RECAPITULATION OR SUMMARY VIEW OF STAGES OF ENGLISH PROSODY
I. OLD ENGLISH PERIOD
Prosody rhythmical, not metrical; determined exclusively by
alliteration and accent. Combinations of accented and unaccented
syllables perhaps classifiable, but seldom, if ever, reducible to
any combination corresponding to the flow of later Middle and Modern
English verse, though the _principle_ (of syllabic irregularity in
corresponding lines) _survives as the most important basis of that
verse itself_. Rhyme, except in the piece specially entitled "Rhyming
Poem" and other very late examples, practically non-existent; the
instances collected from other places being very few and quite possibly
accidental.
II. BEFORE OR VERY SOON AFTER 1200
_Earliest Middle English Period._
_No_ pure and unmixed alliterative-accentual verse of the old kind, but
a choice between pure syllabic metre of iambic type (_Ormulum_), less
regular but clearly metrical (_i.e._ "_foot_-measured") verse, iambic
or trochaic (_Paternoster_, _Moral Ode_, etc.), and singular mixtures
of the alliterative kind (badly done), and the metrical kind (sometimes
done rather better) (_Layamon_, _Proverbs of Alfred_).
III. MIDDLE AND LATER THIRTEENTH CENTURY
_Second Early Middle English Period._
The metrifying process going on, with stronger emphasising of the
metrical character and almost complete discarding of the alliterative
(_King Horn_, late in the century, has sometimes been claimed as
an exception, but without good reason). Definite forms emerge: the
two great kinds of octosyllabic couplet--more strictly _syllabic_
(_Owl and Nightingale_), or less so (_Genesis and Exodus_); the
fifteener-fourteener or seven-foot iambic (_Robert of Gloucester_);
the _rime couée_ or "Romance-six" (_Proverbs of Hendyng_). _Of pure
alliterative verse there is no trace whatever._
IV. EARLIER FOURTEENTH CENTURY
_Central Period of Middle English._
The metrical development attains complete predominance in the
_Romances_ (chiefly octosyllabic couplet or "Romance-six"), and in
lyrics such as those of the Harleian MS. 2253. In both there is
considerable _equivalence_, or substitution of trisyllabic (and perhaps
also monosyllabic) for dissyllabic feet. The fourteener begins to break
itself down into the ballad measure of eight and six, with or without
full alternate rhyme. Decasyllabic couplet appears (as it had done even
earlier) sporadically. But at an uncertain time--probably about the
second third of the century--alliteration again makes its appearance,
sometimes alone (_William of Palerne_), sometimes in company with some
rhyme-arrangement (_Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_); and the two
methods continue side by side (though with the alliteration always in
the minority and seldom quite pure) for the best part of two hundred
years, till well within the sixteenth century itself.
V. LATER FOURTEENTH CENTURY
_Crowning Period of Middle English._
The tendencies already indicated, and shown after 1350 by Laurence
Minot, the writers in the Vernon MS., and others, culminate in three
remarkable poets--Langland, Gower, and Chaucer. The first, who is
probably the oldest (though the most plausible theory of his work
puts it in stages from the sixth or seventh to the last decade of
the century), eschews rhyme altogether, and (as far as he can, but
not entirely) declines metrical form--preferring a modernised Old
English line, strongly middle-paused, and regularly, but not lavishly,
alliterated. Gower, with a little rhyme-royal, employs elsewhere,
throughout his voluminous English work, octosyllabic couplet, nearer
to the French or strictly syllabic norm than that of any other Middle
English writer, though with some tell-tale approaches to variety.
Chaucer, between the two, represents the true development of English
prosody proper. He practises, from the (disputed) _Romaunt of the
Rose_, to the (certain) _House of Fame_, the octosyllabic couplet;
varies it remarkably and consciously; and gets from it effects
excellent in their way, but never, apparently, quite satisfactory to
himself. He adopts or imitates from the French, besides minor forms,
the great rhyme-royal or _Troilus_ stanza. He has, in his prose,
curious "shadows before" of blank verse. But his greatest metrical
achievement is the taking up--whether wholly from French or with some
consciousness of earlier sporadic attempts in English is disputed,
but certainly in the perhaps unconscious line of those attempts--the
decasyllabic or heroic couplet, which is first the sole vehicle of
his _Legend of Good Women_, and secondly the main vehicle of _The
Canterbury Tales_.
VI. FIFTEENTH AND EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURIES
_The Decadence of Middle English Prosody._
The prosodic accomplishment of Chaucer, while representing all that
Middle English was capable of attaining, represented more than it was
capable of maintaining. His followers in Middle Scots, employing not
the actual vernacular, but a "made" literary language, carried out his
lessons for some time with great success. But those in Southern English
appear to have--except in more or less pure folk-poems--succumbed
partly to influences of change in pronunciation (which are very
imperfectly understood, though the disuse of the final valued _e_
is the certain and central fact), partly to a loss of understanding
(which is still more obscure in its nature and causes) of the
metres themselves. From Lydgate to Hawes, rhyme-royal most of all,
decasyllabic couplet (not so often tried) hardly less, and octosyllabic
to a somewhat minor degree, exhibit the most painful irregularity,
clumsiness, and prosaic effect, there being sometimes no regular
rhythm, and nothing at all but the rhyme to give a poetical character
to the composition. The "doggerel" of Skelton is a pretty obvious
attempt to escape from this. Only ballad, carol, and the like seem to
escape the curse.
VII. MID-SIXTEENTH CENTURY
_The Recovery of Rhythm._
In the second quarter of the sixteenth century attention seems to have
been drawn to the "staggering state" of prosody; by the end of that
quarter, or a very little later, we know from positive evidence that
it was theoretically felt. But much earlier Sir Thomas Wyatt, and, in
his tracks, Henry Howard, Lord Surrey, expressed the fact practically
by their imitations of Italian forms. Both tried the sonnet; Wyatt
attempted, with little success, _terza rima_; and Surrey, with more,
tried blank verse. The regular quantification or accentuation necessary
for the reproduction of these forms evidently gave them (and Wyatt
more particularly and naturally, as the pioneer) a great deal of
trouble; but they managed it--if not universally or perfectly--somehow;
and they kept the practice up in lyric measures less strictly
imitated. They also popularised--if they did not introduce--a new
combination-variation of the old long lines into the so-called
"poulter's measure" or couplet of twelve-fourteen syllables, easily
breaking down into six, six, eight, six. Their example was followed
by many poets between 1550 and 1580, iambic regularity establishing
itself rather at the expense of poetic variety, but with an immense
gain to the ear. A very important, though not in itself very poetical,
development was also made in the regular anapæstics of Tusser; and
the drama, taking up at last Surrey's blank verse, in the meantime
experimented with all sorts of forms, regular and doggerel.
VIII. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
_The Perfecting of Metre and of Poetical Diction._
This invaluable if not always very stimulating period of drill and
discipline (in which Wyatt and Surrey themselves, with Sackville later,
are the chief and almost the only poets who transcend experiment)
passes, a little before 1580, into one of complete poetic and
proportionately complete prosodic accomplishment, with Spenser and
his companions and followers for non-dramatic poetry, with Peele and
Marlowe preluding Shakespeare in dramatic blank verse. The greatest
pioneer, one who not only explores but attains, is Spenser; and he,
after presenting in the _Shepherd's Calendar_ the most remarkable
record of experiment in the history of English poetic form, proceeds to
the perfect structure and exquisite diction of the _Faerie Queene_. He,
however, hardly touches blank verse, and, after the _Calendar_, eschews
the lighter lyric. But both these are taken up by others; and while
lyric attains all but the highest possible stage of that diversity in
harmony which is especially required by it, the possibilities of blank
verse are more than suggested in Shakespeare's predecessors, and are,
in the dramatic range, exhausted by Shakespeare himself. Outside the
drama, however, and blank verse, the abiding fear of doggerel keeps
back the due development of regularised substitution: verse is mostly
iambic. But here also Shakespeare pierces the heart of the mystery, and
the songs in his plays are as prosodically complete as his blank verse
itself. There is much practice in sonnet, and, towards the end of the
century, "riding rhyme" or heroic couplet, which had fallen into some
disuse, is revived, chiefly for satiric or semi-satiric purposes (as
by Spenser in _Mother Hubberd's Tale_, by Hall, Donne, and Marston in
their definite satires, etc., and for "history" by Drayton).
IX. EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
_The further Development of Lyric, Stanza, and Blank Verse. Insurgence
and Division of the Couplet._
Between the latest years of the sixteenth and the earliest of the
seventeenth century there is naturally little difference, but the
total transformation is rather rapid. Blank verse no sooner attains
its absolute perfection in Shakespeare than it begins to show signs of
overripeness, in the great tendency to redundance which even he shares
in his latest plays, and which distinguishes Beaumont and Fletcher.
Stanza does not, after the similar consummateness of Spenser, show
a similar formal decline; but there arises a distaste for it. Only
lyric perseveres in practically full flourishing; and even exhibits a
certain further quintessence of beauty, though some loss of strength.
Meanwhile, the decasyllabic couplet revives in a complicated fashion.
It does not yet make much recovery of drama, but is very largely
practised by Drayton, is declared (at least on Drummond's authority)
to be "the bravest sort of verse" by Jonson, and made, towards the end
of James the First's reign, the subject of a formal critical-poetical
encomium by Sir John Beaumont. But it is a house divided against
itself, and it is not till the "stopped" form (in which the rhymes
sharply punctuate the sense) conquers the "enjambed" (which in _this_
sub-period is the favourite) that it attains complete popular favour.
X. MID-SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
_Milton._
The period, or sub-period, which may be called "mid-seventeenth
century," on one side continues the developments described in the
last section, and on another begins those which will be described
in the next. But it contains almost the whole work of Milton, who
belongs in one sense to both, in another to neither. If he had written
no blank verse, he would still be of the first rank as a practical
prosodist, in virtue of his stanza-forms, such as that in the "Hymn
on the Nativity"; of his remarkably varied octosyllabic couplet in
_L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, _Arcades_, and _Comus_; of the almost
unique strophes, with irregular rhyme, in _Lycidas_; of the _Sonnets_,
adjusted not to the Elizabethan-English, but to the commoner Italian
forms; and of the peculiar choric arrangements of _Samson Agonistes_.
But it is undoubtedly as the introducer of blank verse for general
poetic practice, and as the modulator of that verse in the directions
previously described, that he stands as one of the very greatest
masters of English prosody. For, on the one hand, he rescues "blanks"
from the chaos into which, by the laches of the dramatists, they were
falling; and, on the other, he establishes for ever (though it may
sometimes be mistaken by individuals and periods) the principle of
foot-equivalence and substitution in the individual line, with that of
combination of several lines into a verse-paragraph.
XI. THE LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
_Dryden._
For the moment, however, the work of Milton produces no effect, and
though Dryden, his younger contemporary, uses, with great effect, a
large variety of metres, his main importance, in the general history of
prosody, consists in the establishment of the stopped heroic couplet
as at once the most popular and the most dignified of English metres.
But he does not at once make it into the strictly decasyllabic,
strictly middle-paused kind which dominates the following century.
