FROM CHAUCER TO SPENSER--DISORGANISATION AND RECONSTRUCTION
[Sidenote: Causes of decay in Southern English prosody.]
It might be supposed, especially in face of the unquestionable
reputation which Chaucer had attained before his death--and which he
maintained undisturbed, and hardly approached, for the entire period
until Spenser's birth,--that his prosodic work, once done, would have
been done once for all; that in points of form, though individual
inferiority of poetic gift might show itself, there could be no great
technical falling off. To think this, however, would be to ignore--as,
in fact, men too usually do ignore, and have ignored--the necessary and
intricate connection between language and prosody. Chaucer had raised
the state of English versification to the highest point possible in
his time; in fact, there are reasons for saying that he had screwed
it up beyond the level possible to ordinary men. To mention nothing
else, the exactness, and at the same time the rhythmical variety of
his verse, depend on two special points--the valuing of the final
_e_ and the optional but carefully selected shift from French to
English accentuation.[74] We know that, even in the mouths and on the
pens of his own contemporaries, the _e_ was breaking down, and that
it "went" more and more during the fifteenth century; and we know
likewise, though less certainly, that though, even at the close of
the period with which we are dealing, French accentuation was still
permissible to poets, an English standard was gradually establishing
itself, violation of which was disapproved.[75] Moreover, the fact
remains undeniable that the poetic quality of the followers of
Chaucer, in Southern English of the literary kind, was low to a point
unprecedented, and never yet again reached since.
The progress of prosody between Chaucer and Spenser divides itself,
sharply but unequally in point of time, between a longer space (about
a century and a quarter) from Chaucer to poets like Hawes, Skelton,
and Barclay; a shorter (of about half a century or less) from Wyatt to
Spenser. In the first division a subdivision--of matter, not time--has
to be made between the literary poets in Southern English, the Scottish
Chaucerians from James the First to Douglas or Lyndsay (if not even
to Montgomerie, who died later than Spenser himself), and the ballad,
carol, and other folk-song writers of the fifteenth century.
[Sidenote: Lydgate, Occleve, etc.]
The history of the first division is the history of the breakdown
just referred to. Except in the so-called _Chauceriana_--pieces such
as "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," "The Flower and the Leaf," "The
Court of Love," etc., once attributed to Chaucer himself, but cast
out on various kinds of evidence ranging from practically conclusive
to very doubtful--and sometimes even in such poets as Lydgate and
Occleve, who for no very small portion of their lives were Chaucer's
own contemporaries, downwards, seem to be struck with metrical palsy or
metrical blindness. Examples, given in the Scanned Conspectus above,
will show the way in which they confuse different metres, vary the
lengths of their lines not by intentional substitution but by sheer
muddlement, violate rhythm and cadence--turn, in fact, the perfect
harmony of their master into a cacophony which is not even prosaic.
Sometimes, especially in Occleve, by rigid counting of syllables, they
escape worse blunders, though they seldom make real music. Generally,
even this resource fails them, and there is no worse chaos than in
Hawes, one of the latest and not one of the least of them; while
Skelton, perhaps the acutest intelligence of all, takes refuge in
frank, _not_ clumsy, and intentional doggerel.
[Sidenote: The Scottish poets.]
To this spectacle of disorganisation and decay the Scottish followers
of Chaucer (who, generally with acknowledgment as eager and hearty as
that of their English comrades, take him for their master) present
what may at first sight seem an astonishing and almost unintelligible
contrast. With final _e_'s allowed for (or in case of necessity touched
in), the _Kingis Quair_, traditionally ascribed, and never with solid
reason denied, to James the First, is a piece of rhyme-royal as soundly
constructed, and as well fitted and polished, as if it were Chaucer's
own. Henryson, in his following of Chaucer's _Troilus_, and in his
other poems, never breaks down in metre, but handles every form that
he touches with equal precision and charm. Even more may be said of
Dunbar, whose lyrics possess the peculiar grace only given by metrical
accomplishment, who can manage alliterative metre more smoothly than
Langland and with not less vigour, and who, if he wrote the "Friars
of Berwick," is, next to Chaucer himself, the greatest master of the
early (Middle English) heroic couplet. Of the verse-chroniclers,
Wyntoun, though not very poetical, uses octosyllabic couplet, with not
infrequent equivalence, effectively enough, and Blind Harry writes
very strict decasyllabic couplet with cæsura at the fourth syllable,
after the French model. The earlier sixteenth-century writers, Douglas
and Lyndsay, if not perhaps quite impeccable, appear so beside Hawes
and his fellows; while the two latest strictly Scots poets, Scott and
Montgomerie, manage most complicated measures--reminding us of early
French and Provençal, or of those of the English fourteenth century in
lyric and drama--with unerring accuracy and finished grace. Of this
strange contrast the simple fact of writing in a different dialect,
requiring more care in imitation, may supply some explanation; the
other fact, that this dialect was rather a literary convention than
a vernacular speech, some more; and the higher quality of individual
genius, more still; but a margin of surprise remains.
