Note 5 — ENGLISH VERSE

Leigh Hunt said that "Coleridge saw the mistake which had been made with regard to this measure, and restored it to the beautiful freedom of which it was capable, by calling to mind the liberties allowed its old musical professors the minstrels, and dividing it by time instead of syllables." (See the entire passage on Christabel, in the Introduction, on "What is Poetry?", to Imagination and Fancy. For a criticism of the metrical structure of Christabel, see Robert Bridges's Milton's Prosody (ed. 1901, pp. 73-75).)