On the initiation (partly at least) of Cowley, he varies it with the
Alexandrine, which he sometimes includes in a triplet, while the same
extension to three similarly rhymed lines, in decasyllable only, is
still more frequent. If he does not exactly introduce, he popularises
and for a time maintains, the same couplet in drama, but uses it most
successfully in satiric and didactic verse, of extraordinary weight and
vigour, while entirely destitute of monotony. He himself and his minor
but more lyrical contemporaries, Rochester, Sedley, Afra Behn, etc.,
continue the older Caroline tradition of song in varied measures, but
it dies out. On the other hand, his practice (suggested, doubtless, by
Davenant's _Gondibert_) of the decasyllabic quatrain, and the majestic
if not fully Pindaric strophes of his _Odes_, supply models which serve
to vary the unbroken prevalence of the couplet, and are followed by
Gray and others, during the succeeding century, with exceptionally fine
results.
XII. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The summary of the history of eighteenth-century prosody has been
foreshadowed in the above lines. Addison, Garth, and others follow
Dryden; and Pope further "corrects" him in a couplet which becomes
polished to the extreme, but, when handled without almost supreme
genius, is distinctly monotonous. And this couplet, with almost
complete and definite acceptance by theorists and little overt protest
on the part of practitioners, assumes the position of premier metre
in English for long poems, continuing to hold it throughout the
hundred years. Lyric, too, confines itself to relatively few forms,
chiefly iambic--the "common" and "long" measure, the Romance-six, the
decasyllabic quatrain, the regular or irregular Pindaric ode. There
are, however, certain privileged exceptions to the uniformity. Two
poets not in their first youth at the beginning of the century--Prior
and Swift--secure a position for the light octosyllable and for
anapæstic measures; Gray and Collins raise the ode; Thomson--preceded
by one or two minor poets, and followed by a considerable number, some
of whom are not so minor--takes up "the manner of Milton," that is
to say, blank verse. Even in the first half of the century Shenstone
timidly pleads for trisyllabic substitution, while in the second half
Chatterton and Blake boldly practise it; and that study of old (and
especially ballad) English verse, of which Percy's _Reliques_ is the
central example, slowly but surely leads the way to a restoration of
its principles.
XIII. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY AND THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL
In no department of poetic practice does the great Romantic revival,
after forerunnings in Chatterton and Blake, show itself, in the
latest years of the eighteenth century, and the earliest of the
nineteenth, more perceptibly than in that of prosody. Only one of
its masters--Wordsworth--slights this revival in theory, while he is
not of the first mark in practice. But Coleridge, in _The Ancient
Mariner_ and _Christabel_, restores and perfects equivalence on a
doubtful principle, but with consummate practical effect. Southey, less
effective practically, is both sounder and more original in theory;
Scott takes up Coleridge's example in all his verse-romances, and
completely vindicates the freedom of lyric; Byron, affecting admiration
of the couplet, achieves his own best work in Coleridge-Scott
octosyllables, in Spenserians, in octaves, and in lyric; Shelley pushes
the various and unfettered lyrical movement to its almost inconceivable
farthest; and Keats revives (after Leigh Hunt) the enjambed couplet
in decasyllable, recovers an octosyllabic form unknown since Gower
and only partially utilised by him, writes exquisite Spenserians and
beautiful octaves, comes perhaps nearest Milton in blank verse and
nearest Dryden in the other kind of couplet, and achieves forms of ode,
classical and Romantic, of astonishing flexibility and charm. By and in
these, and in many minors from Moore downwards, the freedom of prosody,
and the great instrument of that freedom, the equivalenced foot, are
championed and practised with almost all the variety possible.
XIV. THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY
The process of varying and extending the forms of prosody, by the
special instrument above noticed and others, and under the direction of
a general effort to give those forms a wider visual and audible appeal
to the mind's senses, continues in the two later groups or stages--of
which the chief representatives are, in the first case, Tennyson and
Browning; in the second, Mr. Swinburne, the Rossettis, and William
Morris--with constant recovery or fresh invention of prosodic effect.
* * * * *
It is on the continuity of this history that the student should keep
his eye. Looked at partially, it may seem to lack this continuity;
looked at as a whole, it will be seen to exhibit exactly the alternate
or successive predominance of different tendencies and developments in
which all healthy life-history consists. No partial and inconsecutive
explanations as to widely differing pronunciation of vowels at
different times, none of "quantity" having the preference at one time
and "accent" at another, or of certain feet inclining to these things
respectively, are necessary, or should be entertained. The birth,
progress, and perfecting of the foot under the guidance of equivalent
substitution, now vividly present, now apparently in abeyance, but
always potentially existing--this is "the mystery of this wonderful
history," the open secret of English prosodic life.
BOOK III
HISTORICAL SURVEY OF VIEWS ON PROSODY
CHAPTER I
BEFORE 1700
[Sidenote: Dearth of early prosodic studies.]
In hardly any language are studious investigations into the form
of verse likely to be early, and in a language with such a history
as English they could not possibly be so. We have indeed, from the
early fourteenth century, some remarks of Robert of Brunne on kinds
of verse--"cowee" (Romance-six), "baston,"[130] "enterlace" (pretty
obvious), etc., but with no explanation or discussion; and Chaucer
himself (who, in this respect as in others, is slavishly followed by
Lydgate[131]) makes apologies for roughness and inexperience.[132] In
Gower (_Conf. Am._ iv. 2414) there is a reference, but after Chaucer
and not yet quite satisfactorily explained, to the difference between
"rhyme" and "cadence," while in the Scottish chronicler Wyntoun
there is another reference[133] to "cadence." Again, in Chaucer we
have the Parson's famous disclaimer of indulgence in "rum ram ruf,"
because the speaker is "a Southern man." But not one of these things
makes the slightest pretence to be even a prosodic discussion, let
alone a prosodic treatise; and it is not till towards the end of the
third quarter of the sixteenth century--when a whole generation had
already followed Wyatt in endeavouring to effect, in practice, the
reform of the prosodic breakdown from Lydgate to Hawes, if not even to
Barclay--that the first English prosodic treatise appears in the shape
of Gascoigne's _Notes of Instruction_ (1572-75). They had been a little
anticipated in time by remarks of Ascham's, and perhaps of others, on
a new fashion of classical "versing," on which more presently; but
this, though essentially prosodic in character, had not yet formed
the subject of a regular treatise, and its exponents implicitly or
expressly declined all meddling with "beggarly rhyme," _i.e._ with the
form of English poetry proper.
[Sidenote: Gascoigne.]
Gascoigne's little book[134] is very short, very practical, very
sensible, and--except in one unlucky remark, which (or rather the
misunderstanding of it) has done harm to the present day--in the
main, perfectly sound. He dwells on the importance of accent and of
the observation of it; and he was quite right, for even Wyatt had
been very loose in this respect, and the desire to get out of the
doggerel of the fifteenth century[135] had led novices in precision
to strain the accent, in order that they might keep the quantity. But
he insists also--and with more than a century of awful examples to
justify him if he had cared to use them--on "keeping metre"--on not
wandering from lines of one length or character to those of another
as the rhyme-royalists of the preceding century constantly do. He
gives rules for the pause, leaving rhyme-royal itself free in that
respect. He mentions especially, besides rhyme-royal, "riding rhyme"
(Chaucerian couplet), "poulter's measure" (the alternate Alexandrine
and fourteener), and octosyllables. He deprecates poetic commonplaces
("cherry lips" and the like), and gives some positive rules for
pronunciation ("Heav'n" is to be always monosyllabic).
[Sidenote: His remark on feet.]
The excepted unlucky point is his remark that "commonly nowadays in
English rhymes we use no other than a foot of two syllables, whereof
the first is depressed and made short, and the second elevated or made
long." He says that "we have used in times past other kinds of metres,"
giving as example the anapæstic line--
No wight | in this world | that wealth | can attain;[136]
laments the restriction to iambs, and shows a remarkable appreciation
of Chaucer's "liberty that the Latinists do use," _i.e._ equivalent
substitution, though he may not have quite correctly understood this.
The desire for order and regularity in all this is very noticeable,
and perfectly intelligible to any one who has appreciated (see last
Book) the hopeless breakdown, due to the neglect of these qualities,
in English prosody between 1400 and 1530. Gascoigne's statement about
the iamb is, moreover, true of the majority of his own contemporaries,
though it overlooks such a writer as Tusser. But it would be a grievous
mistake (and unfortunately it has often been committed) to accept this
not quite accurate declaration of ephemeral fact--accompanied as it is,
more especially, by another expression of regret for that fact--as a
rule and principle governing Elizabethan and English poetry.
Gascoigne's little treatise was followed at no great intervals, but
after his own death, by more elaborate dealings with the subject--some
of them exclusively or mainly devoted to the new craze for classical
metres, others treating the subject at large and merely referring to
the "versing" attempts. The order of these compositions, with a very
brief sketch of their contents, may now be given.
[Sidenote: Spenser and Harvey.]
In the winter of 1579-80, the date of the appearance of the _Shepherd's
Calendar_, Spenser and his pragmatical friend Gabriel Harvey exchanged
certain letters (which we have) dealing with the "versing" attempt that
Spenser himself makes. An experiment in quantified trimeter refers
to "rules" on the subject made by a Cambridge man named Drant, but
does not (unfortunately) give them, and asks for Harvey's own. Harvey
blows rather hot and cold on the matter, approving the system, but
criticising the details.
[Sidenote: Stanyhurst.]
Next, in 1582, came the _Preface_ to Richard Stanyhurst's translation
of the _Aeneid_, a book famous for the strange language in which it
is written, but, as far as its Preface is concerned, a very sober and
scientific attempt to do an impossible thing. Stanyhurst endeavours
to arrange a set of rules for determining the quantity of every
syllable in English, _not_ necessarily according to its Latin or other
derivation, but on principles germane to the language itself. He does
not and cannot succeed; but his attempt is interesting, and rather less
contrary to facts than some recent attempts of the same kind.
[Sidenote: Webbe.]
He was followed, in 1586, by William Webbe, whose _Discourse of English
Poetry_ is notable for the enthusiasm displayed by the author towards
Spenser (the _Shepherd's Calendar_ had appeared some years previously);
for his curiously combined enthusiasm as regards the classical metres
which Spenser had tried and dropped; for the first _published_ sketch
of the history of English poetry (erroneous, but interesting); and for
a certain number of desultory remarks on prosodic subjects, mostly
brought round to the classical fancy, though showing the interest which
these questions were exciting. But between Stanyhurst and Webbe one
book of the kind had appeared, and another had been perhaps composed,
though not printed, in the same year--1584.
[Sidenote: King James VI.]
The first was King James the Sixth of Scotland's _Rewlis and Cautelis_
for the making of verse in his native dialect. Obligation has been
traced in it to Gascoigne and to the great French poet Ronsard. It
is very clear and precise, but of no wide interest, being simply
an analysis of recent actual Scots verse with some peculiarities of
terminology. It is our first methodical book of prosody, and some of
its titles, such as "cuttit and broken" verse for the metres of very
irregular line-length which were growing so fashionable, and which were
to excite the displeasure of the eighteenth century, are distinctly
useful. Not so perhaps another--"tumbling verse"--which is of uncertain
application to alliterative-anapæstic or to mere doggerel rhythm--which
has complicated the question of "cadence" (_v. sup._), (of this it has
been, perhaps correctly, thought to have been intended as an English
translation), and which was adopted rather arbitrarily by Guest (_v.
inf._).
