FROM SHAKESPEARE TO MILTON--THE CLOSE OF THE FORMATIVE PERIOD
The high and (it is believed) thoroughly well-deserved praise bestowed
upon Spenser at the close of the last chapter must not lead the
student to suppose that Spenser worked alone, that he was the sole
restorer and perfecter of English prosody at this time, or even that
his work included all that was necessary or desirable. That work,
as has been pointed out, tended towards the complete restoration of
regular and at the same time thoroughly musical and spirited verse,
but it kept--except in the early experiments of the _Shepherd's
Calendar_--to the regular side, avoiding much trisyllabic substitution
as well as "triple time" generally, and eschewing, likewise, strictly
lyrical movements save of the stateliest kind, very much "broken and
cuttit"[80] verse, and the like.
As regards pure triple or anapæstic measures, no great advance was
made until nearly the close of this present period, though a few
isolated attempts can be quoted. But the principle of trisyllabic
substitution was secured, once for all, by the development of blank
verse, and the variation of lyric was fully maintained by the practice
of a hundred poets, from the contributors, sometimes quite obscure,
to the _Miscellanies_ which came later than _Tottel_, through Sidney
and others of the first great Elizabethan division, through Drayton
and many more of the second, down to the famous group of "Caroline,"
"Cavalier," or "metaphysical" poets who were contemporary with Milton.
[Sidenote: Blank verse.]
And first of blank verse.
[Sidenote: Before Shakespeare.]
The earliest examples of this great metre in Surrey were, naturally
enough, very exact in syllabic length and somewhat monotonous in
arrangement and effect. Deprived of the warning bell of rhyme, and
having nothing but the structure of the verse itself to rely upon, the
poet was almost inevitably tempted to make very sure of that structure
by moulding it singly, and ensuring a distinct stop at the close. This
rather aggravates than relieves itself in the satiric blank verse of
Gascoigne (_The Steel Glass_) and the dramatic blank verse of Sackville
and Norton (_Gorboduc_); while when the immediate predecessors of
Shakespeare, called the University Wits (Marlowe, Peele, Greene, and
the rest), took up the vehicle for general theatrical practice, they
never completely got clear of the same fashion--which Shakespeare
himself adopted in his earliest attempts. Admiration, just in itself,
for Marlowe has made some try to discover in him, and perhaps also in
Peele (where there is really a little more of it), the trisyllabic
substitution, the variation of pause, and the overrunning of sense
and rhythm from line to line, which are necessary to break up this
"single-mouldedness." But, except as to a very few passages where
actual passion melts the ice, they deceive themselves. In the couplet
(_v. inf._) Marlowe did arrive at enjambment; in blank verse, hardly
ever. The beauty of such verse as his in the more majestic, as Peele's
in the sweeter kind, can hardly be exaggerated, but neither has yet got
complete command of all means of achieving beauty.
The three chief means which they, on the whole, missed, and over
which Shakespeare (profiting by their advance as far as they made it)
gradually gained the mastery, have been indicated as the overrunning of
the line, the variation of the pause, and, above all, the employment of
trisyllabic feet. We can see Shakespeare step by step attaining these,
as well as the more doubtful and dangerous redundant syllable, which
in his last stage he rather abused, and which Beaumont and Fletcher
and later dramatists were to abuse still more. All these means,
but especially the three first (for redundance is compatible with
single-mouldedness), break up the single-moulded line, and substitute
for it (except in cases where it is specially wanted) the verse-clauses
and verse-paragraphs, which it is the glory of Shakespeare to have
perfected.
