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That, after all that has been written on the subject, I imagine to be still the question in the bosom of most readers when they are confronted with a piece of Lyric metre at all complicated. Those who are fortunate enough to have an ear for rhythm, and thus the capability of understanding, are still left, it seems to me, to hear a piece of metre as an uninstructed person hears a piece of music: though he may experience to a considerable degree a sense of vague and general satisfaction, he will lack the understanding of a musical adept. But a musician, hearing a sonata, follows what is being done; observes the themes of which the composition is constructed; notes the treatment of them, how they are developed, varied, and combined; perceives their ethical significance, and feels intelligent artistic pleasure. For all that I can see, the books on lyric metre do not put a student in the position to do this.
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References
1 Just, of course, as printers tend to do: for example, the first verse of Campion's song ‘Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time as dancers, From their own music when they stray’ should continue
All her free favours
And smooth words wing my hopes in vain; but it is printed
All her free favours and smooth words,
Wing my hopes in vain. and has escaped correction both by Mr. Bullen and Mr. Beeching.
2 In his Preface (ed. 2 p. lxviii) Prof. Blass describes this poem truly as a lamentatio lugubris, and asks how that could be in honour of Apollo. A possible answer is suggested by a note of Wernsdorf's on Himerius, Ecl. xiii. 6 and 7, p. 213Google Scholar: ‘Videtur Sophista hoc loco, ut in Orat. xiv. 10, abitum Flaviani sui comparasse cum reditu Apollinis ad Hyperboreos ac descripsisse cum laetitiam Delphorum ob dei sui praesentiam, tum luctum eorum, ob dei abitum: porro autem tetigisse fluvium Alpheum, cuius discessu similiter lugeant Elienses.’
3 If only they had had our system of musical notation they would never have been bewildering to us—or to themselves.
4 The scholia are not correctly treated by Bergk on Stesichorus 35 and 36 p. 220.
5 Dorian metre in burlesque, as Eur., Cycl. 367Google Scholar sqq., Ar. Ran. 814 sqq., would have just the same effect as the delightful Handelian burlesques of Sullivan; in Princess Ida for example, ‘This helmet, I suppose, Was made to ward off blows.’
6 Müller, K. O.History of Greek Literature I p. 251Google Scholar.
7 Wilamowitz - Moellendorff for 
(v.l. 
): so in Aesch., Ag. 950Google Scholar the MSS. give 
for 
in Ath. 689 b 
for 
The reading of v. 12 (enhoplion repeated) is due to the same scholar; the MSS. have 
8 Crusius for 
v.l. 
so 
has been restored for 
in Pers. 592. The active 
is in O.C. 134.
9 The reading of the MSS. and of the Aldine too is 
I have corrected this and the metre at the same time. The editors follow the MS., which divides the words according to their grammatical construction
The antistrophe is restored by transposition.
10 Epodes belong properly to Dorian metre, and are usual with paeonic. All the purely Dorian odes of Pindar, except P. xii and N. ix, have epodes; all the rest that have none (O. i, iv, xiv, P. vi, N. ii, iv, I. viii) are in more or less varied Lydian or Ionic rhythms: so are the only three complete odes of Bacchylides that have not, iv, vi and xvii. The strophes of iii, which tells the story of the Persians and the Lydian Croesus, are in Lydian or Ionic, but the epode is in Doric because it is addressed to Hiero of Sicily; and we are prepared for this by a Doric phrase (enhoplion) in the 2nd and 3rd lines of the strophes.
11 Or 
12 Or 
The reading of the 2nd line is uncertain, but as I have written it, it is metre.
13 E.g. 
or 
the metre is in complete without this ending.
14 
MS.; I give the correction of Weil, cf. Pind. I. ii. 16: 
would be as good, cf. Pind. P. iv. 8; but 
would be a glyconic line quite foreign to the metre. In the previous line 
awaits correction; I cannot scan Wecklein's 
15 ‘Or of metre either’ I might almost say; only that Bergk, on Nem. vi. 7 p. 279Google Scholar laid down exactly the opposite for Pindar,—that his metre gets more strict as it proceeds: ‘in prima stropha correptio minus offendit, solet enim poeta deineeps severiore lege uti.’ It would be strange indeed if it were so, but it is simply not the fact.