[Sidenote: Puttenham (?)]
The other book, written in or before 1584, though not published
till 1589, was the most elaborate treatment of English prosody yet
attempted, and continued to be so until Mitford's treatise (_v. inf._)
nearly two hundred years later. The _Art of English Poesy_, as it not
too arrogantly called itself, has no certain author, but has been
by turns attributed to two brothers, George and Richard Puttenham.
It is, in the original, a treatise of some 257 well-filled pages.
About half of these is indeed occupied by an immense list of the
fancifully devised "Figures of Speech" which the Greek rhetoricians
had excogitated, and which apply (in so far as they have any real
application at all) not more to poetry than to prose. But the First
Book contains an elaborate discussion or defence of poetry generally,
ending with a sketch of English poets, probably, if not certainly,
written earlier than Webbe's. And the Second is a very full and formal
handling of the formal part of poetry, the discussion being carried
so far as to include those artificial figures in squares, lozenges,
altars, wings, etc., which more than one age fancied, but which, in
English, hardly survived the satire of Addison. Puttenham, however,
takes great pains to point out the exact form of different regular
stanzas; arranges line-lengths; dwells on rhyme, pause, accent, and
other matters of importance; considers the classical "versing" (though
he does not like it); and, in short, treats the whole subject, as
far as his lights and opportunities permit, in a really business-like
manner. It was somewhat unfortunate that he came a little too soon,
neither the _Faerie Queene_ nor probably any of the greatest plays of
the "University Wits" having appeared at the time he wrote--nothing, in
short, of the best time and kind but the _Shepherd's Calendar_.
[Sidenote: Campion and Daniel.]
The later years of the sixteenth century were less fruitful in regular
prosodic discussion, though the old wrangle about "versing"[137]
continued at intervals between Harvey and Nash, and some scattered
observations on prosody exist, by Drayton and others. But in the
earliest years of the seventeenth the first-named dispute, after
hanging about for more than half a century since Ascham's day, was laid
to rest, for the time and (except in scattered touches) for nearly
two centuries afterwards, by the poet Thomas Campion's tractate on
certain new forms of verse (not hexameters) devised by himself, and
the reply of another poet, Samuel Daniel, in his _Defence of Rhyme_.
Campion, an exquisite master of natural rhymed verse, did not wholly
fail with his artificial creations of "English elegiacs," "English
anacreontics," etc.--metres based mainly on iambs and trochees, though
with some trisyllabic feet grudgingly allowed. He not merely does not
support the dactylic hexameter, but pronounces against it; and his
main objection seems to lie against rhyme. He also, like Stanyhurst,
attempts a scheme of English quantity, though he admits the abundance
of "common" syllables with us. Daniel in his answer confined himself to
generalities, but with the most triumphant effect--basing his defence
of rhyme on "Custom and Nature"; alleging the omnipotence of delight
which is unquestionably given by and received from rhyme; and asking
why, when in polity, religion, etc., we notoriously and profoundly
differ from the Greeks and Latins, we are to imitate them in verse? He
points out, again with absolute truth, that Campion's own versification
is mostly or wholly nothing but old forms stripped of rhyme, and urges
the hopelessness of adjusting, even on the reformer's own system,
English quantity to classical. With this the thing became, and was long
wisely allowed to be, _res judicata_.
[Sidenote: Ben Jonson, Drayton, Beaumont.]
In a sense this little book, or rather pamphlet, may be said to
conclude the first batch or period of prosodic study in English. For
the whole of the seventeenth century after it, though one of the
most important practically in the entire history, sees very little
theoretical discussion. Ben Jonson had, we are told, written a treatise
against both Campion and Daniel, especially the last, praising couplets
"to be the bravest sort of verses, especially when they are broken
like hexameters," and against "cross-rhymes and stanzas." But we have
not his own authority for this, which is only reported by Drummond,
and the exact interpretation to be put upon "broken like hexameters"
is absolutely uncertain. The surfeit of stanza[138] is, however, an
obvious fact, and is borne witness to by Drayton, in the remarks above
referred to, and by others--things culminating in the verse precepts
of Sir John Beaumont (_v. sup._) recommending the stopped distich in
a form which is almost eighteenth century. Had Jonson finished his
_English Grammar_ and given the prosodic section which he promised, we
should know more.
[Sidenote: Joshua Poole and "J. D."]
As it is, there is nothing of importance before the Restoration except
the _English Parnassus_ of Joshua Poole, published posthumously,
with a remarkable Preface signed "J. D.," which in point of time
might be--but which there is not the slightest reason except date
and initials to suppose to be--Dryden's. This Introduction is partly
historical and not ignorant, while the author shows good sense and
taste by objecting to "wrenched" rhymes ("náture" and "endùre"), to
the habit of "apostrophation" or cutting out syllables supposed to
be extra-metrical, and substituting apostrophes,[139] which was
infesting the printing of the day, and was, to the great corroboration
of prosodic heresies, not got rid of for a century and a half. He
dislikes, too, the heavily overlapped verses then prevalent.
[Sidenote: Milton.]
Milton, inferior to no English poet in his practical importance as a
master of prosody, and perhaps superior to all except Shakespeare, has
nothing about it in the preceptist way, except his rather petulant
outbreak against rhyme[140] in the advertisement to _Paradise Lost_ (an
outbreak largely neutralised by his own practice, not only earlier,
but later), and the reference to "committing short and long" in Sonnet
XIII.[141]
[Sidenote: Dryden.]
And Dryden almost repeats the tantalising conditions of Jonson's
attitude to the subject. He tells us that he actually had in
preparation a treatise on it; but nothing more has ever been heard of
this, and, large as is the amount of his work in literary criticism,
his references to this part of it are few and are mostly vague. He
does indeed tell us that no vowel can be cut off before another when
we cannot sink the pronunciation of it, and if this observation be
extended to elision generally it is important.
[Sidenote: Woodford.]
But, on the whole, the most significant passages on prosody of the
later seventeenth century are the work of a more obscure writer, Samuel
Woodford, in his Prefaces to Paraphrases of the _Psalms_ (1667) and
the _Canticles_ (1678). Here criticising, as no one else did, Milton
from the prosodic point of view soon after date, he recognises and
defends trisyllabic feet, but is disinclined to blank verse, regarding
(and actually arranging) it as rhythmed prose. The references of Lord
Roscommon and one or two others in verse, as well as of critics of
shadowy notoriety like Rymer and Dennis in prose, are mostly trivial.
[Sidenote: Comparative barrenness of the whole.]
In this first division of English prosodists there is observable
a want of thoroughness--at first sight perhaps strange, but
easily explicable--which makes most of their work little more
than a curiosity. The only book which attempts to grapple
somewhat methodically with the whole subject--that attributed to
Puttenham--labours under two fatal disadvantages. The first is that
the writer has a most imperfect knowledge, or rather an almost unmixed
ignorance, of what has come before him; and the second is that he
naturally cannot know what will come after him, while what actually did
come immediately after him happens to be one of the greatest bodies,
in bulk and merit and variety, of English poetry. The two most gifted
persons who think of treating it, Jonson and Dryden, do not actually
do so; and it may be more than doubted whether, had they done so,
ignorance of the past would not still have stood in their way. It is
true that Dryden's _obiter dictum_, that you must not elide what you
must pronounce, is a sort of ark of salvation which carries all the
elements of a sound prosody in it. But it is not certain that the
writer quite saw its full bearing, and that bearing was certainly not
seen by others. On the other hand, Gascoigne's innocent but unlucky
remark about the single two-syllabled foot expresses an opinion which,
though wholly erroneous, undoubtedly did prevail very widely throughout
the whole period. The evidence of its falsity was indeed constantly
accumulating in blank verse during the first half of the seventeenth
century, in definite trisyllabic metres during the second. But this
evidence was ignored or disobligingly received; and when, at the very
beginning of the eighteenth, Bysshe once more attempted formulation
of prosodic orthodoxy, he arranged a code which, as long as it was
observed, half maimed the sinews and half throttled the song of English
poetry.
FOOTNOTES:
[130] Perhaps general for a stanza. Certainly used in one case for a
six-lined one of four longer lines and two shorter.
[131] In his _Troy Book_ he says that, "as tho" [at that time] he "set
aside truth of metre," "had no guide in that art," and "took no heed of
short and long."
[132] _House of Fame_, Book III., where he disclaims intention to
"shew art poetical," speaks of his "rhyme" as "light and _lewed_"
[unlearned], admits that "some verses" may "fail in a syllable," and
precedes (possibly patterning) Gower in distinguishing "rhyme" and
"cadence."
[133] He says that the substitution of "Procurator" for "Emperor" "had
mair grievèd the _cadence_ Than had relievèd the sentence [meaning]."
[134] For editions, etc., of this and other books named and discussed
in this survey, see Bibliography.
[135] The passage referred to above (p. 166) as illustrating this, in
the _Mirror for Magistrates_ (ed. Haslewood, ii. 394, and see _Hist.
Pros._ ii. 188), is anterior to Gascoigne.
[136] Observe that this _might_ be scanned
No wight | in this | world that | wealth can | attain.
But then it would not be "another kind of metre." The remark is not
without bearing on the suggested possibility of Spenser's "February"
being mistaken heroic.
[137] At this time the technical phrase for classical-quantitative
versification without rhyme.
[138] Which, let it be remembered, had dominated English poetry, in
rhyme-royal, for nearly two centuries from Chaucer to Sackville, and
then in the Spenserian, the octave, and others, for three-quarters of
a century more. These surfeits always recur, though the octosyllabic
couplet has suffered least from them.
[139] "Wat'ry," "prosp'rous," and even "vi'let."
[140] As "the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter
and lame metre," "a barbarous and modern bondage," contrasting with
"apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn
out from one verse to another."
[141] This phrase, which has been treated as enigmatic, is quite clear
in the context, addressed to Lawes the musician as one
Whose tuneful and well-measured song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent, not to scan
With Midas' ears, committing short and long.
That is to say, Lawes was not guilty, as most composers notoriously
are, of laying musical stress on a syllable that could not prosodically
bear it.
CHAPTER II
FROM BYSSHE TO GUEST
[Sidenote: Bysshe's _Art of Poetry_.]
In 1702, just after the beginning of the new century, there appeared
a book which, though it received little directly critical notice,
and was spoken of with disapproval by some who did notice it, was
repeatedly reprinted, and which expressed, beyond all reasonable doubt,
ideas prevalent largely for a century or more before it, and almost
universally for a century or more after it. This was the _Art of
Poetry_ of Edward Bysshe. The bulk of it is composed of dictionaries of
rhyme, etc. But a brief Introduction puts with equal conciseness and
clearness the following views on English prosody.
"The structure of our verses, whether blank or in rhyme, consists in
a certain number of syllables; not in feet composed of long and short
syllables." He works this out carefully--explaining that verses of
double rhyme will always want one more syllable than verses of single;
decasyllables becoming hendecasyllables, verses of eight syllables
turning to nine, verses of seven to eight. "This must also be observed
in blank verse." Then of the several sorts of verses. Our poetry, he
thinks, admits, for the most part, of but three verses--those of ten,
eight, or seven syllables. Those of four, six, nine, eleven, twelve,
and fourteen are generally employed in masques and operas and in the
stanzas of lyric and Pindaric odes. We have few entire poems composed
in them; though twelve and fourteen may be inserted in other measures
and even "carry a peculiar grace with them." In decasyllabic verse
two things are to be considered--the seat of the accent and the pause.
