Note 80 — Chapter II · RHYTHM AS THE ESSENTIAL FACT OF POETRY

Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry, 2d ed., I. 289. This view of Twining is upheld in some highly sensible remarks by Mr. A. O. Prickard in a lecture, Aristotle and the Art of Poetry, London, 1891. What Aristotle clearly meant to say is that “metre is not the most essential characteristic of poetry, yet it would be a misuse of language to call anything a poem which is not metrical in form.” (Italics not in original, p. 60.) Mr. Prickard agrees with Whately, Twining, and many others, that the words of the passage in question, and the instances given, do not make against this view; and “elsewhere, Plato and Aristotle invariably assume that only what is metrical is to be called poetry; nay, that metrical writing and poetry are, for the common purpose of language, convertible terms. ‘In metre, as a poet,’ says Plato, ‘or without metre as a layman.’ ‘A good sentence,’ says Aristotle, ‘should have rhythm but not metre; if it have metre, it will be a poem.’” See the Phædrus, 258, D., and Aristotle’s Rhetoric, III. 8.