beauty of his book; it is
a history of English poetry in one particular form or mode.... The
author perceives that the form of verse is not separable from the soul
of poetry; poetry 'has neither kernel nor husk, but is all one,' to
adapt the phrase of another critic."

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY

By DR. GEORGE SAINTSBURY

SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME II.

_THE ATHENAEUM._--"We have read this volume with as eager an impatience
as that with which we read the first, for the author is in love with his
subject; he sees 'that English prosody is and has been a living thing
for seven hundred years at least,' and, knowing that metre, verse pure
and simple, is a means of expressing emotion, he here sets out to show
us its development and variety during the most splendid years of our
national consciousness."

_THE STANDARD._--"The second volume of Professor Saintsbury's elaborate
work on English prosody is even more interesting than his former volume.
Extending as it does from Shakespeare to Crabbe, it covers the great
period of English poetry and deals with the final development of the
prosodic system. It reveals the encyclopaedic knowledge of English
literature and the minute scholarship which render the Edinburgh
professor so eminently suited to this inquiry, which is, we think, the
most important literary adventure he has undertaken.... It is certainly
the best book on the subject of which it treats, and it will be long
indeed before it is likely to be superseded."

_THE CAMBRIDGE REVIEW._--"It is the capacity of being able to depart
from traditional opinion, the evidence shown on every page of
independent thought based upon a first-hand study of documents, which
make the present volume one of the most stimulating that even Professor
Saintsbury has written. The work, as a whole, is a fine testimony to his
lack of pedantry, to his catholicity of taste, to his sturdy common
sense, and it exhibits a virtue rare among prosodists (dare we say among
scholars generally?)--courtesy to opponents."

_THE PALL MALL GAZETTE._--"This volume is even more fascinating than was
the first. For here there are even greater names concerned--Shakespeare
and Milton.... It appears to us that Professor Saintsbury hardly writes
a page in which he does not advance by some degree his view of the right
laws of verse. We cannot imagine any one seriously defending, after this
majestical work, the old syllabic notion of scansion.... The book is