The pause ought to be at the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable. The
strongest accent must be on the second, fourth, and sixth. But he
says nothing about accent in the last four places; indeed he is less
explicit about the second half of the line throughout. And he says less
about accent generally than about pause, though he is sure that "wrong
placing" of it is as great a fault in English as a false quantity was
in the classical languages. To make a good decasyllable you must be
careful that the accent is neither on the third nor on the fifth--a
curious crab-like way of approaching the subject, but bringing out in
strong relief the main principle of all this legislation, "Thou shalt
not." The verse of _seven_ syllables, however, is most beautiful when
the strongest accent _is_ on the third.
More curious still is his way of approaching trisyllabic metres. As
such, he will not so much as speak of them. "Verses of nine and eleven
syllables," it seems, "are of two sorts." "Those accented on the last
save one" are merely the redundant eights and tens already spoken of.
"The other [class] is those that are accented on the last syllable,
which are employed only in compositions for music, and in the lowest
sort of burlesque poetry, the disagreeableness of their measure
having wholly excluded them from grave and serious subjects." These
are neither more nor less than anapæstic three- and four-foot verses;
though for some extraordinary reason Bysshe does not even mention
the full twelve-syllable form under any head whatever. I suppose the
"lowness and disagreeableness" of the thing was too much for him, and
as he had disallowed feet he had, at any rate, some logical excuse in
making nothing of them. He admits triplets in heroic, and repeats his
admission of Alexandrines and fourteeners. "The verses of four or six
syllables have nothing worth observing," though he condescends to give
some from Dryden.
Under the head of "Rules conducing to the beauty of our
versification," and with the exordium, "Our poetry being very much
polished and refined since the days of Chaucer, Spenser, and other
ancient poets," we find that you must avoid hiatus; _always_ cut off
the _e_ of "the" before a vowel; never allow such collocations as
"th_y_ _i_ambics" or "int_o_ _a_ book"; never value such syllables as
"amaz_è_d" and "lov_è_d," but always contract them; avoid alliteration;
never split adjective from substantive, or preposition from verb, at
the end of a line. "Beauteous" is but two syllables, "victorious" but
three. You must not make "riot" one syllable as Milton does.[142] You
_may_ contract "vi'let" and "di'mond," and if you do, should write them
so. "Temp'rance," "diff'rent," etc., are all right; and you may use
"fab'lous" and "mar'ner." But Bysshe acknowledges that "this is not so
frequent." And he rejects or doubts some of the more violent and most
hideous apostrophations, such as, "b'" for "by," but has no doubt about
"t'amaze," "I'm," "they've," and most others. Rhyme is not very fully
dealt with, but for the most part correctly enough--so far as Bysshe's
principles go. Stanzas of "intermixed rhyme" (like rhyme-royal, the
octave, and the Spenserian) "are now wholly laid aside," for long poems
at least. Shakespeare invented blank verse to escape "the tiresome
constraint of rhyme." Acrostics and anagrams "deserve not to be
mentioned."
[Sidenote: Its importance.]
If any one has read this account carefully he will perceive at
once what Bysshe's ideals and standards are. They put the strict
decasyllabic couplet, with no substitution, no overrunning of lines,
a fixed middle pause, and as nearly as possible an unvaried iambic
cadence, into the principal place--if not quite the sole place of
honour--in English poetry. They frown upon stanzas, upon varied metres
of any kind, and even upon unvaried anapæestic or "triple" measures.
Strict syllabic scansion, with a consideration of accent, is the only
process allowed; and even Dryden, just dead, and still regarded as the
greatest of English poets, is directly though gently reproached for
too great variety and laxity, as well as indirectly blamed for using
"low" and "disagreeable" forms. The author seems to have been a very
obscure person, of whom little or nothing is known; but any one who
really knows English poetry will see that he practically expresses
the mind that dominated it during almost the whole of the eighteenth
century.
[Sidenote: Minor prosodists of the mid-eighteenth century.]
Either from Bysshe's starting the question; or from the same general
influence which made him start it; or from the supposed tendency, not
to be too hastily accepted, of a lull in creative poetry to be followed
by an access of criticism--there is, from this time onward, no lack
of prosodic work. John Brightland, in an _English Grammar_ (1711),
opposed Bysshe on the subject of accent; and he was also spoken of
disparagingly by Charles Gildon, who produced two books, _The Complete
Art of Poetry_ (1718) and the _Laws of Poetry_ (1721). Gildon was
a pert and rather superficial writer who deservedly came under the
lash of Pope; and, though neither quite ignorant nor quite stupid,
he initiated a course of error which has never yet been stopped, by
confusing prosody with music and arranging it by musical signs. Between
Bysshe and his two critics Dr. Watts had, in the preface to his _Horae
Lyricae,_ given some prosodic remarks indicating discontent with the
monotony of the couplet, an appreciation (not unmixed with criticism)
of Milton, and other good things. But, before long, the question
whether Accent or Quantity governs English verse--often complicated
with the attempt to interpret this latter by musical notation--absorbed
an altogether disproportionate amount of attention. The works of
Pemberton (1738), Mainwaring, Foster, Harris, Lord Kames, Webb, and
Say (1744) must be consulted by exhaustive students of the subject,
and will be found duly commented upon in the larger _History_ by the
present writer. But they hardly need detailed notice here, any more
than the later lucubrations of Lord Monboddo, Tucker, Nares, Fogg,
and others. Their general tendency--which was indeed, as has been
said, the general tendency of the century, correctly harbingered by
Bysshe--was to concentrate attention on the heroic line, and indeed to
regard it as strictly iambic, trisyllabic feet being wholly rejected,
and even trochaic substitution either rejected likewise, as by
Pemberton, or regarded as a more or less questionable licence. But the
subject was also handled by persons of more literary importance, and in
some cases, though not in all, of more insight and more knowledge.
[Sidenote: Dr. Johnson.]
The most remarkable exponent of the general prosodic ideas of the
century is undoubtedly Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, though he wrote no
special prosodic treatise, dealt with the subject in his _Dictionary_,
in the _Rambler_ (especially in connection with Milton), and in his
_Lives of the Poets_. Except that Johnson does admit feet--or at least
their names--his doctrine in the _Dictionary_ hardly differs from
Bysshe's as to the syllabic norm of lines, the strict regularity of
accent constituting "harmony," and the duty of compounding superfluous
syllables by elision, synalœpha, etc. He applies these doctrines in the
_Lives_, and still more in his papers on Milton, Spenser, etc., in the
_Rambler_. The spondees in Milton's lines--
Bōth stōod,
Bōth tūrned,
and the trochees in his
Uncropped fālls tŏ the ground,
and in Cowley's
And the soft wings of peace cōvĕr him round,
are condemned as "inharmonious." He objects to Milton's
"elisions"--that is to say, the devices necessary on his own system
to avoid trisyllabic feet--and so to these feet themselves. He
thinks the Spenserian stanza, _Lycidas_, and the end of _Comus_ bad,
because the lines and rhymes are not regularly arranged. In short,
he is an unhesitating--and almost the greatest--believer in the
sheer, alternately accented, middle-paused, syllabically limited
decasyllable; though, with perhaps inevitable inconsistency, he does
admit that, without variation of accent, the series of sounds would
be not only very difficult but "tiresome and disgusting," while
maintaining at the same time stoutly that this variation "always
injures the harmony of the line considered by itself."
[Sidenote: Shenstone.]
The inconveniences of this rigid system were not, however, entirely
unnoticed. At an uncertain time, but probably between 1740 and his
death, the poet William Shenstone urged, in a posthumously published
Essay, the beauty of what he called "virtual dactyls"--that is to say,
words like "wat_e_ry" and "tott_e_ring,"--distinctly arguing that
"it seems absurd to print them otherwise than at full length"--the
"otherwise" being the established practice, based upon definite theory,
of the century.
[Sidenote: Sheridan.]
Johnson's friend the elocutionist Sheridan, in his _Art of Reading_
(1775), calls it absurd (as it certainly is) to regard "echoing"
as metrically "ech'ing." And, later, the poet Cowper, though using
ambiguous and irresolute terminology on the subject, admits the "divine
harmony" of Milton's "elisions"--by which, he explains in the most
self-contradictory way, "the line is _lengthened_."
[Sidenote: John Mason.]
While much earlier, at the very middle of the century, John Mason, a
little-known dissenting minister, who was, like Sheridan, a teacher of
elocution, quoting and scanning the lines--
And many an amorous, many a humorous lay,
Which many a bard had chanted many a day,
observes that this, "though it increases the number of syllables,
sweetens the flow of the verse," "gives a sweetness that is not
ordinarily found in the common iambic verse." It would be impossible
to state more correctly or more definitely the case for the equivalent
substitutional trisyllabic foot in English. But, as we shall see, it
was to be nearly two generations before considerable poets boldly
adopted (even then not always distinctly championing) the idea, and
an entire century, if not more, before the principle was thoroughly
accepted and understood.
[Sidenote: Mitford.]
Two deliberate prosodists, in two books published within a twelvemonth
of each other, are memorable as (if not exactly starting) formulating,
in a more elaborate way than had ever been done before, the one a
mischievous and false, the other the only true method of dealing
with prosody. Joshua Steele, in his _Prosodia Rationalis_ (1775), is
not always wrong; and William Mitford is not by any means invariably
right--in fact, he partly shares Steele's error. But his _Harmony
of English Verse_ (1774) is even then to a great extent, and in
its second edition, thirty years later, much more, occupied with a
careful historical inquiry as to the actual successive forms of his
subject from the earliest period. At first he had not even Tyrwhitt's
invaluable _Chaucer_--which appeared in the year after Steele's
book--to guide him: later he availed himself of the great accessions
to the study of Middle and Elizabethan English which the intervening
generation had seen. And so, though he believed too much in accent, and
relied too much on the dangerous assistance of music, he frequently
came right. He has no doubt (as it is astonishing that an historical
student should have any doubt) about trisyllabic feet; he likes what
he calls "aberration of accent," _i.e._ trochaic substitution; and
he shows the possession of a fineness and cultivation of ear not as
yet noticeable in any English prosodist, by observing the presence
of anapæstic rhythm in the revived alliterative verse of Langland.
Except the inadequate and perfunctory, as well as of necessity merely
inchoate, sketches of Webbe and Puttenham, this was the first attempt
really to take English poetry into consideration when studying English
prosody; and it had its reward.
[Sidenote: Joshua Steele.]
