Note 54 — PART THREE

At least no difficulty has generally been found; but Mr. Liddell marks the word as one which must be stressed from its grammatical importance. He even finds Coleridge untrue to the metre in putting where in an unstressed place in the verse, on the ground that it means "through which." It would perhaps be safe to guess that no unsophisticated English reader has ever found difficulty in the accents of the line in question. The matter is worthy of remark as illustrating the tendency of one class of readers to emphasize sense-reading at the expense of rhythm. On the other hand, for an illustration of the opposite extreme see Professor Bright's article on "Grammatical Ictus in English Verse," in the Furnivall Miscellany (1901), where we are told, in effect, that the metrical accent must always triumph over the sense-accent. As usual, the truth seems to lie somewhere between the extremes.