[Sidenote: In him,]
In his certainly earliest plays--_The Comedy of Errors_, _Titus
Andronicus_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _Love's Labour's Lost_
to some extent--single-mouldedness still appears strongly. But there
are exceptions even in them; and these exceptions gradually pervade,
mellow, and diversify the prosodic composition, till it attains
the perfect accomplishment of _As You Like It_ and _Hamlet_. Yet a
fifth peculiarity and innovation--the lengthening and shortening of
lines--though it may have originally been a mere easement or liberty,
and is often much abused by other dramatists, becomes in Shakespeare's
hands a fresh instrument of concerted music--the frequent regular
Alexandrines relieving the decasyllable by direct contrast, and
fragments being generally (_v. sup._) so arranged as to give genuine
fractions of the normal scansion itself.
[Sidenote: and after him in drama.]
Practically all the secrets and all the accomplishments shown--perhaps
all the accomplishments possible--at this period are to be found
in Shakespeare. The differences of the other dramatists are rather
rhetorical than strictly prosodic; and the efforts sometimes made to
construct special prosodies for them are mostly lost labour. Beaumont
and Fletcher (who seem, from uncertain but pretty strong evidence, to
have actually collaborated with Shakespeare in the _Two Noble Kinsmen_)
develop his latest mood--that where, as in _Cymbeline_, _The Winter's
Tale_, and _The Tempest_, there is much redundance.[81] They carried
it much further than he did, and undoubtedly too far; though the
great poetical power which both possessed saved them. On the other
hand, Ben Jonson, all whose tastes were classical (_i.e._ in favour
of restriction and order), adopted a rather hard and limited, though
rhetorically fine, fashion of blank verse. On the others it would be
unprofitable to enlarge much here. Massinger is perhaps interesting as
working with the most obviously _literary_ eye on his predecessors--a
tendency which is continued in Shirley. But in the latter there is
some, if not much, of a special degeneration which by Shirley's own
later days had nearly destroyed dramatic blank verse itself, and which
was only arrested by the substitution for it of the "heroic" couplet,
as used in the plays called by the same name.
[Sidenote: Its degeneration.]
This degeneration, which is most evident in Davenant and Suckling, but
which appears to some, though not to a great extent, in Shirley, and
in most others of the play-writers up to the closing of the theatres,
should be carefully compared with the initial stage of the measure in
English. Then, as we saw, the absence of the guiding and preserving
influence of rhyme made writers especially and excessively careful
of exact syllabisation, of punctilious though monotonous rhythm,
and of meticulous separation of one line from another. So also we
have seen that, in the second or great period, the restrictions were
loosened--that Shakespeare, preserving perfect metrical harmony,
substituted an ordered licence for them all. But even he perhaps a
little latterly, and his followers Beaumont and Fletcher much more,
exceeded in the redundant syllable. The third generation, though
including, as in the three cases specially mentioned above, men of
no small poetic talent, made the common, the apparently inevitable,
but the disastrous mistake of considering beauty not merely as
directly connected with apparent irregularity, but as to be secured by
irregularity itself. Much of their blank verse is extremely blank, but
not verse at all; nor yet prose, but an awkward hybrid. Not a little
is prose pure and simple. It is scarcely surprising that, after the
Restoration, the metre should have been regarded as "too mean even for
a copy of verses," and discarded, for more than a few years, in drama
itself. Except the broken-down rhyme-royal of the fifteenth century
(to which it bears a striking resemblance without the excuse there
available) there is no more really disgraceful department of English
poetry.
[Sidenote: Milton's reform of it.]
At the very time, however, when this disorganisation of dramatic blank
verse was at its worst, and when it had as yet only been used on the
rarest occasions for any other purpose, its great restorer began,
though he did not for a long time continue, the process of restoration.