On the other hand, Steele, who has been followed by many other
prosodists of the same school, entirely neglected the historical
contents of his subject, approaching it absolutely _a priori_, deciding
that it is essentially a matter of music, and basing his scansions on
purely musical principles. This led him to begin with an anacrusis in
every case, and so to invert the whole rhythm of the line. He has been
praised for his views on "time" in the abstract, and may deserve the
praise; while he was certainly right in regarding pause as an important
metrical constituent. But whatever merit there may be in his principles
from an abstract point of view, his concrete practice is simply
atrocious, and proves him to have had absolutely no ear for English
verse whatever. He makes _six_ feet or "cadences with proper rests," at
least, and sometimes more, in every heroic line, so that he would scan
one famous line thus--
O | happiness, | our | being's | end and | aim,
and he arranges the opening lines of _Paradise Lost_ for scansion thus--
Of man's | first diso|bedience | and the | fruit of that for- |
bidden | tree | whose | mortal | taste brought | death | into the |
world | and | all our | woe, | Sing, | Heavenly | Muse.
It must be perfectly evident to any one who will read these examples,
even to himself, but still more aloud, not merely that they entirely
destroy the actual cadence and rhythm of the actual verses, but
that they provide a new doggerel which is absolutely inharmonious,
unrhythmical, and contrary to every principle and quality of English
poetry. It would doubtless be possible to accommodate them with a tune;
in fact, any one who has ever looked at a "set" song will see how they
correspond to it. But then any one who has ever looked at a set song
must, in a majority of cases, have been convinced at once that musical
arrangement has nothing to do with prosodic.
[Sidenote: Historical and Romantic prosody.]
It was inevitable that the "Romantic" movement--one of the principal
causes and features of which was a demand for variety, while another
was its disposition to return to older modes--should be largely
concerned with prosody; but, with some notable exceptions, this
concernment did not take the form of actual prosodic deliverances or
discussions.
[Sidenote: Gray]
Gray, one of the chief precursors of the movement, had projected a
regular history of English poetry, and has left invaluable notes under
the general head of _Metrum_--notes in which he goes back, deliberately
and directly, to Middle English, discovers therein the origin and
nature of the metre of Spenser's _February_, etc., and has very good
remarks about others. But it was not till the stir of the revolutionary
period that much more was done, and even then more was done than said.
[Sidenote: Taylor and Sayers.]
The German explorations of William Taylor of Norwich induced English
writers to follow the German attempt at accentual hexameters; and
another of the Norwich group, Frank Sayers, not merely wrote, but
expounded and defended in prose, rhymeless metres of a choric
character; both being--in part, if not mainly--revolts from the
mechanical heroic couplet.
[Sidenote: Southey. His importance.]
Before the end of the century, long before Coleridge published the
explanatory note on _Christabel_ metre, and not improbably before he
had even thought of that note, Southey had not only used trisyllabic
equivalence in his _Ballads_, but had formally and independently
defended it as such in a letter to his friend Wynn.[143]
[Sidenote: Wordsworth.]
Wordsworth says very little about metrical detail in his famous
Preface to the second edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_ and its
successors--appearing to think, and indeed in one place asserting, that
"harmony of numbers" comes of itself to a person who has other poetical
qualifications.
[Sidenote: Coleridge.]
His two just-mentioned friends, however, lodged, at a slightly later
period, two of the most important preceptist documents of English
prosody, though they were documents differing very widely in the
extent and character of their importance. These were Coleridge's note
on the metre of _Christabel_, and Southey's Preface to the _Vision
of Judgment_. The latter is too long to give, and is written from a
mistaken point of view; but it, and the much-ridiculed poem which it
accompanied, undoubtedly restarted the practice of attempting to write
English hexameters, which has been continued, with some intervals and
some episodes, but at times most busily, ever since. The former must be
given at length, and some comment made on it:--
[Sidenote: _Christabel_, its theory and its practice.]
"The metre of the _Christabel_ is not, properly speaking, irregular,
though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle,
namely, that of counting, in each line, the accents, not the syllables.
Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the
accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless this occasional
variation in number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the
mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition in
the nature of the imagery or passion."
What _Christabel_ metre really was has been expounded earlier, and its
author's account of it is not a little surprising. When he called its
principle "new" he must have forgotten--not exactly the Middle English
writers, whom he very likely did not know, nor perhaps Gray, though the
latter's remarks on Spenser's _February_ were actually published before
_Christabel_, but--Spenser himself and Chatterton (both of whom he
certainly knew, if not Blake also), as well as the very ballad-writers
whom he had himself imitated in the _Ancient Mariner_. His mention
of "accents" and not "feet" argues an erroneous and inadequate theory
which leaves much of the beauty of his own work unexplained; while it
can be shown from the text itself that the variation of syllables,
though metrically beautiful, often does not correspond at all with any
special point of sense, passion, imagery, or anything else. But his
practice more than cured any wound which his theory may have inflicted.
[Sidenote: Prosodists from 1800 to 1850.]
In comparison with Southey's and Coleridge's remarks, and still more
with the practice of the latter in _Christabel_ and the _Ancient
Mariner_, the preceptist prosody of the extreme end of the eighteenth
century, and the first third of the nineteenth becomes, except for
exhaustive students of the subject, a mere curiosity, and not a very
interesting one. Prosodic remarks, mostly erroneous or inadequate,
found their way into popular handbooks, such as Walker's _Dictionary_
(almost wholly wrong) and Lindley Murray's _Grammar_ (partially
right). The musical theories of Steele were taken up by others, such
as Odell, Roe, and, above all, the republican lecturer Thelwall, who,
escaping the consequences of his earlier extravagances, became a
teacher of elocution. The new Reviews gave opportunity for occasional
critical remarks on the subject--the most notable of which was the
_Quarterly_ review, by Croker, of Keats's _Endymion_,--usually
embodying the cramped and ignorant doctrinairism of the preceding
century. Southey's hexameters started a large amount of writing on
that subject. In 1816 John Carey, compiler of the best-known Latin
_Gradus_ and author of many "cribs" and school editions, repeated most
of the errors of Bysshe, but did grudgingly allow trisyllabic feet;
and in 1827 William Crowe, a minor poet and Public Orator at Oxford,
wrote a treatise of _English Versification_--good in method, but bad
in principle--condemning the adjustment of very short to longer lines,
etc. Nothing of this period comes in importance near to that second
edition of Mitford (1804, with most of the historical matter added)
which has been noticed.
[Sidenote: Guest.]
But in 1838--after the appearance of Tennyson and Browning, but
when no public attention had been paid to them--appeared the most
elaborate, ambitious, and, partly at least, valuable work that had
yet been written on the subject--the _History of English Rhythms_, by
Edwin Guest, then Fellow, afterwards Master, of Gonville and Caius
College, Cambridge. Guest took nearly two years between the publication
of the first and second volumes of his book, and admittedly changed
his opinions on some points, but his main theories are unmistakable.
He goes entirely by accent, denying metrical quantity in English
altogether, and imposing curious arbitrary rules (such as that two
adjoining syllables cannot be accented without a pause) on accent
itself. But he possessed an immense and truly admirable knowledge of
English verse--Old, Middle, and Modern--up to his time; and he lavished
this, in a manner useful, indeed invaluable, to the present day, on the
support of general theories which, unfortunately, are quite unsound.
For Guest seems to have conducted his work under the influences
of three different obsessions, no one of which he ever worked out
thoroughly in all its bearings, which do not necessarily imply each
other, and two of which are even rather contradictory.
The first[146] was the belief that our verse is wholly dependent upon
accent, and that "the principles of accentual rhythm," whatever they
are, govern it exclusively.
The second[147] was that the laws of English versification generally
are somehow not only dependent on those of _Old_ English versification,
but identical with them, and always to be adjusted to them.
The third[148] was that, somewhere about the early thirteenth century,
and increasingly till the end of the fourteenth, there took place a
succession of alien invasions which never resulted in a coalescence or
blending, but merely in the presence of two hostile elements; and that
while the perfect English versifier will cling to the older and only
genuine one, he must, if he does not so cling, give it up altogether,
and have nothing to do with anything but "the rhythm of the foreigner."
Now what has been already and will be later given in this book seems to
show that these propositions are in fact false.
In the first place, though accent plays a large part in English
prosody, that prosody is as far as possible from being purely or
exclusively accentual.
In the second, the oldest English poetry and its younger varieties are
so utterly different that the same laws cannot, except _per accidens_,
apply to them.
In the third, instead of two jarring elements, we find before us, from
the thirteenth century, at least, onwards, a more and more distinct and
harmonious blend of language, resulting, of necessity, in a more and
more distinct and harmonious blend of prosody.
But there is also a _fourth_ principle, which he adds to, rather than
deduces from, the other three:--
That the collocation of accented and unaccented syllables forms
_sections_,[149] which in turn form, and into which can be reduced, all
English verse.
On these principles he went through the whole body of English verse
from Caedmon to Coleridge, arranging it with infinite trouble on the
"sectional" system, and classifying the verses as those of "four
accents," those of "five," and so on, with suitable distinctions
for stanzas, etc. Unfortunately--to mention only the crowning and
fatal fault which makes mention of all others in such a book as this
unnecessary--he finds himself in perpetual conflict with the practice
of the greatest English poets in their most beautiful passages.
Shakespeare and Milton go "contrary to every principle of accentual
rhythm," and use devices which "they have no right" to use. Coleridge
and Burns employ sections which "have very little to recommend them."
Spenser's verse is "wanting in good taste," and Byron's versification
"has never been properly censured." It may seem incredible that a
writer of learning and acuteness should not have seen the absurdity
of his position when he tells beautiful poetry--sometimes admitted by
himself as such--that it has no business to be beautiful because it
does not suit his rules. But the fact disposes of him, and of the rules
themselves, without its being necessary--though it would be easy--to
prove their want of intrinsic justification.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] Of course Milton does _not_.
[143] The passage is of importance and must be given:--
"And now ... I proceed to the indictment of my ears. If the charge had
come from Dapple it would not have surprised me. One may fancy him
possessed of more than ordinary susceptibility of ear; but for the
irritability of yours, I cannot so satisfactorily account. I could
heap authority on authority for using two very short syllables in
blank verse instead of one--_they take up only the time of one_.[144]
'Spirit' in particular is repeatedly placed as a monosyllable in
Milton; and some of his ass-editors have attempted to print it as one,
not feeling that the rapid pronunciation of the two syllables does not
lengthen the verse more than the dilated sound of one. The other line
you quote is still less objectionable, because the old ballad style
requires ruggedness, _if this line were rugged_; and secondly, because
the line itself rattles over the tongue as smoothly as a curricle upon
down-turf:
Ī hăve măde cāndlĕs ŏf īnfănt's făt.
This kind of cadence is repeatedly used in the _Old Woman_ and in the
'Parody.'"[145]
The quantification, it should be observed, is original.
[144] Italics added.
[145] _Letters of Robert Southey_, ed. Warter (London, 1856), i. 69.
[146] The evidence of this obsession is concentrated in Book I. chap.
iv. pp. 74-101; but diffused over the entire treatise.
[147] This seems to have presented itself to him throughout as a
matter of course, not requiring demonstration and hardly likely to be
contested; it is perhaps most categorically affirmed at Book II. chap.
iii. p. 184.
[148] This also is pervading. It "gathers itself up" most in the
context just cited, and at pp. 301 and 400-402, the two last among the
most surprising instances of complete misunderstanding of history by a
real historical scholar.
[149] Perhaps it should be said that a "section" is a bundle of
"accented" and "unaccented" syllables extending in possible bulk from
_three_ syllables with _two_ accents (Guest's minimum) to _eleven_
syllables with _three_ accents. Of a pair of these, similar or
dissimilar, a verse consists.