[Sidenote: Ballad, etc.]
It is difficult to say whether that margin is reduced or widened by
the fact that a contrast, almost as striking, is found between the
English literary poetry of the period and the "folk-song," sacred and
profane. It is probable that the bulk of our older ballads date from
the earliest fifteenth century or the very close of the fourteenth. The
latter would seem to be true of the "Robin Hood" ballads; the former is
pretty certainly true of "Chevy Chase." We have also from the fifteenth
century a large body of carols, or sacred poems for singing.
Now in these, though they naturally vary much in poetic merit and in
prosodic accomplishment, it is remarkable that this latter scarcely
ever falls to the level of the worst literary poetry, and never falls
in exactly the same way. The ballad-writers invariably, and the
carol- and hymn-writers very commonly, preserve the English licence
of equivalence in the fullest fashion; and this seems to relieve
their motion of the staggering and fatal cramp which rests on their
superiors in formal literary rank. They sing naturally: they do not
aim at, and break down in, a falsetto. Although it would be impossible
to have anything in a worse condition, as far as copying goes, than
our oldest version of "Chevy Chase," its natural ballad motion carries
it safe through all the corruptions and defacements; the sacred song
of "E.I.O." is admirable metre; the Carol of the Virgin, "I sing of
a maiden," is matchless in quiet metrical movement; and the famous
"Nut-brown Maid," which is certainly not later than this century,
deserves the same praise in more rapid melody.
These compositions, however, though they did a precious office
in preserving the true principles of English prosody, could not
exercise immediate influence; and the disorganising of literary
versification was no doubt partly cause and partly consequence of the
continuance of the alliterative revolt which did not die till after
Flodden--indeed, not till after Musselburgh (Pinkie). But, indirectly,
this revolt encouraged fresh developments of English metre itself.
The old fourteener had taken new and lively form in such pieces as
_Gamelyn_[76] (late fourteenth century) and _Beryn_ (middle fifteenth),
and through it and other things--the musical adaptations of songs
and hymns and the like--there was arising, in dramatic literature
especially, a disorderly, imperfect, but very important notion of
wholly "triple-timed" or anapæstic metre. In fact, it is not excessive
to regard the English fifteenth century as a period when all elements
of prosody were thrown into a sort of cauldron, sack, sieve, or
lucky-bag, in which, as according to the different metaphors suiting
these objects, they were to be boiled down, shaken together, sifted
out, and taken as fortune would have it, to supply the stock of a new
venture in more orderly and polished verse-manufacture when actual
speech had settled itself once more.
[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction and reform.]
At what period, in what manner, and by what persons exactly, conscious
discontent with this confusion and dilapidation was made manifest,
is not known. That it was felt consciously about the middle of the
sixteenth century we do know positively from a passage in the _Mirror
for Magistrates_; and later still we find the precepts of Gascoigne
virtually, if not always expressly, directed against it. But, as has
been hinted, even Skeltonic evinces an earlier attempt to escape
from it in practice as far back as the first quarter of the century;
while, at an uncertain time for first efforts, during the second, and
then ever increasingly during the third, till the death of Gascoigne
himself, poetical practice proclaims the fact, even more emphatically
than any preceptist rules of criticism could do. Indeed, there has
hardly ever been any mistake, and it is difficult to think that by
persons possessed of ears and eyes any could be made, about the
surprising revolution manifest in the verse of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and
of his younger disciple, Henry Howard, known by his courtesy title as
the Earl of Surrey. Instead of the weltering and staggering discords
of the poets from Lydgate onward, we come back to verse almost as
clear, regular, and harmonious as Chaucer's, though with a much more
modern pronunciation and accent, to which it occasionally seems to
have some difficulty in reconciling itself. The final _e_ has in most
cases disappeared, though it is probably there in a few cases, and in
a few others has settled itself into _y_.[77] The inordinate variety
of syllables in the line, not explicable by any trisyllabic foot, is
reformed. Indeed, the need of the reform is so strongly felt that the
poets run into the opposite error--salutary for the time--of excessive
syllabic uniformity.
