The Musical Basis of Verse: A Scienctific Study of the Principles of Poetic Composition

Excerpt from The Musical Basis of Verse: A Scientific Study of the Principles of Poetic Composition
I was led to the inception of this work by my recognition of the need - a need felt grievously in my own studies, but even more in the attempt to direct those of others - of a working hypothesis of the Science of Verse which should be at once rational, coherent, and simple - such a working hypothesis as every music student has at his right hand.
The study of all the a priori text-books - founded as they are upon a complicated system which will not fit our modern verse - proved a wariness and vexation to the spirit; for, from Puttenham ("Arte of English Poesie," 1589) to our own day, although there is much delightful reading upon the essence of verse, there is little light upon the paths of metre, but endless ignes fatui. To follow the various disquisitions of the various metrists is like wandering through a vast Daedalian labyrinth, wherein, if at any time some true clew seems to offer itself, it will be presently snipped away and another diametrical one substituted; and, in the end, all lead no-whither. This, because in every case the supposed true way has been an artificial and arbitrary one, not the natural one founded upon primary law; the primary laws of verse, like those of music, being laid upon the bed-rock of acoustics.
The first clear note of truth we hear struck is from Coleridge, when, in his preface to "Christabel" (1816), he announced that he had discovered a "new principle of versification; to wit, that of accents."
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