[Sidenote: _Comus._]
Milton's _Comus_ (1634) exhibits him as a student, and consequently
an imitator, of all the three preceding schools, excepting the
contemporary degradation, which was impossible to such a born master
of harmony. He has now caught, and often directly reproduces, the
single-moulded line of Marlowe; and, on the other hand, he is almost
equally inclined to the excessively redundanced endings of Beaumont
and Fletcher, even to the extent of frequently making the last foot an
anapæst.[82] Yet he not seldom closely approaches Shakespeare himself
in the varied modulation, without excessive laxity, of his lines, and
in the weaving of them, through overlapping, presence, absence and
shifting of pause, and the like, into a verse paragraph. He inserts
Alexandrines, but does not use verse-fragments much. And he begins a
process--of which he was to be the greatest master--of adding to the
colour, and enhancing the form, of lines by striking and important
words, especially proper names. But fine as the blank verse of _Comus_
is, it is, when we compare it with the lyrical close of the piece
itself, evidently in the experimental stage. And it does not show the
complete and assured command which is visible in the octosyllables and
mixed lyrics.
[Sidenote: _Paradise Lost._]
When, later, he once more employed blank verse (and this time blank
verse only) in _Paradise Lost_,[83] there was nothing of experiment
left in it. The system, in whatever way it may be interpreted, is
quite obviously one which the poet has completely mastered, and which
he is using without the slightest doubt or difficulty. It has given
the pattern for all narrative, in fact for all non-dramatic, blank
verse since; it established, though not quite at once, the measure as
one of the great staples for this general use; and though there have
been times at which it was not generally popular, and persons by whom
it was heartily disliked, there has been a sort of general consensus,
sometimes grudging, but oftener enthusiastic, that it is one of the
greatest achievements of English poetry.
It is therefore inevitable that the partisans of the various systems
of that poetry on its formal side, of which accounts were given in the
beginning of this _Manual_, should all try to vindicate it for their
own views. Attempts are still made (though chiefly by foreigners who
naturally cannot bring the necessary ear) to reduce _Paradise Lost_ to
a strict decasyllabic arrangement, no extra syllables being allowed at
all. This, of course, is merely hideous, and involves numerous crass
absurdities, such as the reduction of, "so oft" to "soft."[84]
[Sidenote: Analysis of its versification, with application of different
systems.]
The accentualists, as such, are not driven to equal straits unless they
choose; indeed, though accentual prosody can never give an adequate
account of Milton's verse, there is no reason why it should not give a
partially correct one. If any one says that Milton employs a verse of
five accents--these usually occurring at the even places of a normal
line, but not infrequently varied in position, sometimes separated by
more than one unaccented syllable, but usually by one only--he will
give, in his own language and with his own limitations, a correct,
though scanty and jejune, account of the thing. He will, however, in
most cases be found going on, and entering upon very disputable matter.
He will notice "licences," and will, in some cases, be inclined to
deplore, or even denounce, the variation of accent just noted. He
will also, in most cases, be found declining to accept the unaccented
syllables as they stand--indeed he has no machinery ready for doing so
without making them a disorderly crowd,--and will endeavour to dispose
of them by some process of "elision," inventing extremely ingenious,
but mostly arbitrary and sometimes self-confessedly inadequate,
specifications of the employment of this. If he is of the class of
accentualists who prefer the term "stress" and its applications, he
will probably go much further still, and allow, or insist upon, the
widest variation in the number of stresses, lines of five being indeed
the average, but four, three, and, in some extreme cases, even two,
being allowed.[85] Further intricate subdivisions will be found between
believers in these theories who, while ruling out syllables from
_scansion_ by an elaborate system of metrical fictions, maintain that
they are not to be dropped in _pronunciation_, and others who, as most
people did unhesitatingly in the eighteenth century, as many did in
the earlier nineteenth, and as a few boldly and consistently do still,
drop the pronunciation altogether, spelling and pronouncing, as well as
scanning, "am'rous," "om'nous," "pop'lar," "del'cate," and the like.
The foot system, on the other hand, as it always does, accepts Milton's
verse exactly as it stands, takes no kind of liberty with it, and
merely strives to discover its characteristics. This system finds (with
the exception of a very few daring experiments, no one of which can
be called wrong in principle, though there may be different opinions
about the success of some of them in practice) nothing different from
the general laws of English verse, as observed at all its best periods,
and as visible, if only in the breach of them, at all, best and worst.
