Note 101 — Chapter III · SCALIGER, CASTELVETRO, AND THE LATER ITALIAN CRITICS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

One cannot help thinking that this distinction, which is quite contrary to those entertained by Aristotle and Quintilian, must have been influenced by the cadences of the modern languages—Italian and French—with which Scaliger was familiar. In both, but especially in French, the actual “measuring-off” of syllables was the be-all and end-all of metre, the easements provided in English and German by syllabic equivalence being in French refused altogether, in Italian replaced only by the more meagre aid of syncope and apocope.