[Sidenote: Wyatt and Surrey.]
There can be no question that Wyatt, and, through or after him, Surrey,
were enormously helped, if not originally stimulated to reform, by
the existence of new, exact, and attractive foreign models derived,
at any rate originally, from a new language. French had hitherto been
almost the only source of such models, and it had lost its virtue--not
least perhaps because _ballades_ and other formal devices, though
excellent in themselves, had been practised all through the period of
disorganisation. Italian supplied, in the sonnet, _terza rima_, and
blank verse, fresh models, in the attempt to imitate which precision
of syllabic and rhythmical arrangement almost inevitably enjoined
itself. To write either sonnet or _terza_ in shuffling doggerel would
destroy the particular form; to write blank verse in such a way (as was
actually shown a hundred years afterward by the later "Elizabethan"
dramatists) is to lose _all_ form; so that the instinct of preservation
kept the new experimenters right. Precisely why they adopted another
form which is not Italian at all--the poulter's measure of alternate
Alexandrine and fourteener--is not so easy to decide; but it may very
reasonably be taken to be an attempt to regularise two of the shapes
to which the doggerel of the time and its predecessor most nearly
approximated. It is not a very good form (though when it splits up
into "short measure" it has some merits), and even in the hands of two
such poets as Wyatt and Surrey it is terribly sing-song. But this very
sing-song carried regularity with it. Of the imported measures _terza_
has never suited English very well, though numerous attempts have been
made at it by poets sometimes of supreme quality. On the other hand,
the sonnet--not the commonest Italian form at first, but that also
later--has made itself thoroughly at home; and blank verse--not much
more of a success in Italian itself than _terza_ in English--has, in
English, grown to be one of the greatest metres in the world's prosodic
history.
It should be at once seen that these processes of reform involved an
almost inevitable--a certainly very natural--"drawing-in of the horns"
of verse, which was positively beneficial in practice, but which led
to rather disastrous mistakes in theory. On the one hand, so far as
Italian admits of foot-distribution, it is distributable only into
dissyllabic feet in the metres affected.[78] On the other, the utter
disorganisation of English verse which had prevailed might well seem
to have been caused by the neglect to observe accurate division into
such feet--a division which, in our language, will always chiefly
favour the iamb, or foot with the first syllable short and the second
long. Accordingly we find that in Wyatt and Surrey themselves; in
their companions when (long after the death of the first, and nearly
a decade after that of the second) their work came to be published in
_Tottel's Miscellany_; in the huge rubbish-heap of the _Mirror for
Magistrates_ with its one pearl of price in Sackville's contributions;
and in the poets of the third quarter of the sixteenth century--George
Turberville and Gascoigne himself--this iambic rhythm is omnipresent,
though the line-length and other combinations may be largely variable.
There is, it is true, one remarkable exception in the Georgic poet
Tusser, who uses frequent and accurate anapæst; but the nature of
his subject, the homeliness of his diction, and the character of his
intended readers, may have been thought to put him out of strictly
poetical consideration. When Gascoigne--merely as narrating and
regretting a fact, _not_ announcing, as some have erroneously thought,
a principle--stated the limitation, his fact was for the most part a
fact, and had been so for more than a generation.
[Sidenote: Their followers.]