Milton's normal line is a five-foot iambic:
̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄
But for these iambics he will substitute trochees or anapæsts,
sometimes perhaps tribrachs, very freely; and his use of the trochee
for this purpose is more lavish and more audacious than that of any
other English poet, so much so that he will allow two to follow each
other at the opening of the line, and frequently adopts a choriambic
ending by placing one at the fourth foot. On the other hand, he seldom
has the final anapæst which we found in _Comus_, or perhaps the
Alexandrine, though sometimes there are fractional lines. By dint of
these variations--of which the trisyllabic (generally anapæstic) foot
is the most frequent, the most successful, and, despite objections, the
most certain--he attains great variety in his line, which he increases
and utilises, for one great purpose, by the same devices of pause,
diction, etc., formerly noticed in _Comus_, but in a more accomplished
manner and to a higher degree.
The purpose is this, that by these, by equally elaborate and
extraordinarily successful variation of the pause, by devices of
diction, and by the use of brilliantly coloured and heavily weighted
proper names and of others, he may construct a verse-paragraph similar
to that which Shakespeare had already accomplished, but without the
special characteristics of spoken verse. He altered his methods a
little--though perhaps not so much as has been sometimes thought--in
_Paradise Regained_, and still more in _Samson Agonistes_, where,
however, the renewed dramatic intention has to be considered. And,
on the whole, especially when taken in combination with his master
Shakespeare, he established not merely the freedom and order of blank
verse itself, but the whole principle of equivalent substitution in
English prosody.
[Sidenote: Stanza, etc., in Shakespeare,]
But it was not in blank verse only that Shakespeare and Milton played,
in prosody, almost more than the part which they played in poetry
generally. In their other work it is quite as true of them that, from
it, all the principles of English versification could be derived by
intelligent study. Shakespeare's early long poems, _Venus and Adonis_
and the _Rape of Lucrece_--the one in the six-line stanza, the other
in rhyme-royal--rank as the greatest stanza-verse of the last decade
of the sixteenth century except Spenser's; while his _Sonnets_ are,
not merely for their poetic spirit, the greatest in the English form,
exhibiting remarkable individuality in the arrangement of the three
quatrains, and an unmatched power of bringing the last couplet to
bear suddenly, with the utmost prosodic as well as poetic effect. The
largely shortened octosyllabic couplets, scattered about his plays
and among the smaller (some of them technically "doubtful") poems,
show equal mastery of that form, and have indeed inspired Fletcher,
Wither, Milton, and all practitioners of it since. But the songs in
the plays are, next to his blank verse, his greatest prosodic triumph.
He has got in them all the contemporary variety and much more than
the usual contemporary freedom, so that such pieces as those in _The
Tempest_,[86] in _Much Ado About Nothing_, and in _As You Like It_[87]
might, had they been attended to and understood, have saved the early
critics of Tennyson and some other nineteenth-century poets from
blunders about the "irregularity," "discord," "un-English character,"
etc., of their versification. t | sprītes, thĕ | būrthĕn | bear. Hārk,
| hārk! | Bŏ̄w-wōw. | Thĕ wātch-|dŏgs bārk: Bŏ̄w-wōw. P/
(Alternate trochaic and iambic rhythm capable of being made all iambic
by starting with monosyllabic feet: "Cōme" | "Cōurt-" | "Fōot" | etc.
Monosyllabic equivalence in "Hark, hark!" to "The watch-|dogs bark.")]
