Nearly all modern writers on the theory of verse have admitted that
English words have no fixed syllabic quantities such as are postulated
for the classical languages, but that English quantities, so far as they
exist, are variable and (in part at least) subjective in character. To
this it is true there are exceptions, chiefly among the poets, like some
of those considered in the preceding section on Imitations of Classical
Metres.
Writers who have agreed that English words have no fixed quantities, are
still at variance as to the relation of the element of syllabic time to
the element of accent in English verse. Two extremes may at once be
distinguished: that represented by the familiar statement that our
rhythms differ from those of classical poetry in being based wholly on
accent, and that represented most notably by the late Sidney Lanier, who
held that syllabic time-values in English verse are as exact and regular
(hence as accurately measurable) as the notes of music. Lanier applied
his theory with admirable consistency, and represented all sorts of
English verse, even that of the Anglo-Saxon period, in musical notation.
He is almost universally regarded, however, as having been led by the
analogy between music and poetry to carry his method to quite impossible
lengths. The most characteristic example of this is his representation
of the familiar "blank verse" measure in "three-four" time, each
accented syllable being given a time-value twice as long as that of the
adjacent unaccented syllable--a method of reading which can easily be
shown to be contrary to all common practice. It should not be forgotten,
however, that a debt of gratitude is owed Mr. Lanier for having been one
of the first to emphasize adequately the fact that verse, like music, is
_rhythmical sound_.
Besides those who make English verse to depend wholly on accent, and
those who give it time-values equally regular and measurable with those
of music, there is a third class disposed to confuse the two elements of
quantity and accent. Of this class was Edgar Poe, who in his essay on
The Rationale of Verse constantly spoke of accented and unaccented
syllables as "long" and "short," respectively, and was even disposed to
carry the identification into Latin verse itself. This essay of Poe's
has lately been defended by Mr. John M. Robertson, in the interesting
Appendix to his _New Essays toward a Critical Method_ (1897).
Unfortunately Mr. Robertson seems to have perpetuated deliberately the
confusion which he found in Poe in the use of the terms "accent" and
"quantity." He even says that the attempt to distinguish them is
ill-founded, "that quantity in speaking _must_ amount substantially to
the same thing as stress," and, again, that "Poe's identification of
stress with length is perfectly sound." Whatever be the fundamental fact
here, the use of terms cannot be commended. If quantity is swallowed up
in accent, so that accent alone dominates our verse, that is one thing;
if the conditions are such that a heavy stress and a long quantity
nearly always coincide, that is also a possible doctrine; but that is
not to say that the two things should be identified. If all tall men
wear long coats, or if all men--tall and short--wear long coats, it
follows in neither case that tallness and long-coatedness are the same
thing. It is a mere matter of physics that duration of sound and
intensity of sound are perfectly distinguishable, and that they have no
necessary connection with each other. The problem is: how are they
related in practice?
It has already been observed that Mr. Lanier did good service in
emphasizing the analogy between music and poetry, but that he carried
the analogy too far. It may, therefore, be worth while to consider at
just this point the elements of likeness and of difference in the two
forms of art. Both are forms of _rhythmical_ art: music and verse are
alike rhythmical sound. Lanier showed with sufficient certainty that
rhythm is dependent upon both _time_ and _accent_. He said, to be sure,
that "time is _the_ essential" element;[50] but this does not seem to
have been altogether what he meant, for he himself pointed out that the
ear insistently marks off time-elements by the sense of variation of
stress, even when there is no real variation, as in the tick-tack of the
clock. He also pointed out that accent marks the rhythm of music quite
as truly as that of verse, the rule being that ordinarily the first note
of each measure shall receive a special stress. It seems, then, that the
rhythm of music is based on the recurrence of accented sounds at equal
time-intervals. The same thing is true of the rhythm of verse. For every
kind of metre there is a normal verse-rhythm which is present in the
mind as the basis on which the verse is built up, no matter how many
variations may constantly occur. This normal rhythm is formed by a
succession of accents at exactly equal time-intervals,[51] such as can
be marked off by a metronome, or by the mechanical beating of the foot
on the floor. We realize that the verse as commonly read frequently
departs from this regularity of intervals; but without the regularity as
a norm to which to refer it, we should not recognize it as verse. The
normal accent-interval we call a "foot."