It would, however, be a gross mistake in criticism, as well as a piece
of unpardonable ingratitude, to find fault with these poets for their
prosodic limitation. It was their business to limit and be limited--to
substitute, at whatever cost of temporary restriction of freedom, order
for the abominable disorder of the preceding century, rhythm for its
limping or staggering movement, harmonious and well-concerted metrical
arrangement for its hubbub of halting verse or scarcely more than even
half-doggerelised prose. And they did this. When, as in the cases of
Wyatt, Surrey, and Sackville, they were men of real and genuine poetic
gift they did much more; though the two first were still hampered by
the uncertainty of pronunciation. From this Sackville is comparatively
free; though the deliberate archaism in him no doubt assists this
freedom, and may have suggested something similar to Spenser. Even
Turberville and Gascoigne, though their strictly poetic powers are
less, manage to produce, by no means seldom, sweet and harmonious
measures. And all do the inestimable work of drilling, regimenting, and
preparing the raw and demoralised state of English prosody so that it
may be ready to the hands of a real master and commander.
[Sidenote: Spenser.]
Such a master and commander duly presented himself in Spenser.
Naturally enough--and even commendably enough on the principle of
proving all things and holding fast that which is good--he spent a
little time on classical "versing"; only to give it up so completely
that (as is not the case with his friend Sidney) no single example of
it, or of any approach to it, occurs in his actual poetical works.
He must have spent much more on experiments in English verse proper,
before the ever-famous and admirable _Shepherd's Calendar_ appeared in
the winter of 1579-80.
[Sidenote: The _Shepherd's Calendar_.]
For poetical excellence, combined with prosodic regularity, there had
been nothing like this since Chaucer; for poetical excellence combined
with prosodic variety it may be questioned whether Chaucer himself--his
whole work being set against this novice's essay--can show anything
equal. Spenser had not yet ventured to publish (though it is more than
probable that he had sketched it out[79]) his immortal stanza, and he
did not issue till later any exact and complete followings of Chaucer's
riding rhyme. But he uses (the exact order is for special reasons not
followed) a very fine six-line stanza (decasyllables rhymed _ababcc_);
slightly altered Romance-six with fresh substitution and redundance in
the short lines; various stanzas much "cuttit and broken" (_i.e._ of
very varied line-length and rhyme-order); the Chaucerian octave; common
ballad measure; and another metre, much discussed and not universally
agreed upon, but, on the more probable interpretation of it, one of the
most interesting in the whole history of English poetry.
This arrangement, which is found in the "February," "May," and
"September" pieces, but most characteristically in the part of
"February" devoted to the tale of "The Oak and the Brere" (Briar),
has been thought by some to be evidence that Spenser misunderstood
Chaucer's "riding rhyme" owing to the disuse of the final valued
_e_ and other changes, these pieces presenting the result of the
misconception. Unfortunately for this notion, the pieces themselves
contain large numbers of consecutive decasyllabics perfectly well
filled and rhythmed; while Spenser later wrote another piece, _Mother
Hubberd's Tale_, which is in impeccable "riding rhyme" from first
to last. He is also, not merely in his later work, but in the other
nine-twelfths of the _Calendar_ itself, an equally impeccable master
of every rhythm and metre that he tries, so that it is practically
inconceivable that he should here have been stumbling blindfold, or
wandering aimlessly, between perfect decasyllabic couplets, perfect
octosyllabic couplets, and doggerel anapæstic lines inconsistent with
both. On the other hand, there had been in English, as we have seen,
from _Genesis and Exodus_ downwards, a variety of octosyllabic couplet
which had admitted anapæstic equivalence freely, which reappeared in
the Romances, and which, though not favoured by Chaucer or Gower or
their immediate followers, had persevered in various places down to
Spenser's own time. It seems to the present writer, as it did to Gray a
hundred and fifty years ago, and has to many others since _Christabel_,
though Coleridge himself strangely did not notice it, that Spenser here
followed his elders, and anticipated Coleridge himself, in choosing
equivalenced octosyllable to vary his non-equivalenced decasyllable.
And on this theory we have in _Genesis and Exodus_, the _Shepherd's
Calendar_, and _Christabel_, the three main piers of a great bridge
which unites the earliest and the latest ages of English prosody, and
which carries that prosody's most vital and differential principle.
[Sidenote: The _Faerie Queene_.]