[Sidenote: in Milton,]
Except in this last respect (for he does not much indulge in
triple-timed measures), Milton's examples are as striking, while
they are more numerous. In grave stanza of purely iambic cadence
but varied line-length, the ode on the _Nativity_ is unsurpassed
in our poetry. The octosyllabic couplets (with catalexis) of the
_Arcades_, _L'Allegro_, and _Il Penseroso_, and the already-mentioned
latter part of _Comus_, stand at the head of their class. _Lycidas_,
which is written in lines mainly decasyllabic, though sometimes of
different length, arranged (except in the last stanza) on no identical
principle, is a practically unique combination of rhyme and blank
verse--the ends being sometimes left unrhymed, but generally rhymed,
though on an apparently irregular system which never violates harmony,
but makes--first each paragraph and then the whole poem--a piece of
concerted music, a definite prosodic symphony or sonata. And lastly,
the choruses of _Samson Agonistes_, when he had returned to rhyme,
apply this system on more extensive principles[88] still, occasionally
attempting quite new measures,[89] and getting the utmost possible
result out of large variation of line-length in the same or in mixed
cadences. Some of the experiments are less successful than others,
and, on the whole, _Samson_ displays a _harder_ style of verse than
the earlier poems; but it is equally important as exhibiting the true
principles of English prosody. Indeed, when Milton had published it, he
may be said to have closed the formative period of our versification,
not in the sense that he had not left infinite things to be done,
but that he had, after Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, almost
completely indicated the principles of doing them.
[Sidenote: and others.]
But these principles had been illustrated by others during the lifetime
of the two,[90] after fashions which even the most summary account
of English prosody cannot leave unnoticed; and these fashions, with
some general phenomena of this double lifetime, not always specially
noticeable in Shakespeare and Milton themselves, must be indicated. The
performances of these two "primates"--the one in the English, the other
in the Italian form of the sonnet--make it unnecessary to say more of
that form, though it was very largely practised in the last decade of
the sixteenth century, and beyond all doubt helped much to discipline
verse generally. And the same is true of the octosyllabic couplet,
which, however, was very beautifully practised by the Jacobean poets
Browne, Wither, and others. But more must be said of the stanza, of
the decasyllabic couplet, the fortunes of which in this time were most
momentous (and which, as it happens, was only occasionally practised
by Shakespeare,[91] scarcely at all by Milton[92]), and of the various
forms, so far as their multiplicity does not forbid, of lyric.
The novelty, splendour, and apparent difficulty of the Spenserian seem
to have imposed on contemporaries to such an extent as to prevent them
from copying it in typical form at all; while many years passed before
it was attempted in slightly altered forms.[93] The favourite stanza
in the later years of Elizabeth was the octave, chiefly in the Italian
form, which was very largely written by Drayton, by Daniel, and many
others, including Edward Fairfax in his very influential translation of
Tasso. Rhyme-royal fell especially out of favour, though Milton used
it in his early days, and Sir Francis Kynaston wrote a long poem in
it as late as 1648. The decasyllabic quatrain, alternately rhymed, was
used by Davies and others. Yet not merely Ben Jonson (_v. inf._) but
Drayton himself expressed weariness of the stanza generally, and this
undoubtedly grew, though it continued to be used. The new favourite was
the decasyllabic couplet.
[Sidenote: The "heroic" couplet.]
It has been said that this couplet, despite its splendid success, and
the abundance of varied model for it in Chaucer, was not much used
(and never used well save perhaps in _The Friars of Berwick_) by his
successors. It acquired, however, without any clearly traceable cause,
a considerable hold on the early drama; and, when it was ejected from
this, it revenged itself by turning the stanza out to a large extent
in non-dramatic verse. Drayton, in the passage referred to, speaks of
the attraction of "the _gemell_," _i.e._ "the _twinned_ line," and
practised it not a little. Jonson, we are told, thought couplets (made
in a fashion the specification of which is unfortunately not clear)
"the bravest sort of verses." He did not, however, write them very
largely; but Drayton did. And while Marlowe set a magnificent example
in _Hero and Leander_, and others employed the measure independently,
the same sort of influence in its favour, which was noticed formerly as
exercised in Chaucer's case by the final couplets of rhyme-royal, was
beyond all question now exercised afresh by those of the fashionable
_ottava_. In fact, the already-mentioned _Tasso_ of Edward Fairfax
(1600) is one of the recognised originals of a particular form--the
stopped or self-ended couplet. This the octave, like the English
sonnet, which doubtless had influence too, especially encourages.