Exception must therefore be taken, it seems to me, to another contention
of Mr. Robertson's; namely, that "there is no time-unit." "Our feet," he
says, "are a pure convention, and the sole rhythmic fact is the
fluctuant relativity of long and short, or stress and slur." I am glad
to be able to believe that the fundamental rhythmic fact is something
more definite than this.[52] But the latest writer on the subject, Mr.
Mark Liddell, in his _Introduction to the Scientific Study of Poetry_,
joins Mr. Robertson in finding no feet in English verse. Nay, he
represents the metrist who makes use of the old conventions of
rhythmical measurement as one who will "flounder ceaselessly amid the
scattered timbers of iambuses, spondees, dactyls, tribrachs, never
reaching the firm ground of truth"! Mr. Liddell points out that we do
not pronounce English words, even in verse, with mechanically regular
alternations of stress; and he rejects the explanation that there is
nevertheless a typical form in the poet's and the reader's mind, on the
ground that it is "a strange state of affairs that the æsthetically
imperfect should produce a greater pleasure than the æsthetically
perfect." Strange, perhaps, but as familiar as sunrise, if by
"æsthetically perfect" we mean absolutely regular. Here we need to recur
to the analogy of music, where the phenomenon in question is so obvious.
Let any one attempt to follow a symphony with a metronome in his hand,
and he will soon discover that if the metronome represents the
æsthetically perfect rhythm, the orchestra represents a more pleasurable
imperfection. Its accelerations and retardations carry on a continual
conflict with the typical time of the music, yet that typical time is
not only printed on every sheet, but is in the mind of every player. It
is precisely so with verse.
It is true, of course, that the variations from regularity of rhythm are
more numerous and conspicuous in verse than in music. The reason is
obvious: the sounds of verse have constantly to effect a compromise
between the typical rhythm to which they are set and the irregular
stress-and time-variations of human speech, while music has no such
complicated task. Lyrical verse, being closest to music, keeps the
typical rhythm freest from interruption; and it is worthy of remark that
Mr. Liddell's study of English rhythms is based very largely on those of
a non-lyrical character, although he himself points out (p. 271) that
these are the least regular. The drama is dominated, most of all forms
of verse, by the necessity of representing natural human speech; hence
it is not the place to look for the fundamental laws of verse at their
purest.
There is, then, a unit of time on which all verse-rhythms, like all
musical rhythms, are based; and this is what we commonly call in music
the _measure_, and in verse, the _foot_, I shall recur to this matter a
little later in considering the terminology of the subject; for the
present let us return to the relations of verse and music. Both, we have
seen, are based on the recurrence of accented sounds at equal
time-intervals. There is some difference, however, in the emphasis which
one naturally places on the respective parts of the statement. In music
we feel that the fact of chief importance is that the measures shall be
equal in time, while the recurring accent seems a mere means of marking
this equality; but in verse we feel that the chief fact is that the
accents shall recur, the equality of time-intervals being in a sense a
secondary source of pleasure. In music, therefore, as we have seen, we
treat departures from regularity of time-intervals as somewhat more
exceptional than in verse. But the rhythm would suffer, would even
disappear, were either element wholly removed.
If we look for further distinctions between verse and music, we find
them in the separate sounds which go to make up the unit-measures. Not
only are the measures of music of mathematically equal length, but all
the sounds bear exact time-relations to each other: each is either half
as long, or twice as long, or a quarter as long, or four times as long,
as its neighbor. On the other hand, the number of separate sounds in the
measure constantly varies; it is sufficient that the total length be
that of the full measure. In verse these conditions are reversed. The
separate syllables, while they doubtless vary in length, are not
mathematically coördinated as to duration by the ordinary reader. It is
almost as difficult to say just what the time-relation of any two
adjacent syllables is, as to be sure that one is stressed just twice as
strongly as the other. On the other hand, the _number_ of syllables in
the foot (in good modern English verse) is tolerably constant.
For the sake of completeness, one may add two other fundamental
distinctions which, _apart_ from the elements of rhythm, differentiate
verse from music. Music, apart from rhythm, characteristically depends
on variation of pitch, and only incidentally (as in the case of the use
of different instruments in orchestration) on variation of
sound-quality; whereas verse, apart from rhythm, characteristically
depends on variation of sound-quality,--that is, on the different sounds
of the different words,--and only incidentally on changes of pitch.
