Historical Manual of English Prosody

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About this book

Historical Manual of English Prosody is a book by George Saintsbury. The text describes combinations of syllables, up to three syllables most commonly, up to four in fewer cases, and possibly up to five in still fewer, that made up lines which experiment discovered to be harmonious. The text sets modern blank verse beside lines sometimes arranged in batches corresponding more or less to each other, as in modern couplet or stanza poetry.

The text says that some of the experiments are less successful than others, that Samson displays a harder style of verse than the earlier poems, and that the work is equally important as exhibiting the true principles of English prosody. The text adds that while the ancient trimeter is very largely patient of substitution, the French Alexandrine positively refuses any, and the English is, for an English line, distinctly intolerant of it.

About the author

George Saintsbury

George Saintsbury was an English literary critic, historian, editor, and university teacher whose scholarship covered both French and English writing. A History of Elizabethan Literature, first published by Macmillan in 1887, surveys poetry, drama, and prose from the early Tudor period through the seventeenth century.