Drayton and others wrote as Chaucer, we saw, had written, almost
indifferently in both kinds, at least so that neither has marked
and dominant character. But Marlowe, in striking contrast to his
blank-verse practice, decidedly preferred, and practised exquisitely,
the opposite or "enjambed" variety.
[Sidenote: Enjambed]
By degrees, however, there grew up in the seventeenth century what
has been perhaps not incorrectly described as a "battle of the
couplets"--certain poets definitely employing one form, others the
other; while in at least one case[94] the preference is distinctly
and combatively avowed. As a sect, clearly marked, the enjambers
or disciples of Marlowe are the older. Their most distinguished
representatives are, in the earlier part or first quarter of the
century, William Browne, George Wither--who in the piece called
_Alresford Pool_ produced one of the most beautiful separate examples
of the kind,--a rather mysterious person named John Chalkhill, to
whom Izaak Walton was godfather and usher; in the second and at the
beginning of the third, the dramatist Shakerley Marmion and William
Chamberlayne. The latter's poem of _Pharonnida_[95] is the longest
example of the style, and in flashes and short passages the most
poetical of all; but it also exhibits the defects of that style most
flagrantly. These defects come from the fact that the poet--allowed to
neglect his rhyme as a warning bell of termination of something, and
to use it as a mere accompaniment--allows his clauses and sentences to
run into a sometimes quite bewildering prolixity, and very frequently
neglects even that modified restriction of the line itself to some
distinct form and outline which both good blank verse and this form
of couplet equally require. The result, assisted by the ugly fancy
of the time for apostrophated elisions, sometimes comes near to the
contemporary degradation of blank verse itself which has been mentioned.
[Sidenote: and stopped.]
There can be no reasonable doubt that these excesses and defects
stimulated attention to the stopped form of the couplet; and as little
that this attention was, though not unmixedly, decidedly beneficial to
English verse. It was becoming, and had soon become, desirable, not
merely that such things as this excessive enjambment in couplet and
as the degeneration of blank verse should be corrected, but that the
valuable and indeed inestimable assertion of the right to trisyllabic
substitution which blank verse had once more brought out, and which
was prompting the use once more of purely or mainly trisyllabic
_measures_, should be met, and for a time at any rate restrained, by
the counter-assertion of the necessity of rhythmical smoothness and
regularity. The language--though there is no reason to believe that the
general pronunciation of Shakespeare's time was so different from ours
as some have thought--was still going through changes of accent and
the like; and, as yet, general notions on prosody were rare, for the
most part very ignorant of the actual history of English poetry, and
as a rule badly expressed. In these circumstances it is not surprising
that the form--even the music--of the stopped and as nearly as possible
normal decasyllabic couplet should appeal to many. The accepted growth
of it is marked traditionally by the names of Fairfax, Sandys, and,
above all, Waller, from whom Dryden (not to be noticed in detail till
the next chapter) derived his pattern. But the clearest notion both of
the principles and of the attraction of the form is to be obtained from
the lines of Sir John Beaumont, quoted and discussed elsewhere.
For the present, however, the stopped couplet--even as such, and in
comparison with its rival--was struggling not so much for mastery as
for recognition, and Ben Jonson's idea of its being (if he really
thought so) "the bravest of all" was nowhere near general acceptance.
In particular, the production of lyric between Spenser's time and the
Restoration--if not even considerably later--was immense in quantity,
almost unique in variety, and never surpassed in poetical merit, though
until late in the period it mostly, except in Shakespeare and a few
others, confined itself to dissyllabic feet.[96]
[Sidenote: Lyric.]