Finally, the changing sounds of music are only vaguely symbolic, while
the changing sounds of verse are symbolic of definite ideas.
For the sake of easy comparison we may put these observations in a rough
sort of table:
MUSIC VERSE
_Rhythmical Sound_,
i.e.
Recurrence of accented sounds Recurrence of _accented sounds_
_at equal time-intervals_. at equal time-intervals.
Separate sounds mathematically Separate sounds not mathematically
related in length, and constantly related in length, and
varying in number and arrangement. generally with unchanged number
and arrangement.
Apart from rhythm, dependent on Apart from rhythm, dependent on
variation of _pitch_ (incidentally variation of sound-_quality_
on sound-_quality_). (incidentally on _pitch_).
Sounds vaguely symbolic. Sounds symbolic of definite ideas.
Let us now consider more closely the time-values of the separate
syllables of verse, asking just what we mean by a "long" or a "short"
syllable in English. It has already been indicated that the ear
recognizes no such fixed proportions in the length of our syllables as
are recognized for musical notes, or as are postulated for the syllables
of Greek and Latin verse. It must also be remembered that the terms
"long" and "short," as commonly used of English vowels, are of little
significance for the matter of real quantity. They are applied for
historical reasons, and do not describe present facts. Thus we call the
_o_ in "hotel" _long_, and that in "cot" short; but it is fairly clear
that the _o_ of "cot" takes rather more time, as commonly uttered, than
that of "hotel." The so-called "short _o_" is, in fact, a sound so open
that it has lost the _o_-quality. In the same way what we call "long
_a_" is a short-_e_ sound diphthongized. We cannot be said to preserve
in modern English any single vowels with fixed long quantity, such as we
hear in German words like _Saal_ and _See_,--sounds which obviously take
more time in utterance than others.
Can we speak accurately, then, of long syllables and short syllables in
modern English? It may be said that we have a large number of genuine
diphthongs; and such double sounds, especially where they are so open as
to require unusual effort on the part of the vocal organs (like _-ow_,
for example), may be assumed to take a longer time in utterance than
monophthongs. Even such a sound as is represented by _-au_ or _-aw_,
though it has but slight diphthongal quality, seems to sound longer than
most monophthongs. But in none of these cases does ordinary
pronunciation make the sound-length at all conspicuous, except where it
coincides with strong stress; and it requires a moment's reasoning to
convince one's self that the vowel in _fine_ is any longer than that in
_fan_. It is more than doubtful, then, whether our vowel sounds can be
regarded as of significance for metrical time. A word like "saw" or
"now," occurring in such a place in the verse as to be passed over with
the briefest and lightest utterance, would be pronounced with rapidity
by the ordinary reader, with no thought that the vowel-sound was too
"long."
But in the earlier languages a syllable might be long, not only from the
presence of a long vowel, but also from the presence of two or more
consonants following the vowel. May this be said to hold good for modern
English? In general, prolonged consonantal sounds seem to be avoided, as
in the case of vowels. We pass over them rapidly, and have, for
instance, no such clearly stopped syllables due to double consonants as
are heard in Italian words like _madonna_. Yet we cannot doubt that two
or three consonants require more time than one, and in words like
_strength_, _flushed_, _fists_, and the like, every one would find the
consonantal length perceptible. More than this, two consonants often
serve to "close" the preceding syllable, by making it impossible to run
the consonant at the end of it over into the following syllable, and
hence really lengthen it. This, of course, is the reason why the first
syllable of the Latin _avis_ is said to be short, but that of _alvus_ to
be long. The Elizabethan metrists tried to apply these Latin rules of
"quantity by position" to all English words; and many modern English
writers, who have been trained from childhood in the appreciation of
Latin quantities, easily perceive the differing consonantal quantities
of English words. These quantities may, then, certainly be said to
exist; but in ordinary English pronunciation, and to the ordinary,
untrained English ear, they must be strongly marked in order to attract
attention. When thus strongly marked, they doubtless play some part in
the structure of verse. In some lines attributed to Raleigh,
"His desire is a dureless content,
And a trustless joy,"
the syllable _trust_-occupies the time of two syllables; the typical
metre would require something like
"And a pitiless joy."
