is perfectly sound." Whatever be the fundamental fact here, the use of terms cannot be commended. If quantity is swallowed up in accent, so that accent alone dominates our verse, that is one thing; if the conditions are such that a heavy stress and a long quantity nearly always coincide, that is also a possible doctrine; but that is not to say that the two things should be identified. If all tall men wear long coats, or if all men--tall and short--wear long coats, it follows in neither case that tallness and long-coatedness are the same thing. It is a mere matter of physics that duration of sound and intensity of sound are perfectly distinguishable, and that they have no necessary connection with each other. The problem is: how are they related in practice?