BY CHARLTON M. LEWIS THE PRINCIPLES OF ENGLISH VERSE 143 pp., 12mo, $1.25, net. (By mail, $1.33.) A discussion of the chief types of English verse and the general principles underlying verse-structure. The book is designed for students and general readers who enjoy poetry. It avoids the usual text-book style, and will be found stimulating and useful to students for collateral reading. It contains some new ideas both on theory and on method. The Outlook:-"It ought to be in the hands of lovers of poetry who are not entirely familiar with the technical forms of the different kinds of verse which give them pleasure. ... This compact and easily read volume, in untechnical language, the various kinds of meter are described with sufficient fullness and illustration to give the intelligent lover of poetry all the information he needs." HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK A HARVARD COLLEGE FEB & 1908 Shapleigh fund COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Published November, 1907 THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS PREFACE THIS essay presents the chief new results of a prolonged study of Hamlet with a succession of college classes. I became convinced long ago that the only hope of solving the Hamlet problem lay in a clear discrimination between Shakespeare's original contributions to the story and the legendary materials that he inherited. This plan has never been fairly tried, because it has heretofore been thought impossible to distinguish these heterogeneous elements. There are, however, plenty of clues, and it is necessary only that they be intelligently followed. I have here pointed out the most promising of these, and followed them as well as I could. There have been so many false starts towards a solution of Hamlet that no new adventurer can expect all his conclusions to be acceptable; but I am confident that I have hit upon a sound method of investigation, and that by the same method others will succeed whereever I may have failed. |