Now, the fact that _trust_-is a noticeably long syllable, especially
when closed by the following _l_, makes it well fitted to fill the place
of two syllables; and we should find the line distinctly less pleasing
if a short syllable were there instead. _Boundless_ would do as well,
because equally long; _trusty_ would not be quite so good; _silly_ would
be very bad. Conversely, when a noticeably long syllable occupies the
place of a light syllable, in rapid tri-syllabic verse, we feel that
the verse is injured. Mr. William Larminie criticises a line of Mr.
Swinburne's on this ground,--
"Time sheds them like snow on strange regions;"[53]
the combination _-ange_, with its final _-nj_ sound, made still longer
by the following _r_, and preceded, too, by the combination _n-st_, has
too much quantity for the place where it stands in the verse. In the
verse of inferior writers many worse cases could easily be found. These
illustrations, then, may serve to show that while we do not coördinate
our consonantal syllable-lengths as absolute "shorts" and "longs," we
perceive certain degrees of length, and find these playing a part in our
verse.
So much for intrinsic quantity as found in English syllables. But there
is much more to be said for syllables made long or short at the will of
the speaker, under certain conditions. If we address a friend in
surprise, saying, "_Why, John!_" we not only throw a heavy stress on
both the words, but also perceptibly prolong them. In like manner, we
realize that unimportant words, especially proclitics (like the
italicized words in the phrase "_The_ land _of the_ free") are not only
unstressed, but are hurried over in shorter moments than the accented
words. Examples like this suggest what may in fact be expressed in a
general statement, that accented syllables are very commonly prolonged.
This is not, as we have seen, from any essential connection between the
nature of accent and the nature of quantity. In certain cases,
unaccented syllables even show a tendency to length beyond that of those
bearing the stress, as in words like _follow_, _dying_, and others where
the final sound is easily prolonged. The coincidence of stress and
length, then, is due simply to the operation of the same cause--the
grammatical or rhetorical importance of the syllable in question. This
fact, that the important (stressed) syllables are likely to be held a
little longer than the others, will not warrant us in representing them
as _twice_ as long, in the exact mathematical relations of musical
notes; but it may explain why a musician like Lanier tried to represent
them in such notation. It must also be the cause of Mr. Robertson's
attempt to identify quantity and stress. His statement that "quantity in
fact, in spoken verse, consists of stress _and_ of the consonantal total
of syllables," may be regarded as much more satisfactory than those
already quoted from his essay. It is, however, not quite accurate.
Still another kind of relative syllable-length remains to be considered,
and for metrical purposes it is probably the most important. The
_accents_ of English words not only vary in degree according to the
different stresses which they receive in different prose sentences, but
in verse they are made artificially to vary also so as to conform as
closely as possible to the scheme of the metre. Thus the first syllable
of the word _over_ is accented far more strongly when it occurs at the
opening of a dactylic verse,
"Over the ocean wave,"
than when it occurs at the opening of an anapestic verse,
"Over land, over sea."
This being the case with accent, which tends to be strongly fixed in
English words, we might naturally expect that it would be still more
clearly the case with the element of time; and so it is. Syllables will
be lengthened and shortened by the reader in order to preserve as nearly
as possible the fundamental equal time-intervals between the principal
accents. This is most easily recognized, and most commonly practised, in
the case where syllables are shortened because there are more of them
than the normal scheme of the verse would imply. The old "tumbling
verse" of our ancestors depended on this principle, and so did the
revival of it in Coleridge's _Christabel_. For example:
"A little door she opened straight,
All in the middle of the gate,
The gate that was ironed within and without,
Where an army in battle array had marched out."
Here the rhythm of the last verse is brought into the four-beat measure
of the first verse, by passing lightly and rapidly over all syllables
save the four that mark the metre. In prose, the word _marched_ would be
stressed quite as much as the word _out_, but there is no difficulty in
reducing the stress in reading the verse.[54] It cannot be said,
however, that there is no difficulty in reducing its _length_, for the
final consonant combination _-cht_ takes up considerable time, and the
whole word follows a syllable (_had_) which has been closed and so
lengthened by the _d + m_. Sensitive readers would probably agree,
therefore, that the quantity in this verse is too much for the
smoothness of the rhythm. On the other hand, the long syllable _ironed_
helps us to fill the place of the light syllable which is missing after
it, and we find the rhythm easier than it would be in this form:
"The gate that was ironed both within and without."
Once more, for the sake of convenience, let us attempt to put our
conclusions into the form of a summary. An English syllable may be said
to be _long_, not absolutely but _relatively_, from:
[1. The naturally long character of its vowel-sound, due either
to open quality or diphthongization.]
