glish verse is very
simple indeed and to bring in other principles is here
unnecessary.

But because verse written strictly in these feet and
by these principles will become same and tame the
poets have brought in licences and departures from
rule to give variety, and especially when the natural
rhythm is rising, as in the common ten-syllable or
five-foot verse, rhymed or blank. These irregularities
are chiefly Reversed Feet and Reversed or Counterpoint
Rhythm, which two things are two steps or degrees
of licence in the same kind. By a reversed foot
I mean the putting the stress where, to judge by
the rest of the measure, the slack should be and the
slack where the stress, and this is done freely at the
beginning of a line and, in the course of a line, after
a pause; only scarcely ever in the second foot or
place and never in the last, unless when the poet
designs some extraordinary effect; for these places are
characteristic and sensitive and cannot well be touched.
But the reversal of the first foot and of some middle
(3) foot after a strong pause is a thing so natural that
our poets have generally done it, from Chaucer down,
without remark and it commonly passes unnoticed and
cannot be said to amount to a formal change of rhythm,
but rather is that irregularity which all natural growth
and motion shews. If however the reversal is repeated
in two feet running, especially so as to include the
sensitive second foot, it must be due either to great
want of ear or else is a calculated effect, the super-
inducing or mounting of a new rhythm upon the old;
and since the new or mounted rhythm is actually heard
and at the same time the mind naturally supplies the
natural or standard foregoing rhythm, for we do not
forget what the rhythm is that by rights we should be
hearing, two rhythms are in some manner running at
once and we have something answerable to counter-
point in music, which is two or more strains of tune
going on together, and this is Counterpoint Rhythm.
Of this kind of verse Milton is the great master and
the choruses of _Samson Agonistes_ are written throughout
in it--but with the disadvantage that he does not let
the reader clearly know what the ground-rhythm is
meant to be and so they have struck most readers as
merely irregular. And in fact if you counterpoint
throughout, since one only of the counter rhythms is
actually heard, the other is really destroyed or cannot
come to exist, and what is wri