OF FEET AND CÆSURA.
The feet most often met with in English verse are those corresponding
with the trochee and iambus,[9] that is approximately. The iambic is
most common perhaps, represented by two syllables with the accent on the
last syllable. The trochee has two syllables, with the accent on the
first. An example of a line in each metre will show the difference—
_Four Foot Iambic._
"To fai´r Fide´le's gra´ssy to´mb."
_Four Foot Trochaic._
"No´t a si´ngle ma´n depa´rted."
Dactyls (an accented followed by two unaccented syllables) and
anapæsts (two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one) are most
frequently used in combination with the other feet—
_Anapæstic._
"O´r the wo´rld | from the hou´r | of her bi´rth."
_Dactylic._
"Ma´ke no deep | scru´tiny
I´nto her | mu´tiny."
It appears to me preferable to retain the classic names for these feet,
rather than to try and invent new titles for them. One writer on
versification has attempted to do this, and calls the iambic "march"
measure, and the trochaic "trip." This seems to me to render the nature
of the measure liable to misconstruction, as if the former only suited
elevated themes, and the latter light ones; whereas the metre of
Hudibras is iambic, and Aytoun's ballad of the "Battle of Flodden" is
trochaic. The truth is, that the form of the foot has little to do with
the "march" or "trip" of the verse, for "The Bridge of Sighs" is written
in a dactylic form; and, according to the authority just alluded to, if
the trochee be a "trip," the dactyl must be a "jig"!
By the combinations of these feet in certain numbers a line is
constituted. Those in which two, three, and four feet occur—dimeters,
trimeters, and tetrameters—are not so general as lines of more feet, and
in these latter a new feature has to be recognised and provided for—the
cæsura or pause. Strictly, the cæsura causes poetry to be written in
lines, the end of each being a cæsura; but there are other cæsuras in
the line, one or more according to its length. In the best verse they
correspond with a natural pause in the sense of the words. When they do
not, the artificial punctuation injures the harmony with which the sound
and the sense should flow together. It is by varying the fall of the
cæsura that the best writers of blank decasyllabic verse contrive to
divest it of monotony. In some of the more irregular forms of verse,
especially when it is unrhymed, the cæsura is all-important, giving to
the lines their rise and fall—a structure not altogether unlike what has
been termed the parallelism of Hebrew versification.
It is scarcely possible to lay down rules for the use of the cæsura,
or pause, in English verse. It differs from the classic cæsura in
falling at the end of both foot and word. Of its possible varieties we
may gain some idea when we note that, in the decassyllabic line, for
instance, it may fall after each foot, and it is by the shifting of its
place that in this, as in blank verse, monotony is avoided. In shorter
measures, especially of a lyric nature, it generally falls midway in the
line.
The plan of giving to our accentual feet the titles given to the
classical quantitative feet has been strongly condemned by some writers.
I venture to think they have hardly considered the matter sufficiently.
It must be better to use these meaningless terms (as we use the
gibberish of Baroko and Bramantip in logic) than to apply new names
which, by aiming at being expressive, may be misleading. But there is
something more than this to be considered. There is in accent this, in
common with quantity, that just as two shorts make a long, and can be
substituted for it, so two unaccented syllables may take the place of
one rather more accented; or perhaps it will be found that the
substitution is due less to the correspondence in accent alone, than to
correspondence of quantity as well as accent. To put it briefly, these
resolutions of the foot into more syllables are—like similar resolutions
in music—a question of time, and time means quantity rather than accent.
As an instance of this, I may give the much-quoted, often-discussed
line—
"Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes."
The ordinary method of scanning this is to make a dissyllable of
"tired," as if it were "ti-erd," a vulgarism of which its author would
never have been guilty. The truth is, that the long "i" and the roll of
the "r" correspond in time to a dissyllable, and by changing the run of
the line, carry out perfectly Pope's notion of the sound echoing the
sense.
These resolutions, therefore, need a most accurate ear, and no slight
experience. The versifier will do well, as a beginner, to refrain from
attempting them. When he has gone on writing verse by rule of thumb
until he begins to discover a formality in them that would be the better
for variation, he may fairly try his hand at it—but not until then.
Before that, his redundancy of syllables would be the result of faulty
or unfinished expression, not the studied cause of a change in run.