2. The presence of two or more consonants which require a
perceptible time for utterance.
3. Prolongation by the speaker
(_a_) because of the importance of the syllable, or
(_b_) because of the time which it ought to occupy in
the scheme of the verse.
The artificial lengthening and shortening of syllables, then, is
constantly and naturally practised in the reading of verse which has a
strong lyrical swing such as guides the reader into a sense of its
structure. In verse more subtle and less lyrical in character the
time-intervals are not so strongly marked, and by the ear not trained to
listen for rhythm they are not so easily observed. The five-stress
iambic line, especially when unrimed, has developed far more freedom and
subtlety in English poetry than any other measure, and it is to this
that one finds these writers invariably turning who wish to prove that
our verse is not based on regular time-intervals. A verse like this:
"The lone couch of his everlasting sleep,"
if read as an ordinary prose phrase, has no obvious metrical character.
The second foot ("couch of") inverts the normal order of accent and
no-accent, and in common speech the second and third syllables would be
long and followed by a phrase-pause, while the fourth and fifth
syllables would be made very short and jointed closely to what follows.
There is no rhythm in such a group of words. But when we know that they
are part of a poem in five-stress verse, we can readjust them so as to
approach more closely to the rhythmical scheme in our minds. We cannot
accent either _of_ or _his_, without destroying the sense; nor can we
deprive either _lone_ or _couch_ of its accent; but we can _lengthen_
the words _of his_ beyond their natural time in speech, pronouncing them
more deliberately, and we can also, perhaps, diminish the phrase-pause
after _couch_. This would tend to equalize the five time-intervals to
which the verse, as a verse, should fit itself. It would be too much to
say that this is what the ordinary reader would do, because the ordinary
reader is likely to have his mind fixed on expressing the sense,
neglecting the rhythm which is equally an element of the poetry; but it
is what the careful reader could do without difficulty.
The first line of _Paradise Lost_,
"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit,"
always a favorite specimen for metrists to dissect, is of like
character. Mr. Robertson, in the essay already cited, makes considerable
use of this verse as showing the vanity of the usual method of dividing
verses into equal feet. He quotes approvingly Professor Shairp's account
of the way in which Clough analyzed the line: "The two feet 'first
disobe-' took up the time of four syllables, two iambic feet: the voice
rested awhile on the word 'first'; then passed swiftly over 'diso-,'
then rested again on 'be-' so as to recover the previous hurry." Now
this seems to be merely a description of the way in which the words
would be uttered in prose, and to neglect the rhythm of the poem in
which they stand. In the second foot one can and should give the
syllable _dis-_ full syllabic time, instead of hurrying over it as in
prose speech,--a rendering made easy by the fact that it frequently has
a marked secondary accent. Conversely, one can give _first_ somewhat
less time than it would occupy in prose, without thereby diminishing
its accent. The word _and_, in the fourth foot, would in prose utterance
be allowed almost no time-value; and it may be treated in the same way
in the verse, by permitting the pause at the comma to fill up the normal
time of the foot. It would seem to be better, however, to give _and_ a
fairly distinct utterance for metrical purposes (without, of course,
adding any stress), and thus to approach more closely to the scheme of
time-intervals. It is highly improbable that any one would read this
verse--or almost any other verse of _Paradise Lost_--with such exact
observance of the equal time-intervals as would appear in regular
lyrical poetry. We have already seen that blank verse departs more
constantly from the typical scheme of the measure than any other of our
verse-forms. Nevertheless, the reader with a well-trained ear listens
always for the flow of the typical metre underneath the surface
irregularities, and, by a delicate adjustment of syllable-lengths, can
bring the poet's words into far more rhythmical utterance than they
would find in prose.
There is one other method of varying the time-elements in verse which
has already been suggested by what was said of the pause at the comma in
the line of _Paradise Lost_. It will be seen very generally that light
syllables, such as one wishes to utter in brief periods of time, are
found on either side of the phrase-pauses in our verse.
"The first in valor, as the first in place"
is a typical line in this respect. The natural pause, indicated by the
comma, takes up part of the time of the third foot, which there are no
syllables fitted wholly to fill. It might almost be said that, in
ordinary five-stress verse, such verses are quite as numerous as those
with five complete feet. The pause satisfies the ear, so far as the
time-intervals are concerned, quite as well as a long syllable.
