and "stop," and
"pause," where a perfectly clear and perfectly flexible terminology is
ready to your hand--this does seem to me in another sense a very
childish thing indeed, and one that cannot be too soon put away. It is
no exaggeration to say that the extravagances, the unnatural
contortions of scansion, the imputations of irregularity and
impropriety on the very greatest poets with which Dr Guest's book
swarms, must force themselves on any one who studies that book
thoroughly and impartially. When theory leads to the magisterial
indorsement of "gross fault" on some of the finest passages of
Shakespeare and Milton, because they "violate" Dr Guest's privy law of
"the final pause"; when we are told that "section 9," as Dr Guest is
pleased to call that admirable form of "sixes," the anapaest followed
by two iambs,[104] one of the great sources of music in the ballad
metre, is "a verse which has very little to recommend it"; when one of
Shakespeare's secrets, the majestic full stop before the last word of
the line, is black-marked as "opposed to every principle of accentual
rhythm," then the thing becomes not so much outrageous as absurd.
Prosody respectfully and intelligently attempting to explain how the
poets produce their best things is useful and agreeable: when it makes
an arbitrary theory beforehand, and dismisses the best things as bad
because they do not agree therewith, it becomes a futile nuisance. And
I believe that there is no period of our literature which, when
studied, will do more to prevent or correct such fatuity than this
very period of Early Middle English.

[Footnote 104: His instance is Burns's--

"Like a rogue | for for | gerie."

It is a pity he did not reinforce it with many of the finest lines in
_The Ancient Mariner_.]

CHAPTER VI.

MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY.

POSITION OF GERMANY. MERIT OF ITS POETRY. FOLK-EPICS: THE
'NIBELUNGENLIED.' THE 'VOLSUNGA SAGA.' THE GERMAN VERSION.
METRES. RHYME AND LANGUAGE. 'KUDRUN.' SHORTER NATIONAL
EPICS. LITERARY POETRY. ITS FOUR CHIEF MASTERS. EXCELLENCE,
BOTH NATURAL AND ACQUIRED, OF GERMAN VERSE. ORIGINALITY OF
ITS ADAPTATION. THE PIONEERS: HEINRICH VON VELDEKE.
GOTTFRIED OF STRASBURG. HARTMANN VON AUE. 'EREC DER
WANDERAERE' AND 'IWEIN.' LYRICS. THE "BOOKLETS." 'DER ARME
HEINRICH.' WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH. 'TITUREL.' 'WILLEHALM.'
'PARZIVAL.' WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE. PERSONALITY OF THE