Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the mid--seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non--commercial purposes. Read more about Early Journal

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... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. BOOK REVIEWS BOOK REVIEWS flat; and in this respect it has been found less acceptable than Alden. On the other hand, it gains, by casting off the historic method, an immediacy of approach to the technique of a living art. Its chapters take up in succession verse units, the foot, the meter, the stanza, the poem of conventional form, with introduced chapters on scansion and the quality of sounds. Examples, though scanty, are uniformly provided, well chosen, and printed in readable type. The interested student will inevitably crave more; and for him it might have been well to add reference lists to other poems. The editors pronounce it difficult "to withhold comments on the aesthetic function of the forms and conventionalities of the art." Better had they not taken the pains Brief notes, such as that the sonnet was originally and has been chiefly used for amatory verse, that blank verse is characteristic of most epic and dramatic poetry-with perhaps a mere note on the periods of their greatest influence and achievement-would have enriched the book at slight cost of space. Positive faults of detail are few. In the index it should be stated whether the reference is to section or page. The reference to peonic verses from ? I5d is incorrect, as is that in the index. Reference should be made from p. 31, 1., to ?65 for stichic verses. The citation of many classical meters with no example from Campion seems incongruous. And Herrick's lines (p. i6) certainly lose their intended funereal effect if read as the editor suggests. In Alden's book we have history; here we have technique. But should not a book on versification have the atmosphere, if it be not instinct with the spirit, of poetry ?