Note 165 — Chapter II · RHYTHM AS THE ESSENTIAL FACT OF POETRY

Düntzer, Zeitschr. deutsch. Gymnasialwesen, 1857, pp. I ff., the unwearied commentator, who has had so much experience in the practical reduction of poetry to prose, decided for this view, and doubtless with some show of right. A carmen, he said, was anything,—oath, formula, law, incantation,—spoken in loud and solemn tones. So Livy, I. 26, on that lex horrendi carminis. This may be true for the medicine man, but it is not true for the throng.