The poetical miscellanies of the later Elizabethan time, and the
lyrical work of Sidney, Drayton, Jonson, Campion, and many others,
brought out the song capacity of English as it had never been brought
out before; and in the later portion of the period the poets specially
known as "Caroline"--that is to say, of the period of Charles the
First, with a smaller but remarkable contingent from the earlier days
of his son--Herrick, Carew, Crashaw, Vaughan, Stanley, King, and almost
dozens of others down to Rochester, Sedley, and Afra Behn--tried almost
infinite varieties of line-length and line-adjustment with delightful
results. And it is specially to be noticed that this lyric never broke
down as couplet and blank verse were doing--that it always retained the
tradition of metrical harmony which Wyatt and Surrey had reintroduced
into English literary poetry, and which Spenser had perfected.
FOOTNOTES:
[80] A phrase of King James (VI. of Scotland and I. of England); _v.
inf._ Bks. III. and IV.
[81] That, reversing the order, Shakespeare borrowed this from them,
is a recent notion, extremely difficult to reconcile with external
evidence, and going in the very teeth of internal.
[82] Not, of course, that this is not sometimes most successful, as in
Tennyson's
And flashing round and round and whirled | _in an arch_,
but that it is dangerous, and if often used would be intolerable.
[83] Published in 1667, and so more than thirty years after _Comus_.
But perhaps begun at least fifteen years earlier.
[84] To give a thoroughly satisfactory discussion of Milton's prosody
would need space quite out of proportion here. The writer has done what
he could, in this direction, in the long chapter devoted to the subject
in his larger _History_. But some examples, illustrations, and parallel
scannings under different systems may be added to the text of this
_Manual_. And first in regard to printing:
(_a_) In the printed _Paradise Lost_ the line
Above _th' A_onian mount, while it pursues
appears with the apostrophe; but below--
Delight thee more, and Sil_oa_'s brook that flowed--
has no attempt to indicate elision by printing.
(_b_)
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer--
if this is to be made strictly dissyllabic, we must pronounce "spir't,"
though not so printed; but, a little lower--
Innu|mera|ble force | of spir|its armed
absolutely requires the full value.
(_c_)
Sing, Hea_v'n_ly Muse, that, on the secret top
favours the idea that Milton, as most Elizabethans certainly did,
thought "Heaven" a monosyllable. But compare line 297--
On Hea|ven's a|zure; and | the tor|rid clime.
(_d_) Note, too, words like "ominous," "popular," "delicate," printed
without attempt to apostrophate, though the middle syllabic makes a
trisyllabic foot.
Again, consider the comparative euphony of the following lines:
(_e_)
Of glo|ry̆ ŏbscūred | ăs whēn | thĕ Sūn | nĕw rīsĕn,
or
Of glor|y̆obscūred, | etc.
(_f_)
The form | attempt|ing. Where|fŏre dŏ Ī | ăssūme,
or
Thĕ̄ fōrm | ăttēmpt|ĭng. Whēre|fŏre d'Ī | ăssūme,
or
The form | attempt| Wherefore | do I | assume,
(_ing_).
with the "-ing" sunk or swallowed somehow "extrametrically."
(_g_)
Thĕ ănĭ|măl spĭrĭts | thăt frōm | pŭ̄re blōod | ărīse,
or
Th'ănĭ|măl spīr'ts | thăt frōm | pŭ̄re | blōod | ărīse.
(_h_)
Bĕcāuse | thŏu hăst hār|kĕned tō | thĕ vōice | ŏf thy̆ wīfe,
or
Because | thou'st har|kened to | th' vōice ō̆f | thy wife.
[85] With possible extension to _eight_, and (for aught I can see on
the system) to _ten_.