Pauses not only fill up the incomplete time of a foot containing only
short syllables, but they also fill the time of wholly missing
syllables. In the verse
"Come from the dying moon, and blow"
we start out with trisyllabic rhythm, but have only two syllables in the
second and in the third foot. It does not seem certain whether the
missing syllable after _dying_ is to have its place filled by a pause or
by a prolongation of either or both of the syllables _dy-ing_--perhaps
by all three means combined. In the same way the missing syllable after
_moon_ may have its place filled either by the prolongation of the _oo_,
or by the pause indicated by the comma, or by both. But in other cases
the pause occupies the entire syllable-moment; for examples, see under
Pauses in pages 20-22 above. The whole matter was well summed up in
Lanier's saying that "rhythm may be dependent on silences" as well as on
sounds.
Let us now try to gather what we have been considering into the form of
definite statements regarding the place of the time-element in our
verse.
1. _In the normal verse, accents appear at equal time-intervals._ This,
of course, does not preclude all manner of variations; the unit of
measure is not the distance between the accents as they are found in
each verse, but between the points where they belong in the typical
metre.
2. _There is a tendency toward the coincidence of long and accented, and
of short and unaccented, syllables._ This we have seen to be true in two
different senses. In the first place, an accented syllable is likely to
be lengthened for the same reason that it is accented--because of its
relative importance in the place where it stands. In the second place,
syllables noticeably long are avoided in those places in the verse where
the accent does not fall, and are preferred where the stress is heavy.
3. _In the reading of verse, the length of the syllables is varied
artificially, so as to tend to preserve the equal time-intervals._
4. _In like manner, pauses are introduced where syllables are short or
wanting, to preserve these intervals._
It is quite possible that these laws might be stated more fully and
definitely. In Anglo-Saxon verse the conditions were perhaps not so
different from those of modern English as we are likely to think; there
we know that the principal stresses of the verse always fell on long
syllables, and scholars like Sievers, by analyzing the remains of our
early poetry, have formulated certain other laws as to the position and
relations of the short syllables. If similar laws were to be formulated
for our modern verse, we should probably find them no more perplexing
than our ancestors would find those we have formulated for their verse.
In every case the "law" is only an attempt to express what the ear has
long known and obeyed. Mr. Goodell, in an article on "Quantity in
English Verse," in the _Proceedings of the American Philological
Society_ for 1885, attempted to do for our verse what has just been
suggested. He stated such laws as these:
"The thesis becomes a triseme if the next syllable bears the ictus. No
syllable can be placed in this position which is incapable of
prolongation."
"If the arsis is monosyllabic, a short vowel in the thesis followed by a
single consonant is not lengthened by the ictus; the arsis is instead
prolonged."
"With arsis monosyllabic, the strong tendency is to make the thesis
short."
Perhaps these rules are on the right track; the terminology is somewhat
difficult, and makes one hesitate to criticise carefully. But since, as
we have seen, the terms "long" and "short," as applied to English
syllables, have come to be so purely relative, since our syllabic
quantities vary so much at the will of the reader, and since the whole
matter of the reading of our verse is in good measure one of subjective
interpretation, it seems very doubtful whether any statements more
explicit than those already laid down would be found of practical
service.
Finally, we come back to the question whether we shall use for English
verse the classical terminology which has for so long been applied to
it. Those who object to such terminology do so either on the ground that
it implies that English accented and unaccented syllables are equivalent
respectively to Latin long and short syllables, or on the still more
fundamental ground that there is nothing in our verse which can properly
be called a "foot." It is undoubtedly true that the use of terms based
on quantity has given rise to some confusion when applied to phenomena
based on accent, yet the terms are now understood with as fair a degree
of clearness as any terms relating to so disputed a subject as English
verse; and it seems very doubtful whether it is not easier to explain
them than to introduce new ones. Experiments in the latter direction
have not been very successful. The latest writer on the subject objects,
with considerable severity, to the classical nomenclature "hardly
pressed and barbarously misapplied." Our current prosody, he says later,
"ignores" the frequent occurrence of an accented syllable at the
beginning of a line of Shakspere's verse, "turning it off with the
statement that 'a trochaic foot may begin an iambic verse.'" Yet when we
reach the summary of the author's discussion of the subject, we find the
same phenomenon "turned off" with this statement: "In rising rhythm a
thought-moment may begin with a falling wave-group." One cannot avoid
querying whether this interesting combination of words conveys any
simpler and better idea to the normal English reader than the familiar
statement that "a trochaic foot may begin an iambic verse." The case is
instructive as to the danger of attempting a new terminology where one
is already established, and of imagining that one has thereby made the
discussion of the subject more scientific.