16 I have no doubt that the readings given here are right so far as metre is concerned. In the antistrophe I take it there is an anacoluthon as in the strophe: ‘smite the heads, and that will be a pledge!’ (or ‘and let that be a pledge’).
17 
is the vulgate, but metre requires 
or 
and in cod. L 
has been made from 
The same correction is to be made in Trach. 640 
18 This being mutilated, I have taken the first half from one strophe and the second from the other. In v. 16 
is rightly restored by Prof. Blass.
19 See the schol. on v. 130.
20 The first section presently is numbered (1), the second (3).
21 Probably 
or 
then the metre is continuous throughout.
22 At 4 we get a new figure which is repeated at the close: in the antistrophe it is indicated by caesura; and I think there would have been a caesura in the strophe too, if it had not been that 
is one long word: 
would have been unrhythmical, but 
does not spoil the movement. Other cases in passages to be quoted presently are 
in Agam. 707, 
in Bacchyl. xvii. 2.—When anapaestic dimeters and iambic trimeters have not the usual caesura, it will be found that a long word is the condition of the license, as Again. 781 
784 
Soph., fr. 300Google Scholar
(epitrite movement).
23 
Dindorf: the MS. is 
a variation without parallel in choriambic metre, and the contrary of the sense. Sophocles is alluding to the proverb 
used by Paul., Sill., A.P. v. 193Google Scholar in his clever answer to Agathias, ib. 192. 
are 
of Zeus, (O.C. 1267Google Scholar, 1382, Find. O. viii. 21, Plut., Alex; 52Google Scholar, Orpheus in ‘Dem.’ 772. 26 and fr. 18 in Proclus on Alcib. I.); but 
is not with them; 
is like Nature, 
Eur., fr. 920Google Scholar.
24 Transition to this metre is always, I believe, prepared by 
preceding; therefore the corrupt verses Soph. O.T. 1210=1219 have yet to be restored correctly.
25 Eur., Tro. 307Google Scholar sqq., Ar. Av. 1731 sqq., Pax 1329 sqq., Catull. 61. 4, Plaut., Casina, 799Google Scholar.
26 
hymenaei loco discens flebilc carme Bothe. Change from the 
to the 
is a theme found first in Erinna, A.P. vii 712Google Scholar, and it became a commonplace with later writers, ib. 52, 182, 183, 186, 188, Ach. Tat. iii. 10, Heliod. ii., 29, Eur., Alc. 924–31Google Scholar. The point is made in our passage with such care and so impressively that it is somewhat surprising to find it has hardly been perceived: Heusde compares Bion i. 87 and Schneidewin, P.V. 573Google Scholar. 
means that she has acquired at last (
as 
) the different strain of 
her perfection in it having been preceded by long practical experience 
of suffering fitted for lament indeed. 
was restored by Heusde (who understood it somewhat differently); and 
suggested by Hermann and confirmed by Paley, seems to me better here than 
27 Opinions on the question are well summarized by Prof. Smyth, H. W.Gretk Melie Poets (1900) p. 239Google Scholar. I quote a portion of Bergk's, note Poetae Lyrici Graeci III p. 99Google Scholar: ‘Cum Aristoteles, fide si quis alius dignus, testificetur poetriam haec rescripsisse Alcaeo, apparet necessitudinem, quae inter haec carmina intercedit, manifestam fuisse: itaque non dubitavi Alcaei versui quern Aristoteles adscripsit 
praemittere versum eiusdem numeri quem servavit Hephaestio 
atque consentaneum est etiam Sapphonem in praegressa stropha Alcaeum nominatim compellasse. Animadversione digni etiam numeri utriusque carminis: Alcaeus ad Sapphonem scribens Sapphico utitur versu sed hendecasyllabon anacrusi auxit, ut numeri lenitatem propria gravitate temperaret, ac videtur hoc metrum, quod novavit, in hoc uno carmine adhibuisse. Sappho Alcaeo rescribens praeter solitum Alcaicara stropham, cuius indoles a suae poesis natura abhorrebat, adhibuit. Haec igitur singularis ars, quam in numeris deprehendimus, consilium utriusque carminis egregie illustrat Aristotelisque testimonium pianissime confirmat.’ The same argument weighs strongly in my mind; though the significance of the metres I interpret differently.