The introduction and acclimatization of the _hexameter_ upon English
soil has been an affair of more than two centuries. The attempt was
first systematically made during the reign of Elizabeth, but the metre
remained a feeble exotic that scarcely burgeoned under glass. Gabriel
Harvey,--a kind of Don Adriano de Armado,--whose chief claim to
remembrance is, that he was the friend of Spenser, boasts that he was
the first to whom the notion of transplantation occurred. In his "Foure
Letters" (1592) he says, "If I never deserve anye better remembraunce,
let mee rather be Epitaphed, the Inventour of the English Hexameter,
whome learned M. Stanihurst imitated in his Virgill, and excellent Sir
Phillip Sidney disdained not to follow in his Arcadia and elsewhere."
This claim of invention, however, seems to have been an afterthought
with Harvey, for, in the letters which passed between him and Spenser in
1579, he speaks of himself more modestly as only a collaborator with
Sidney and others in the good work. The Earl of Surrey is said to have
been the first who wrote thus in English. The most successful person,
however, was William Webb, who translated two of Virgil's Eclogues with
a good deal of spirit and harmony. Ascham, in his "Schoolmaster" (1570),
had already suggested the adoption of the ancient hexameter by English
poets; but Ascham (as afterwards Puttenham in his "Art of Poesie")
thought the number of monosyllabic words in English an insuperable
objection to verses in which there was a large proportion of dactyls,
and recommended, therefore, that a trial should be made with iambics.
Spenser, at Harvey's instance, seems to have tried his hand at the new
kind of verse. He says:
I like your late Englishe Hexameters so exceedingly well, that I
also enure my penne sometimes in that kinde.... For the onely or
chiefest hardnesse, whych seemeth, is in the Accente, which sometime
gapeth, and, as it were, yawneth ilfauouredly, coming shorte of that
it should, and sometime exceeding the measure of the Number, as in
_Carpenter_; the middle sillable being vsed shorte in Speache, when
it shall be read long in Verse, seemeth like a lame Gosling that
draweth one legge after hir and _Heaven_, being used shorte as one
sillable, when it is in Verse stretched out with a _Diastole_, is
like a lame dogge that holdes up one legge. But it is to be wonne
with Custome, and rough words must be subdued with Vse. For why a
God's name may not we, as else the Greekes, have the kingdome of our
owne Language, and measure our Accentes by the Sounde, reserving the
Quantitie to the Verse?
The amiable Edmonde seems to be smiling in his sleeve as he writes this
sentence. He instinctively saw the absurdity of attempting to subdue
English to misunderstood laws of Latin quantities, which would, for
example, make the vowel in "debt" long, in the teeth of use and wont.
We give a specimen of the hexameters which satisfied so entirely the ear
of Master Gabriel Harvey,--an ear that must have been long by position,
in virtue of its place on his head.
Not the like _Discourser_, for Tongue and head to be fóund out;
Not the like _resolute Man_, for great and serious áffayres;
Not the like _Lynx_, to spie out secretes and priuities óf States;
_Eyed_ like to _Argus_, _Earde_ like to _Midas_, _Nosd_ like to _Naso_,
Winged like to _Mercury_, fittst of a Thousand for to be émployed.
And here are a few from "worthy M. Stanyhurst's" translation of the
"Aeneid."
Laocoon storming from Princelie Castel is hastning,
And a far of beloing: What fond phantastical harebraine
Madnesse hath enchaunted your wits, you townsmen unhappie?
Weene you (blind hodipecks) the Greekish nauie returned,
Or that their presents want craft? is subtil Vlisses
So soone forgotten? My life for an haulfpennie (Trojans), etc.