[86]
Cōme ŭn|tō thĕse | yēllŏw | sānds,
Ănd thēn | tăke hānds:
Cōurtsĭed | whēn yŏu | hāve ănd | kiss'd
Thĕ wīld | wā̆ves whīst,
Fōot ĭt | fēatly̆ | hēre ănd | thēre;
Ā̆nd, swĕ̄e
[87]
Ūn|dĕr thĕ grēen|wō̆od trēe
Whŏ lōves | tŏ līe | wĭth mē,
Ănd tūne | hĭs mēr|ry̆ nōte
Ŭ̄ntŏ | thĕ swēet | bĭ̄rd's thrōat,
Cŏme hī|thĕr, cŏme hī|thĕr, cŏme hī|ther:
Hēre | shăll hĕ sēe
Nŏ ēn|ĕmȳ
Bŭt wīn|tĕr ānd | rō̆ugh wēather.
("Ūndĕr | thĕ grēen-" and "Hē̆re shā̆ll | hĕ sēe" would scan equally
well in themselves, but line 5, "Come hither," gives the anapæstic hint
and key. "Nō | ĕnĕmȳ" is possible.)
[88]
_Oct., Iamb., {This, this | is he; | softly | awhile;
and Troch._ {Let us | not break in up|on him.
_Dec._ O change | beyond | report, | thought, or | belief!
_Alex._ See how | he lies | at ran|dom, care|lessly | diffused,
_Hexasyl._ With lan|guished head | unpropt,
_Hexasyl. hyperc._ As one | with hope | aban|doned,
_Hexasyl. hyperc._ And by | himself | given o|ver,
_Oct._ In sla|vish hab|it, ill-fit|ted weeds |
_Tetrasyl._ O'er-worn | and soiled.
_Alex._ Or do | my eyes | misre|present? | Can this | be he?
_Oct. cat._ That he|roic, | that re|nowned,
_Dec._ Irre|sisti|ble Sam|son whom, | unarmed,
_Alex._ No strength | of man | or fier|cest wild | beast could |
withstand;
_Alex._ Who tore | the li|on as | the li|on tears | the kid;
_Dec._ Ran on | embat|tled ar|mies clad | in iron,
_Hexasyl._ And, wea|ponless | himself, |
_Alex._ Made arms | ridi|culous, | useless | the for|gery
_Dec._ Of bra|zen shield | and spear, | the ham|mered cuirass,
_Dec._ Chalyb|ean-tem|pered steel | and frock | of mail
_Hexasyl._ Ada|mante|an proof:
Hardly anything here needs remark, except the use made of the old
catalectic octosyllable beloved from _Comus_ days, with its trochaic
cadence, and that of half-Alexandrines or hexasyllables. There is only
one monometer, towards the centre or _waist_ of the scheme ("O'er-worn
and soiled").
[89]
Ōh, hōw | cōmely̆ ĭt | īs, ănd | hōw rĕ|vīvĭng,
Tō thĕ | spīrĭts ŏf | jūst mĕn | lōng ŏp|prēssĕd,
Whēn Gŏd | īntŏ thĕ | hānds ŏf | thēir ŏp|prēssŏr
Pūts ĭn|vīncĭblĕ | mīght.
(Catullian hendecasyllable?)
[90] Milton was eight years old when Shakespeare died, and their
combined lives, 1564-1674, more than cover the whole "major"
Elizabethan period, 1557-1660, except part of its incipient stage,
1557-1580.
[91] As a variation to blank verse.
[92] Some quite boyish things, a beautiful passage of the _Arcades_,
and a few couplets in _Comus_ are the exceptions.
[93] By the two Fletchers, Giles reducing it to an octave _ababbccc_
and Phineas to a septet _ababccc_.
[94] That of Sir John Beaumont (_v. sup._ p. 78 _et inf._ Book III.).
[95] This, like Marmion's _Cupid and Psyche_, Chalkhill's _Thealma
and Clearchus_, and other pieces exemplifying the form, is a
verse-_romance_, a kind for which that form has special, though
dangerous, adaptation.
[96] The continuous anapæst appears, after Tusser, in Elizabethan
poetry chiefly in popular ballad; and it is only about 1645 that
literary poets, like Waller and Cleveland, take it up.