CHAPTER III
LATER NINETEENTH-CENTURY PROSODISTS
[Sidenote: Discussions on the _Evangeline_ hexameter.]
The amount of prosodic writing during the last seventy years has
been very large. In the earliest and latest parts of the period it
was principally devoted to the subject of English hexameters--in
the first, in regard to the accentual attempts of Longfellow, to
which _Evangeline_ gave immense popularity; in the last, to the
counter-attempts at "quantitative" versification, in which the feet
are constructed, not with reference to accent or to the way in which
the words are ordinarily pronounced, but to independent and even
opposed temporal value derived from the special sound attached to the
vowel ("īdol," long; "fĭddle," short, etc.), or, on semi-classical
principles, to what is called "position." To analyse the individual
views of critics on these two bodies of questions would be here
impossible, and reference must be made to the larger _History_, to
Mr. Omond's treatises, or to the original works, the most important
of which will be found duly entered in the Bibliography. But we may
summarise results under three heads.
I. The "accentual" or _Evangeline_ hexameter has, as has been said,
been at times far from unpopular; but it has always dissatisfied nicer
ears by a certain _inappropriateness_ which has been differently
appraised, but which is evidently pointed at by the apology of its
first extensive practitioner, Southey, that he could not get spondees
enough, and had to be content with trochees. This inappropriateness
has since been characterised by an unsurpassed expert in theory and
practice--Mr. Swinburne--in the blunt assertion that to English "all
dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent."
II. On the other hand, the so-called quantitative verse is repulsive to
the same ears (unless, like Tennyson's experiments, it is accommodated
to ordinary pronunciation) by the very fact that it sets that
pronunciation expressly at defiance, and makes sheer jargon of the
language.
III. Considering these facts, some (among whom the present writer
is included) regard an apparent English hexameter, such as that of
Kingsley's _Andromeda_, and, still more, that of certain verses of
Mr. Swinburne himself, as an admirable and glorious metre, but as not
dactylic at all--scanning it as a five-foot anapæstic with anacrusis
(odd syllable at the beginning) and hypercatalexis (ditto at the
end).[150]
[Sidenote: Mid-century prosodists.]
Of more general prosodic inquiry some selection-summary must be given.
Guest's original work does not seem to have produced much effect,
save on specially scholarly writers interested in the subject, like
Archbishop Trench; though the reprint of it, forty years later, had,
as we shall see, a great deal of influence. Except on the hexameter
matter, there was little done between 1840 and close upon 1870. It
was, however, unfortunate that, at the very opening of this time,
Latham's _English Language_ embodied some very inadequate remarks on
prosody, including the symbol _xa_ for an iamb, which has too much
permeated English text-books since. The works of Archdeacon Evans
and E.S. Dallas, both published in 1852, are important only to very
thorough-going students. The latter was acute, but fanciful and
inclined to jargon. The former, regarding stress as the only basis
of modern versification, indulged in a curious undervaluation of
English poetry generally: we must "forget all about classical poetry
to be satisfied with blank verse"; English lyric has been "under an
evil genius, and always a blank"; and Shakespeare and Milton "gained
exceedingly" by translation into Greek and Latin. Any intelligent
reader can judge of such a tree by such fruits.
Of really earlier date than these (for their author died in 1846)
were Sidney Walker's remarks on _Shakespeare's Versification_,
posthumously published in 1854, which contain some useful metrical
observations.[151] Dallas's book produced at least two important
reviews, each of which extended itself into a more important prosodic
tractate. The first of these was by the late Professor Masson, who
afterwards rearranged his prosodic ideas in a minute and very scholarly
study of Milton's versification, appearing in his larger edition of the
poet. Professor Masson perhaps admitted some unnecessary feet, such
as the amphibrach, but his views are on the whole extremely sound.
The other essay was by Coventry Patmore--a poet, a man of distinct
originality in many ways, and a really learned student of preceding
prosodists--in fact, by far the most learned up to his time. This essay
is full of suggestive and ingenious notions, but exceedingly crotchety,
and, for persons not thoroughly grounded in the subject, unsafe. It
has the merit of recognising the division of verse into what it calls,
by a rather ponderous term, "isochronous intervals" (that is to say,
feet equivalent in time), and of recognising, likewise, the important
metrical as well as rhetorical part played by pause. But it exaggerates
this part in an impossible fashion, making a full pause-foot at the end
of every heroic line; and its attention to "accent" is also excessive
and, in fact, inconsistent.
[Sidenote: Those about 1870,]
On the whole, however, it was not, as has been said, till the very eve
of 1870, when the Præ-Raphaelite school had made its appearance, that
any considerable amount of prosodic writing came. Then, and in the very
same year, 1869, there was a remarkable outburst, including _A Complete
Practical Guide to the Whole Subject of English Versification_ (by
E. Wadham), which represents a modified Bysshian system--believing
in elision; thinking trisyllabic feet bad, though they may exist,
especially at the cæsura; discountenancing both blank and anapæstic
verse; and applying to the whole subject a new terminology which
has not been generally accepted. Then came also a _Manual of
English Prosody_ by R. F. Brewer (reissued many years afterwards as
_Orthometry_), which contains a very large amount of information on the
details of the matter, but little appreciation of its more important
aspects. Much briefer, but, despite some errors, sounder on the whole,
and giving no bad introduction to the subject, was the _Rules of
Rhyme_ of Tom Hood, son of the poet. Greater influence than that of
any of these has been exercised by the prosodic part of Dr. Abbott's
_Shakespearian Grammar_, published in this year, and of his _English
Lessons for English People_, issued (and partly written by J. R.
Seeley) two years later. Unfortunately, not a few of the principles of
these books are either demonstrably unsound or very doubtful, the worst
of all being the insistence on "extra-metrical" syllables, or, in other
words, the confession that English prosody cannot account for English
poetry. 1869 also saw the beginning of a very important work, Mr. A. J.
Ellis's _Early English Pronunciation_, which has had a great effect on
some views of prosody, and contains a very elaborate scheme of syllabic
values for quality and degree of force, weight, etc.
In 1874 Mr. John Addington Symonds, a critic, prose-writer, and even
poet of no mean rank, published an essay, which he afterwards expanded
into a tractate, on _Blank Verse_, denying that _any_ preconceived
metrical scheme will explain this, and arguing that each line must be
treated separately according to its own sense. More minute than any
book since Guest's, and written with definite purpose to teach poets
their business, was Mr. Gilbert Conway's _Treatise of Versification_
(1878), which reverts to eighteenth-century theories, not merely
of the scansion but of the pronunciation of words like "om_i_nous"
and " del_i_cate"; thinks Milton "capricious" and "inconsistent";
and proceeds entirely on the principle that the base and backbone
of English prosody is accent. Two years later Mr. Ruskin issued
his _Elements of English Prosody_, employing musical notation, but
using the names of feet very strangely applied. And a year later Mr.
Shadworth Hodgson published a paper on "English Verse," perhaps not
uninfluenced by Guest, and advocating (as several writers about his
time began to do) "stress" systems of scansion, the stress being
allotted according to various considerations of sense and otherwise.
Another stress-man--still more influenced, though partly in the way
of correction, by Guest--was the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who
in 1883 wrote in the _Saturday Review_ some papers, republished after
his death, and advocating "sections," of which there may be as many
as four in a normal heroic line, though this may, on the other hand,
have as many as seven or even eight "beats" on strong syllables.
Much sounder than any of these--indeed, on practical matters almost
irreproachable--was Professor J. B. Mayor's _Chapters on English Metre_
(1886), on which he founded later a _Handbook_ of the subject (1903).
[Sidenote: and since.]
In the last twenty or thirty years there has been an increasing number
of books on prosody, the names of the most important of which will be
found in the Bibliography. The most important of all is perhaps Mr.
Robert Bridges' _Prosody of Milton_, increased in subsequent editions
to something like a manual of Stress Prosody, and containing material
also for estimating the recent attempts, by Mr. Bridges himself and by
the late Mr. W. J. Stone, to revive the writing of English hexameters
on a quantitative, not an accentual, basis. There have also been
many attempts (of which perhaps the most remarkable is a treatise on
monopressures, taken up and applied by Professor Skeat) which would
reduce prosody to a branch of medical physics or physiology, by basing
it on the mechanical action of the glottis or larynx. And strong and
repeated efforts have also been made to bring the subject entirely
under the supervision of music--using musical notation, musical terms
such as "bar," and the like. The most widely influential of these
was the work of the American poet and critic Sidney Lanier; the most
recent, that of Mr. William Thomson of Glasgow. On the other hand,
the writings of Mr. Omond, though some doubt may be entertained as
to details, have the merits of absolute soundness on the general
principles of the subject, and may be studied with ever-increasing
advantage.
[Sidenote: Summary.]
These principles--general, and in relation to the methods of treatment
more especially dealt with in the last paragraph or two--may be
briefly summarised before this sketch of our prosodist history is
closed. Systems of stress prosody are unsatisfactory, because the
unstressed syllables of the line, and their connection or grouping
with the stressed ones, are of quite as much importance to total
effect as stresses themselves, and because attention to stress seems
to beget the notion that regularity of time and time-interval is of no
importance.[152]
Physiological-mechanical systems are altogether insufficient, even if
not wrong, because they only refer to the raw material of prosody;
because, in their nature, they must be applicable to verse and prose
alike, and to all kinds of verse; with the additional disadvantage
that, as actually explained by their advocates, they usually
make verse-arrangements of the most inharmonious and unpoetical
character.[153]
This latter objection applies with even greater force to the musical
theorists, whose explanations of verse invariably confuse rhythm or
overturn it altogether, while their whole system ignores the fact, that
music and prosody are quite different things--that they may perhaps be
accommodated in particular cases, but that this accommodation is by no
means frequent.
In some cases, chiefly those of foreigners who have undertaken the
study of English verse, return has been attempted to the rigid syllabic
methods of Bysshe and his followers. But it is usually admitted by
these persons that the method does not suit nineteenth-century poetry,
and they are open therefore to the fatal charge of having to suppress
part, and a most important part, of the historical life of the subject.
On the other hand, the system of corresponding foot-division, with
equivalence and substitution allowed, which has been followed in this
book, is open to none of these objections. It neither neglects nor
suppresses any part of the line in any case, but accounts fully for
all parts. It applies to poetry only, and, to a large extent at least,
explains the difference between good poetry and bad. It adjusts itself
to the entire history of English verse, since the English language
took the turn which made it English in the full sense. It requires
no metrical fictions, no suppression of syllables, no allowance of
extra-metrical ones, no alteration in pronouncing, no conflict of
accent and quantity. No period or kind of English poetry is pronounced
by it to be wrong, though it may allow that certain periods have
exercised their rights and privileges more fully than others. In short,
it takes the poetry as it is, and has been for seven hundred years
at least; bars nothing; carves, cuts, and corrects nothing; begs no
questions; involves no make-believes; but accepts the facts, and makes
out of them what, and what only, the facts will bear.
FOOTNOTES:
[150] For examples of all these see Scanned Conspectus.
[151] Especially one which the student should apply for himself, that
Shakespeare's incomplete lines are mostly regular fractions of complete
ones, scanning correctly on the same system (_v. sup._ p. 130).