The result, however, of Spenser's experiments was that, for his chief
poem the _Faerie Queene_, he chose none of the metres in which he
had thus experimented, nor any which had been previously employed by
poets, English or other, but invented (the possible stages of the
invention being given elsewhere) the magnificent Spenserian stanza of
eight decasyllables and an Alexandrine. With this he got more room
than in either rhyme-royal or the octave--an unsurpassed medium for
the individual descriptive effects in which he delighted, and yet one
which could combine itself (for the purpose of larger description or of
narrative) into most attractive sequence. He did not, however, confine
himself to this in his later poems, but showed himself a master, not
merely of the octave in both its forms and of the couplet, but also of
two extensive verse combinations more elaborate than the Spenserian
itself, but less original, and both really suggested, as the Spenserian
was _not_, by Italian. The first was the sonnet, which, after the
successors of Wyatt and Surrey had been apparently afraid to venture
on it, had been taken up by Sidney and Watson probably about the same
time that he was himself at work upon his _Calendar_, and in which he
did very beautiful things. The other was the still more extensive and
complicated arrangement, suggested no doubt by the Italian _canzone_,
which he employed in the _Epithalamion_ and _Prothalamion_--stanzas of
unequal line-length and intertwisted rhyme-order which sometimes extend
to a score of lines or thereabouts.
Spenser did not, after the _Shepherd's Calendar_, attempt the lighter
kind of lyric, nor anything in trisyllabic measures; while he seems
distinctly to eschew trisyllabic substitution in others, though
it appears sometimes. But this was, in fact, a condition of his
completing, and informing with full poetic spirit, the prosodic reform
of the second and third quarters of the century. He left English
poetry once more provided--and indeed had furnished it long before
his too early death--with a perfect form of verse, and with a nearly
perfect form of poetic diction. This diction, which was almost as
much his own work as his stanza, was at the time, and has been since,
much misunderstood. Ben Jonson called it "no language"--an insidious
proposition which, under the truth that it is no language that was at
the time, had been before, or has since been the living speech of any
person or group, conveys the falsehood that it is therefore unfit for
poetry. It is probable that Chaucer's was, though slightly mixed, much
nearer the actual language of his own time, and for that very reason
it grew obsolete, and, until it was studied from the antiquarian point
of view, carried the verse with it. Spenser's blend of actuality,
archaism, dialect, borrowings from French and Italian, and the like,
provided a literary medium which, though parts of it too have become
antiquated, has as a whole provided patterns for all subsequent poets.
The most disputable of his devices, though it has a certain quaint
charm of its own, is what is called his "eye-rhyme"--a system of
altering the spelling of some words so that they may not only sound
alike on the voice but look alike on the page.
FOOTNOTES:
[74] These are certain and incontestable. The present writer would
add the sprinkling of trisyllabic feet, Alexandrines, etc.--even more
difficult for clumsy followers to imitate successfully.
[75] As by Gascoigne (_v. inf._).
[76]
Litheth and lesteneth · and herkeneth aright,
And ye schulle here a talking · of a doughty knight;
Sire Johan of Boundys · was his righte name,
He cowde of norture enough · and mochil of game.
Thre sones the knight hadde · that with his body he wan;
The eldest was a moche shrewe · and sone he bigan.
His bretheren loved wel here fader · and of him were agast,
The eldest deserved his father's curse · and had it at the last.
The goode knight his fader · livede so yore,
That deth was comen him to and handled him full sore.
The goode knight cared sore · syk ther he lay,
How his children scholde · liven after his day.
He hadde ben wyde-wher · but no housband he was,
Al the lond that he hadde · it was verrey purchas.
Fayn he wolde it were · dressed among hem alle,
That ech of hem hadde his part · as it might falle.
(_Gamelyn_, 1-16.)
(Here l. 8, with the almost certain _crasis_ of "theldest," is a
pure iambic fourteener. Elsewhere there are monosyllabic beginnings,
contractions of whole or half feet, and great apparent "irregularity,"
but at the same time nearer and nearer approach to the anapæstic
dimeter, which was to become so popular.)
[77] _I.e._ forms like "hugy" (Sackville), "bleaky" (Dryden), and
"paly" (Coleridge). These forms somehow identified themselves with the
artificial poetic diction of the eighteenth century, and have, since
the early part of the nineteenth, been rather eschewed by poets.
[78] Or, rather, as any one may see from different editions of Dante,
the trisyllables which do occur are almost always capable of being
"slurred up."
[79] The scheme of the _Faerie Queene_ was sent to Harvey soon
afterwards.