The second of the objections to the usual terminology, that there is no
real _foot_ in English verse, has already been considered. If there are
no regular units of measure in our verse, then to attempt constantly to
find such units, and to use terms that imply their existence, is
certainly a mistake. But those are on the wrong track who would find the
divisions of the verse in the natural phrase-divisions of English
speech.[55] In "_arma virumque cano_" the syllable _vi-_ is far more
closely connected with the syllable _-rum_, for all prose purposes, than
with the preceding syllables; but in the verse the Romans thought of it
as being in the same foot with _arma_; and later in the verse the last
syllable of _cano_ is rhythmically connected (over the barrier of a
comma) with the first of _Trojæ_. Indeed, the Latin poets instinctively
avoided the regular coincidence of metrical units with word or sentence
units. Precisely the same thing is true of English verse. It has been
suggested more than once that the great preponderance, among English
dissyllables, of those accented on the first syllable, goes to explain
our preference for iambic over trochaic measures; and that one reason
why the rhythm of _Hiawatha_, for example, so soon wearies the ear, is
because its metrical divisions and word divisions so frequently
coincide. The fundamental principle of verse is that it sets up a new
order of progress which constantly conflicts with, yet without
destroying, the order of progress of common prose speech.
So the _foot_ means, not a unit of measure for the words, but for the
syllables viewed as rhythmical sound; and the attempt has already been
made to show that it represents the time-interval between the regularly
recurring accents of the normal metre. When there are two syllables in
the interval, it is convenient to call the foot an iambus, a trochee, a
pyrrhic, or a spondee; when there are three, it is convenient to call
the foot an anapest or a dactyl. According to this system, the number of
feet in the metre will always depend on the number of regularly
recurring accents, which of course is not the case in classical prosody.
For the same reason, all exceptional feet can be named by one of the six
terms indicated, except where (as in Swinburne's "Choriambics") some
classical metre is deliberately imitated. There is no sufficient reason
for speaking of the choriambus as occurring in Shakspere's verse,
because where four syllables occur in such succession as to form a sort
of choriambus, they will be found to fill the place of _two_ ordinary
feet, not of one; hence it would be irrational to combine them into one
exceptional foot. But on this matter of convenience in the terminology
of verse, one cannot do better than to refer the reader to Mr. Mayor's
_Chapters on English Metre_, where a refreshingly simple system is set
forth, such as will not break down under any reasonable test.
There is one defect, it may be freely admitted, in these classical names
of feet. They provide no place for the secondary accent. A foot made up
of a fully accented plus a slightly accented syllable must be called
either a spondee (the second syllable being thought of as approaching
the stress of the first) or a trochee (the syllable being thought of as
approaching no stress). The abundant use of secondary or compromised
accents--and one might say, too, of secondary or compromised
quantities--is a Germanic characteristic, for which no classical
terminology can provide. There is, theoretically, room for some new
names of feet recognizing these ambiguous syllables. Yet since degrees
of accent are purely relative, and no two readers would be sure of
agreeing as to which syllables are fully stressed, and which are
half-stressed, it is not likely that such additional terms would make
our terminology any more exact for practical purposes. The present
system does, in fact, represent a characteristic feature of modern
English as distinguished from early English verse; namely, that our
metres strive after a regular alternation of stress and no-stress, and
that the ear imagines this alternation even where (if it were a matter
of prose utterance) it can scarcely be said to exist.
It would be absurd to strive with any warmth for the classical system of
terminology in English prosody. It is undoubtedly not an ideal system,
nor such a one as we should adopt if we were naming everything anew; few
existing terminologies are. The only object of the present defence of
its carefully limited use is to show that it does stand for some
fundamental facts in our verse, and to suggest that it is usually wiser
to make the best of the vocabulary we have than to fly to one we know
not of. The important thing, in any case, is not the question of terms,
but the end that we should not lose hold of the musical rhythms of our
verse, made up of delicately adjusted elements of accent and time.