A History of English Prosody

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The Preface of the second volume of this book was much shorter than the Preface of the first this shall be shorter still, indeed of the shortest. For I have endeavoured to say in the body of the text what I thought material, and I do not wish to say anything immaterial either here or elsewhere. I have only to thank critics for the kindness with which the work has been generally received hitherto; to hope that this part of it - the most difficult and trying, no doubt, of the three, as touching matters most inter esting to most people - will not be found unworthy of the continuance of that kindness; to apologise to any one whom I may have offended, in any of the senses of that word, while writing on a matter where offence is very hard to avoid unless one writes with a flavourless and colourless scholasticism and to make my bow.

The Preface of the second volume of this book was much shorter than the Preface of the first this shall be shorter still, indeed of the shortest. For I have endeavoured to say in the body of the text what I thought material, and I do not wish to say anything immaterial either here or elsewhere. I have only to thank critics for the kindness with which the work has been generally received hitherto; to hope that this part of it — the most difficult and trying, no doubt, of the three, as touching matters most inter esting to most people — will not be found unworthy of the continuance of that kindness; to apologise to any one whom I may have offended, in any of the senses of that word, while writing on a matter where offence is very hard to avoid unless one writes with a flavourless and colourless scholasticism and to make my bow.