[152] Thus Mr. Bridges, though he himself does _not_ neglect the
unstressed, and even makes combination of the two kinds which are
actually feet, would allow sometimes _four_ and sometimes only _three_
stresses in a heroic line. Later stress (or "stress-_cum_-music")
prosodists have even proposed to recognise _two_ "bars" only in such a
line.
[153] Thus it has been proposed to scan a line of Goldsmith:
The sheltered | cot, | the culti|vated | farm.
BOOK IV
AUXILIARY APPARATUS
CHAPTER I
GLOSSARY
(The miniature glossary which I prefixed to my larger _History_ having
been found useful, and indeed some complaints having been made that it
was not fuller, I have determined to go to the other extreme here, with
a special view to those readers who may be approaching the subject for
the first time. Excepting words like "trisyllabic," etc., which can
hardly be thought to require explanation, an attempt has been made to
include almost every technical, and especially every disputed, term.)
ACCENT.--This term, which is perhaps the principal centre of dispute
in matters prosodic and which, even outside strict prosody, is not
a little controversial, may be defined, as uncontroversially as
possibly in the words of a highly respectable book of reference,[154]
"A superior force of voice, or of articulative effort, upon some
particular syllable." It is prosodically used as equivalent (with some
slight differences) to "stress," and is regarded by a large--perhaps
the most numerous--school as constituting the foundation-stone of
English prosody. The inconveniences and insufficiencies of this view
will be found constantly indicated throughout this book. On the
question, almost more debated, what constitutes, and in different
languages and times has constituted, accent itself--whether it is
loudness, duration, "pitch," or what not of sound--no pronouncement has
been or will be attempted in this volume.
ACEPHALOUS.--A term applied to a line in which the first syllable,
according to its ordinary norm or form, is wanting, as in Chaucer's
ʌ Twen|ty bo|kès clad | in blak | or reed.
ACROSTIC.--An arrangement, not perhaps strictly prosodic, by which
the initial syllables of the lines of a poem make words or names of
themselves, as in Sir John Davies's _Astræa_, where these initials
in every piece make "Elizabetha Regina." The process is now chiefly
confined to light verse; but there is nothing to be said against it,
unless the sense is strained or perverted to get the letters.
ALCAIC.--A Greek lyrical measure, used by and named after the famous
lyrical poet Alcæus, but most familiar in the slightly altered
Latin form of Horace. Like all these forms, it is only a curiosity
in English, and, even as such, has shared the endless and hopeless
controversies as to accentual and quantitative metre. No one, however,
is ever likely to get nearer to the real thing than Tennyson in
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse, and cedar arches,
Charm as a wanderer out in Ocean.
The strict Horatian form (the last syllables being, as usual, common)
is:
̄ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̆ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̆
̄ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̆ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̆
̄ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆
̄ ̆ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆.
ALEXANDRINE.--A line of twelve syllables or six iambic feet. This
measure (traditionally said to have taken its name from the Old French
poem on Alexander) became the favourite metre for the _chansons de
geste_ or long narrative poems in that language, and then practically
the staple of French verse to the present day. But though it is early
traced--as a whole or as two halves--in English, it never established
itself as a continuous metre with us. Only two pieces of importance,
Drayton's _Polyolbion_ and Browning's _Fifine at the Fair_, so employ
it. On the other hand, it is constantly found scattered about early
English verse; appears--questionably according to some, unquestionably
according to the present writer--in Chaucer; was an ingredient in the
"poulter's measure" (_v. inf._), so popular with the poets of the
second and third quarters of the sixteenth century; was used by Sidney
continuously in sonnet; forms, as a concluding line, the distinguishing
feature of the great Spenserian stanza; is very frequent in Shakespeare
and the other Elizabethan dramatists; and was adopted by Dryden (though
latterly, and then not quite always, rejected by Pope) as a relief and
variation to the heroic couplet. It also supplies a frequent ingredient
in Pindaric verse and in various lyrical stanzas. For its perfection it
almost requires a central cæsura at the sixth syllable.
In Dryden (probably from insufficient information), in Warton (less
excusably), and in some more modern writers (without any excuse at
all), "long Alexandrine," or sometimes even Alexandrine by itself, is
used to designate the fourteener, "seven-beat," or seven-foot iambic
line. This ignores the derivation, contravenes the established use of
French, the special home of the metre, and introduces an unnecessary
and disastrous confusion.
ALLITERATION.--The repetition of the same letter at the beginning
or (less frequently) in the body of different words in more or less
close juxtaposition to each other. This, which appears slightly, but
very slightly, in classical poetry, has always been a great feature
of English. During the Anglo-Saxon period universally, and during a
later period (after an interval which almost certainly existed, but the
length of which is uncertain) partially, it formed, till the sixteenth
century, a substantive and structural part of English prosody.
Later, it became merely an ornament, and at times, especially in the
eighteenth century, has been disapproved. But it forms part of the very
vitals of the language, and has never been more triumphantly used than
in the late nineteenth century by Mr. Swinburne.
AMPHIBRACH.--A foot of three syllables--short, long, short (̆ ̄
̆)--literally "short on each side." According to some, this foot is not
uncommon in English poetry, as, for instance, in Byron's
Thĕ blāck bănds | căme ōvĕr
Thĕ Ālps ănd | thĕir snōw,
as well as individually for a foot of substitution. Others, including
the present writer, think that these cases can always, or almost
always, be better arranged as anapæsts--
Thĕ blāck | bănds căme ō|ver
Thĕ Ālps | ănd thĕir snōw,
and that the amphibrach is unnecessary, or, at any rate, very very rare
in English.
AMPHIMACER ("long on both sides").--Long, short, long (̄ ̆ ̄)--an
exactly opposite arrangement to the amphibrach, also, and more
commonly, called _Cretic_. It is more than doubtful whether this
arrangement, _as an actual foot_, ever occurs in English verse or
is suitable to English rhythm; but the name (preferably Cretic) is
sometimes useful to designate a combination of syllables belonging
to more feet than one, and possessing a certain connection, as
expressing either the quantity of a single word or that of a rhetorical
division[155] of a line.
ANACRUSIS.--A syllable or half-foot prefixed to a verse, and serving
as a sort of "take-off" or "push-off" for it. This, frequent in Greek,
is by no means rare in English, though there are numerous disputes as
to its application. It has sometimes been proposed to call it with us
"catch"; and, whatever it be called, it comes into great prominence
in connection with the question whether the general rhythm of English
verse is iambic or trochaic, while it is almost the hinge of the whole
matter on the other question whether the English hexameter is really
dactylic or anapæstic.
ANAPÆST.--A trisyllabic foot consisting of two shorts and a long (̆ ̆
̄). Almost as soon as English poetry proper makes its appearance, this
measure or cadence appears too; for a time chiefly as an equivalent to
the iamb. In the revived alliterative metre it to a great extent ousts
the trochee, and to one almost as great dominates the doggerel of the
fifteenth century. As a continuous metre the early examples of it are
well marked, though not very numerous; but in the sixteenth century
it seems (no doubt with the help of music) to have caught the popular
ear, and from the late seventeenth has been thoroughly established in
literature. It is perhaps the chief enlivening and inspiriting force
in English poetry, and, while powerful for serious purposes, is almost
indispensable for comic.
ANTI-BACCHIC OR ANTI-BACCHIUS.--A trisyllabic foot opposite to the
Bacchic as a definite foot--a short followed by two long (̆ ̄ ̄). Of
very doubtful occurrence anywhere in English verse; though the same
remark applies to it as to the amphibrach, the amphimacer, other
trisyllabic feet, and all tetrasyllabic, in regard to secondary or
rhetorical use.
ANTISPAST ("pulling against").--A four-syllabled foot--short,
long, long, short (̆ ̄ ̄ ̆)--opposed to the choriambic. Like all
four-syllabled feet, it is not wanted in English poetry, being always
resolvable into its constituents, the iamb and trochee. But the
combined effect may sometimes be represented by it--with this _caveat_,
as in other cases.
ANTISTROPHE.--See STROPHE.
APPOGGIATURA.--A musical term which has no business whatever in
prosody, but which has been used by some (_e.g._ Thelwall) to evade
the allowance of equivalence, and the substitution of trisyllabic
for dissyllabic feet. Its definition in music is "a short auxiliary
or grace-note forming no essential part of the harmony." The nearest
actual approach to it in English verse would appear to be the extra
syllables found (by licence very rare until recently) in such lines as
Scott's in the "Eve of St. John," Moore's in "Eveleen's Bower" and
elsewhere, and Macaulay's in "The Last Buccaneer"--_e.g._:
And I'll chain | the bloodhound | and the ward_er_ | shall not sound.
[156]
ARSIS and its opposite, THESIS, are two terms much used in prosody,
though unfortunately with meanings themselves attached in diametrical
opposition to the same word. The words literally mean "lifting up" and
"putting down" respectively. At first, among the Greeks themselves, the
metaphor seems to have been taken from the raising and putting down
of the _foot_ or _hand_; so that "arsis" would make a light or short,
and "thesis" a heavy or long syllable. By the Latins, and by the great
majority of modern prosodists in reference even to Greek, the metaphor
is transferred to the raising or dropping of the _voice_, so that
"arsis" lengthens and "thesis" shortens. This, which, whether the older
or not, seems to be the better use, is followed here.
ASSONANCE.--An imperfect form of rhyme which counts only the vowel
sound of the chief rhyming syllable. This principle was the original
one of rhyme in French, and has always held a considerable place
in Spanish. But in English it has never established itself in
competent literary poetry; though it is frequent in the lower kind of
folk-song, and though attempts to naturalise it--in forms even further
degraded--were made by Mrs. Browning, and have been suggested since.
As an instrument of vowel-music, very delicately and judiciously used
at other parts of the line than the end, it has its possibilities, but
must always be an offensive substitute in rhyming verse, and an almost
equally offensive intruder in blank.
ATONIC ("without accent").--When employed in prosody, is applied to
those languages which, though they may use accentual symbols, have
nothing in the pronunciation that can be made the base of an actual
scansion--the chief example being French.
* * * * *
BACCHIC or BACCHIUS.--A three-syllable foot--long, long, short (̄ ̄
̆)--the opposite of anti-Bacchic and subject to the same observations.
BALLAD (rarely Ball_et_).--A word common to most European languages,
but used very loosely, and to be carefully distinguished from _Ballade_
(see following item). Its original connection is with singing and
dancing (Italian _ballare_), and it came, centuries ago, to be used
for any short poem of a lyrical character. It has, however, a special
application to short pieces of a narrative kind; and "The Ballads" has,
as a phrase of English literary history, frequent reference to the body
of such compositions of which the pieces about Robin Hood are early
examples. It is most commonly, though not universally, written in the
"ballad metre" described below.
BALLADE, on the other hand, is a term arbitrarily restricted to a
measure originally and mostly French, but frequently written in English
during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and revived
in the nineteenth. It consists usually of three stanzas and a _coda_ or
_envoi_, written on the same recurrent rhymes, with a refrain at the
end of each. (See example above, p. 126.)
BALLAD METRE or COMMON MEASURE.--The most usual quatrain in English
poetry, consisting, in its simplest form, of alternate octosyllables
and hexasyllables; the even lines always rhyming, and the odd ones
very commonly. In the best examples, old and new (but less frequently
in the late sixteenth, early seventeenth, and almost whole eighteenth
century), the lines are largely, equivalenced, and it is not unusual
for the stanza to be extended to five or more. The most perfect example
of ballad metre is Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_.
