THE ART OF SCANSION
A Letter from ELIZABETH BARRETT, afterwards MRS. BROWNING, to UVEDALE
PRICE, afterwards SIR UVEDALE PRICE, Bart.
To UVEDALE PRICE, Esq.
Hope End. April, 1827.
My dear Sir,—I shall not detain you for any unnecessary prologuizing
purpose, but with your permission shall go en avant at once, and “tell
you what I am going to say.” Pray have a great deal of indulgence ready
for me, for I assure you I shall want all you can spare. Page 32. “There
is a manifest absurdity in transferring the Latin mode of accentuation
to the Greek, yet we certainly should not like to follow the Greek
mode.” Here you give the general taste a great deal more credit than it
deserves, and more than you would give if you were acquainted with a
material circumstance which I certainly imagined I had mentioned to you,
but which either you must have overlooked in one of my letters, or I
omitted in the great hurry with which I wrote one of them. This is that
they do at the Charterhouse precisely what you say we should not like to
do: they read Greek by the Greek accents, and then dismiss their prisca
fides for the sake of embracing a new kind of idolatry, which has not
even the advantage of being sanctified (may I profane that word?) by old
prejudices. In short they have left Belze_bub_ and taken to Beelze_bul_,
and therefore I hope you will grant them, _par parenthèse_, the special
licence of liking to do anything that we certainly should not like to
do; and of being, at least in this instance, “uniformly and consistently
absurd.”
Page 34. There is a difference in the character of the anapæstic and
dactylic rapidity, and one that has been very happily marked by
Marmontel in a very few words, “le dactyl s’elance, et l’anapeste se
précipite.” This, I am persuaded, is not, what it may perhaps appear at
first sight, a fanciful distinction. I am very sure it is not and cannot
help pausing here to say how much I have been struck with the whole of
this forcible illustration of Marmontel’s position. Milton who often
likes to fill English verse from the iambic and trochaic dynasties,—you
_must_ let me think so still,—seems to have been quite aware of the
distinction on which the position is founded: and has made admirable use
of it in a line expressive of the lost Angels’ ‘ruining’ from Heaven—
Eternal wrath
Burnt āftĕr thĕm | tŏ thĕ bōttŏmlĕss pīt.
where by the grand situation of the first long monosyllable we have
revealed to us, first the Avenger with fixed foot on the battlement of
Heaven,—and then the dactylic out-darting of the scorching
thunderbolt—and then the headlong and precipitate descent of the
condemned.
The intermediate monosyllable which, as you observe, is necessary in an
hexametral union of the two rhythms has been omitted by Milton, and
perhaps with a view to the expression. For the pause by which we
compensate the metre, adds, as I conceive, very singularly to the effect
of this sublime line; by giving something unusual to the cadence that
arrests the attention with the voice; as if one fear made us take breath
a moment before we could turn from the contemplation of _power_ to its
terrible effect. Reasoning as Paley’s savage did about the watch, it
becomes clear to me that the remarkable construction of this line is not
accidental, and what makes me still more satisfied that Milton really
intended to express the distinction in question is the circumstance that
during the whole of his description he has had so evidently in his head
the sublime combat of the immortals in the _Theogony_, where Hesiod has
made use of the very same cadence,—tho’ of course with an intermediate
syllable,—to express the precipitation of the conquered.
Ουρανοθεν κατιων δεκατη
It is clear then to my mind that Milton considered his “_tŏ thĕ
bōttŏmlĕss pīt_” as equivalent to Hesiod’s κατιων δεκατη; and that
consequently he would have agreed with you in your pronunciation of the
Greek, and have accepted your position. “Accent, in its modern sense,
gives length—both the first syllable of _bot´tomless_ and the concluding
word _pit´_ being accented,—and _long_, according to Hesiod’s
analogy,—if that be admitted, tho’ _short_ according to the new heresy.
Do not be ungrateful to Milton, and try to resolve his verse into iambi
and trochees: which you will here find a much too difficult matter to
accomplish. This is one instance out of the thousand he offers us:
Of English cut on Greek and Latin.
I know you will add, and justly;
Like fustian heretofore on satin.
“Page 36. In the second book of the Æneid, there is an instance of a
mixture of the two rhythms, but where the _expression is chiefly in the
anapæstic_.” I dare to contend upon your own principle founded on
Marmontel’s distinction that in your simile quoted from Virgil, the
expression neither lies _chiefly_ in the anapæstic cadence, or _chiefly_
in the dactylic but _equally_ in both. I appeal to Philip against
Philip,—and beg you to consider whether the dactylic impetus at the
beginning of the line Fertur in arva furens cumulo does not bring to the
mind the first out-bursting of the spumeus amnis, where it leaps forward
from the stronghold of its banks,—as much as the anapæstic fall does its
rushing descent upon the plains. You, who are so just and rigid in your
‘division of property’ should really adjudge this case equitably.
Page 37. “We have not many choriambi in English and of them none I
believe are of Greek or Latin or perhaps of Saxon origin.” I like so
much all you say about the choriambi, that I am the more sorry you
should shut the door of English poetry in their face.
If they were lame
Ugly and slanderous to our mother tongue
I would not care, I then might be content
but it really seems to me a little hard that we should be denied their
acquaintance the minute after you have proved it to be most desirable. I
shall try to maintain that, neither we or the choriambi having a
disinclination to each other’s company, you are very uncharitable to
make such mischief between us; and I shall therefore put down one or two
respectably sounding words derived from the Greek and Latin,—tho’ not
from Greek and Latin choriambi,—as candidates for that rank in English.
You will, I think, admit chārăctĕrīze—tēmpĕrămēnt—tēmpĕrăture,—if you
can by any means get over their disallegiance to ancient quantity. You
may, perhaps admit pātrĭŏtīsm: but I bring this example forward with no
kind of triumph: for, in common discourse, we pronounce it much as five
syllables; and find it rough and unmanageable on reducing it to _four_;
which however, I believe, is undeviatingly done in poetry. The most
inharmonious line Campbell ever wrote has no reason to be obliged to it—
If the pātrĭŏtīsm ŏf yŏur fathers.
You may not, _a fortiori_, refuse to admit rīghtĕousnēss—of Saxon
extraction,—
“Just confidence and native rīghtĕoŭsnēss”
and its connections _par la suite_;
hīdĕoŭsnēss—glōrĭoŭsnēss—hōrrĭblĕnēss, &c.
I think līnĕămēnt tho’ pleading guilty to the imperfections you find out
in chārĭŏtēer, has no weak claim—
“Six wings he wore to shade
His līnĕămēnts divine.”
And vīrtŭŏsēst,—rather a rusty word,—receives testimonials from Milton
for itself and kindred—
Seems wisest, vīrtŭŏsēst, discreetest, best.
It seems to me that you can only make one objection to my next
candidate—