Practical Guide to English Versification, Etc
by Tom Hood
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780217531962
Paperback|9780217531962
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Overview
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. GUIDES AND HANDBOOKS. THE earliest handbook of verse appears to be that of Bysshe, who is, by the way, described in the British Museum Catalogue as the Poet. The entry is the only ground I can find for so describing him. He is, however, amusingly hard on simple versifiers. Such Debasers of Rhyme, and Dablers in Poetry would do well to consider that a Man would justly deserve a higher Esteem in the World by being a good Mason or Shoe-Maker, than by being an indifferent or second-Rate Poet. Furthermore, with touching modesty, he says, I pretend not by the following sheets to teach a man to be a Poet in Spight of Fate and Nature. His '- Rules for making English Verse are reprinted in the Appendix. His dictionary of rhymes is better than those of his successors, ?perhaps I should say that of his successors, for Walker's has been repeated with all its errors, or nearly all, in every subsequent handbook. Bysshe is to be praised for setting his face against what Walker styles allowable rhymes, such as haste and feast. He, however, seems to have been curiously ignorant of the ever-changing nature of English pronunciation. When Pope Bysshe's theory of verse was the seat of the accent, and the pause, as distinguished from quantity?that is, it depended on the number of syllables. As a result of this undivided devotion, he misses much of the power to be attained by making the sound the echo of the sense, as Pope puts it. He proposes to alter a line of Dryden's from But forced, harsh, and uneasy unto all. into But forced and harsh, uneasy unto all. One would fancy the merest tyro would see the intentional harshness of the line as Dryden wrote it, and its utter emasculation as Bysshe reforms it. Bysshe is strongly in favour of c...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217531962 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217531962 |
| Weight | 0.50 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.34 In |
| List Price | $19.99 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 148 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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