BAR and BEAT.--Two musical terms used by stress-prosodists and others
who refuse the foot-system. "Bar" is strictly the division between
groups of "beats," loosely the groups themselves. "Beat" is the unit
of time or measure. On a sound and germane system of prosody neither is
needed.
BLANK VERSE, on the analogy of blank cartridge, etc., might be held
to designate any kind of verse not tipped, loaded, or filled up with
rhyme. As a matter of fact, however, and for sound historical reasons,
it is not usually applied to the more modern unrhymed experiments,
from Collins's "Evening" onwards, but is confined to continuous
decasyllabics. This measure (which, _mutatis mutandis_, had already
been used by the Italians and Spaniards in the early sixteenth century,
and of which curious foreshadowings are found in Chaucer's prose _Tale
of Melibee_ and elsewhere) was first attempted in English by the Earl
of Surrey in his version of the _Æneid_. For a time it was very little
imitated, but in the latter half of the century it gradually ousted
all other competitors for dramatic use. It was still out of favour for
non-dramatic purposes until Milton's great experiments in the later
seventeenth; while about the same period it was for a time itself laid
aside in drama. But it soon recovered its place there, and has never
lost it; while during the eighteenth century it became more and more
fashionable for poems proper, and has rather extended than contracted
its business since.
BOB AND WHEEL.--An arrangement (see pp. 48, 49) by which a stanza
hitherto usually alliterated, but not rhymed, finishes with one much
shorter line of usually two syllables, and then a batch, usually four,
of lines not quite so short, but still shorter than the staple, and
rhymed among themselves.
BURDEN.--The same as REFRAIN (_q.v._).
BURNS METRE.--An apparently artificial but extremely effective
arrangement of six lines, 8, 8, 8, 4, 8, 4, rhymed _aaabab_, which
derives its common name from the mastery shown, in and of it, by the
Scottish poet. It is, however, far older than his time, having been
traced to Provençal originals in the eleventh century, and it is
very common in the English miracle plays of the late fourteenth and
fifteenth, and not unknown in the metrical romances, as in _Octovian
Imperator_. Disused in Southern English by the time of the Renaissance,
it seems to have kept its hold in Northern, and Burns received it
either immediately from Fergusson or perhaps from Allan Ramsay. (See
also below, in list of Form-origins.)
* * * * *
CADENCE.--In general, a term applied to the combined rhythm of a line
or batch of lines. In one or two early passages of Wyntoun, Gower, and
others, it seems to be employed in some special sense as opposed to, or
separated from, rhyme, and has been conjectured to signify alliterative
rhythm. But this is very uncertain, rather improbable, and in the Gower
case impossible. (See p. 233.)
CÆSURA ("cutting").--A term applied, in classical prosody, to the
regular provision of a word-ending at a certain place in the line,
usually coinciding with a half-foot. The commonest cæsuras in Greek
and Latin are penthemimeral ("fifth half"), or in the middle of the
third foot, and hepthemimeral ("seventh half"), at the middle of the
fourth. At one time, in the earlier writers on English prosody (_e.g._
Dryden), there grew up a strange habit of using the term "cæsura" to
express elision or hiatus--to neither of which has it the least proper
reference. Correctly used, it is, in English, equivalent to "pause"
(_q.v._), but restricted to the _principal_ pause in a line.
CAROL.--A term, like "ballad," of rather loose application, but
generally confined to religious lyrics of a definite song-kind. The
original O.F. _karole_ referred to a rather elaborate _dance_ with
singing, and from this there has been a certain tendency to associate
the carol with much broken and indented measures in prosody.
CATALEXIS ("leaving off").--A term of great importance, inasmuch as
there is no other single one which can replace it; but a little vague
and elastic in use. Strictly speaking, a _catalectic_ line is one
which comes short, by a half-foot or syllable, of the full normal
measure; a _brachycatalectic_ ("short leaving off"), one which is
a whole foot _minus_; and a _hypercatalectic_ ("leaving over"), one
which has a half foot (or perhaps a whole one in rare cases) too much.
The terms "catalexis" and "catalectic" are sometimes used loosely to
cover all these varieties of deficiency and redundance in their several
developments. _Acatalectic_ means a fully and exactly measured line,
without either excess or defect.
CATCH.--See ANACRUSIS. The sense of "catch" as referring to a song in
parts, with much substitution and repetition, is musical, not prosodic.
CHANT-ROYAL.--A larger and more elaborate _ballade_: five stanzas of
eleven verses each and an _envoi_ of from five to eight.
CHORIAMB.--A four-syllabled foot consisting of a trochee (or "choree")
followed by an iamb (̄ ̆ ̆ ̄). Although the remarks made on other
four-syllabled feet apply here, as far as the ultimate analysis of
English verse is concerned, the great frequency of juxtaposed trochees
and iambs in English, and the natural way in which they seem to cohere,
make choriambic cadence or rhythm suggest itself more frequently than
any other of the compound feet. Mr. Swinburne wrote intentional and
continuous choriambics of great beauty.
CODA ("tail").--A musical term used in prosody by analogy, and
signifying a final stanza or batch of verses, often couched in a form
differing from the rest of the poem, such, for instance, as the final
octave of _Lycidas_.
COMMON.--The quantity or quality in a syllable which makes it
susceptible of occupying either the position of a "long" one or that of
a "short." This gift, well recognised and frequent enough in Greek and
Latin prosody--especially in regard to Greek proper names,--is still
more widely spread in English. Almost all monosyllables, other than
nouns, are common; and in a very large number of others the syllable
can be raised or lowered to long or short by considerations of arsis,
thesis, stress, emphasis, position, etc.
COMMON MEASURE (for shortness, especially in reference to hymns,
"C.M.").--The same as ballad metre, but usually restricted to eights
and sixes without substitution. (See also below, Chapter IV.)
CONSONANCE.--In strictness merely "agreement of sound"; but sometimes
used to designate _full_ rhyme by vowel _and_ consonant, as opposed to
"assonance," _i.e._ rhyme by vowel only.
COUPLET.--In proper English use this refers to a pair of verses only;
and it probably should be, though it is not always, limited to cases
where the members of the pair are exactly similar, as in the heroic
couplet, the octosyllabic couplet. The original French word is much
more elastic, and is applied to the long mono-rhymed _tirades_ of Old
French poems, to stanzas of more verses than two, and even to whole
lyrics, usually of a light description. (See also DISTICH.)
CRETIC.--See AMPHIMACER.
* * * * *
DACTYL.--A trisyllabic foot--long, short, short (̄ ̆ ̆). This foot,
thanks to the great position of the dactylic hexameter in Greek and
Latin, disputes, in those prosodies, the place of principal staple
with the iambic; and, from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, almost
constant endeavours have been made at imitating that metre in English,
and consequently at working the dactyl in our language. It was,
however, early discovered, even by favourers of classical "versing,"
that there is something awkward about the English dactyl. And in
fact, though we have a very large number of words which are fair
dactyls regarded separately, they are no sooner set in a verse than
they seem to slip or waggle into other measures, and especially the
anapæst. When, by some chance or by some sleight of the poet, they are
found, they are usually either continuous, or in connection with, and
substituted for, the trochee. To the classical combination of dactyl
and spondee English is obstinately rebellious.
DI-IAMB.--A double iamb--short, long, short, long (̆ ̄ ̆ ̄).
Not wanted in English; and not even expressing, as some of the
four-syllable feet do, a quasi-real compound effect.
DIMETER.--A combination of two couples of the same foot, iambic,
trochaic, or anapæstic. Thus the ordinary octosyllable is an iambic
dimeter, and the familiar swinging four-foot anapæst, a dimeter
anapæstic. In ancient prosody, "-meter" was never used in this kind
of combination, with reference to _single-feet_ metres, unless these
feet were in places specifically different. Thus "hexameter" means
a line of six single feet, of which, though the first four may
vary, the fifth must normally be a dactyl and the sixth a spondee;
"pentameter," a line of five feet, dactyls or spondees, but rigidly
distributed in two halves of two and a half feet each. Of late years,
in modern English prosody-writing, though fortunately not universally,
a most objectionable habit has grown up of calling the heroic line a
"pentameter," the octosyllabic iambic a "tetrameter." This is grossly
unscholarly, and should never be imitated, for the proper meaning of
the terms would be _ten_ feet in the one case, _eight_ in the other.
DISPONDEE.--Double spondee (̄ ̄ ̄ ̄). Even more than the di-iamb, and
much more than the ditrochee, this combination is not wanted in English.
DISTICH.--A synonym for "couplet," but of wider range, as there is no
reason why the verses should be metrically similar. There is, however,
in the practical use of the word, an understanding that there shall be
a certain completeness and self-containedness of _sense_.
DITROCHEE.--A double trochee--long, short, long, short (̄ ̆ ̄ ̆).--The
remarks on the di-iamb apply here, but not quite so strongly. There
are a few exceptional cases in Milton, as in the famous "Ūnĭvērsăl
reproach," where the ditrochaic effect, whether beautiful or not, is
too noticeable not to deserve specific definition.
DOCHMIAC.--A foot of five syllables, admitting, with the possible
permutations of long and short in the five places, a large number of
variations. This foot, not strictly necessary even in Greek prosody, is
quite unknown in English, and, if used, would simply split itself up
into batches of two and three. But it probably has a real existence in
the systematisation of English _prose_ rhythm.
DOGGEREL.--A word (the derivation of which can be only, though
easily, guessed) as old as Chaucer; always used with depreciating
intent, but with a certain difference, not to say looseness, of exact
connotation. Doggerel is often applied to slipshod or sing-song verse;
sometimes to verse burlesque or feeble in sense and phrase. But it
is better restricted to verse metrically incompetent by false rhythm
and quantification, or by insufficient or superfluous provision of
syllables and the like.
DUPLE.--A term used by some prosodists in combination with "time"
and in contradistinction to "triple," to express a characteristic of
verse which is nearest to music, and which perhaps is musical rather
than really prosodic. Controversies are sometimes carried on in regard
to the question whether trisyllabic feet (such as anapæsts, dactyls,
and tribrachs) are, when substituted for dissyllabic, in "duple" or
in "triple" time; but this question appears to the present writer
irrelevant and extraneous.
* * * * *
ELISION.--The obliteration of a syllable, for metrical reasons,
when a vowel at the end of a word comes before one at the beginning
of another. This strict classical meaning of the term is extended
ordinarily, in the English use of it, to the omission of a syllable
within a word, or the fusion of two in any of the various ways
indicated by the classical terms _crasis_ ("mixture"), _thlipsis_
("crushing"), _syncope_ ("cutting short"), _synalœpha_ ("smearing
together"), _synizesis_ ("setting together"), _synecphonesis_
("combined utterance"), and others. Perhaps the most useful phraseology
in English indicates "elision" for actual _vanishing_ of a vowel (when
it is usually represented by an apostrophe), and "slur" for running of
two into one. These two processes are of extreme importance, for upon
the view taken of them turns the view to be held of Shakespeare's and
Milton's blank verse, and of a large number of other measures.