Note 16 — Chapter IV · SYSTEMS OF ENGLISH PROSODY—THE FOOT
Reading edition
A full account of these would occupy a book bigger than the larger History. Among the latest and most curious attempts on the subject is one to mark off certain metrical rhythms as "accentual," certain others as "quantitative." This (which partly results from the superfluous anxiety to discover and isolate the sources of length and shortness) makes something very like a chimera or a hotch-potch of English verse.