Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c4.15

c4.15

Only habit can explain the general acceptance of so remarkable a metrical theory: still Latin scholars will faintly recollect that the verse even of Virgil was thought not so long ago to require the occasional apology of ‘metrical license,’ and has not Horace said that at times *bonus dormitat Homerus*? In this case however a metrical license, of which the instances can be counted by the thousand, seems to destroy the nature of verse altogether. How are we to suppose that the poets should always find the metre embarrassing just as they reached a final vowel? and why should they be embarrassed at all by the metre if they possessed in themselves the power to transmute at will a vowel quantity? In truth the two principles of ‘resolution’ and ‘metrical lengthening’ together, if unduly pressed, reduce metre to an absurdity, since by means of them any piece of plain prose can be shewn to correspond to some metrical scheme.