TABLE ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF THE HEROIC COUPLET_English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and History

The following table is designed, in the first place, to illustrate the

history of the decasyllabic couplet in English verse, by making possible

a comparison of the characteristic details of its form in different

periods; and, in the second place, to suggest a method by which, through

the careful tabulation of facts, one may substantiate or correct general

statements as to the qualities of verse.

Any such statistics as are here presented must be accepted, if at all,

with no little caution. The table is based on passages of one hundred

lines each, believed to be fairly representative of the verse of the

several authors. No passage of this length, however, can be known to be

perfectly typical. A still greater difficulty is found in the

necessarily subjective character of any such tabulation. Most lines of

English decasyllabic verse can be read--with reference to the

distribution of accents and pauses--in more than one way. It is

unlikely, therefore, that any two readers would reach the same results

in trying to form a table of this kind. The _absolute_ validity of the

figures is therefore doubtful; but on condition that they all have been

computed by the same person, consistently with a single standard of

judgment, their relative validity, for purposes of _comparison_, may be

fairly assumed.

The facts here set down for each specimen of verse group themselves in

four divisions. In the first place, each line of verse is either

"run-on" or "end-stopped"; and, in riming couplets, it is also of

interest to know whether the second line of the couplet is run-on into

the following couplet. In the second place, the cesural pause occurs

either near the middle of the line or elsewhere, or--it may be--is

omitted altogether. In the third place, the line may have a feminine

ending. In the fourth place, it may contain some other foot than the

regular iambus.

There is some room for difference of judgment as to whether a given line

is "end-stopped" or "run-on"; but with occasional exceptions the

presence or want of a mark of punctuation may be made the determining

element. Obviously one may find such clear phrase-pauses, without

punctuation, as will justify the caption "end-stopped."

There is far more divergence of judgment in the recognition of the

cesura. Some writers on prosody treat practically every line of ten

syllables as having a cesural pause, and certainly some slight

phrase-pause may almost always be found. In the following table,

however, the cesura has been recognized only when there is a grammatical

or rhetorical pause so considerable as--in most cases--to require a mark

of punctuation. Such a verse, then, as--

"Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky"

is counted as having "no cesura." The cesura is counted as "medial" when

occurring after the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable; elsewhere it is

regarded as "variant." The significance of this distinction is very

clear in the comparison of the heroic couplet of the "classical" with

that of the "romantic" school of poets.[60]

It is in the last group of facts, those relating to substituted feet,

that the subjective element is most embarrassing. There can be no very

general agreement among readers as to the degree of accent necessary to

change a pair of syllables from an "iambus" to a "pyrrhic" or a

"spondee." The other two forms of substitution (inverted accent, giving

"trochees," and trisyllabic feet, giving "anapests") are somewhat more

definitely determinable. In the following table the naming of all these

feet is based on what is believed to be the natural reading of the

verse, with a due regard for both rhetorical and metrical accent. In the

verse--

"By these the springs of property were bent"

the fourth foot is counted a pyrrhic; so also in this--

"Their busy teachers mingled with the Jews,"

although here a certain secondary accent on the eighth syllable is

possible. In such a verse as--

"There is a path on the sea's azure floor"

the third foot is counted a pyrrhic and the fourth a spondee.[61]

One may get, then, from a table of this sort, a general view of the

character of any particular piece of verse, in respect to the poet's

preference for run-on lines, for feminine endings, for breaking the

verse into two equal parts, for varying the cesura, or for substituting

exceptional feet. The description would be more nearly complete if there

were also indicated the _places_ in the verse where substituted feet

occur; a trochee in the second foot is a very different thing from one

in the first; but it is difficult to tabulate facts of this order

without complicating one's results beyond the point of serviceable

clearness.

Some students of verse are doubtless offended by the use of statistics

in connection with a subject of this kind; and it is easy to ridicule

the obvious incongruity of mathematical methods and poetry. A recent

magazine critic makes merry over certain statistical studies in rhythm,

carried on in a laboratory by recording the beats in nursery-rimes on

the one hand and in hymns on the other. "There is a certain class of

problems," he observes most justly, "whose external aspects may possibly

yield to statistical tabulation, but which in the last resort must be

spiritually discerned."[62] Poetry is unquestionably of this class. Yet

this would not seem to forbid the study, by scientific methods, of those

"external aspects" admittedly susceptible of tabulation. One is not

likely to recommend elementary students to count trochees and cesuras in

order to increase their appreciation of good verse. But when one comes

to the point of generalizing as to the laws or history of verse-forms,

it is well to have a method of correction, representable in figures

black and white, for the vague impressions which are all that

appreciative reading can give. Perhaps the real service of such a method

as has just been described is to prevent one from making hasty

generalizations which statistics will not support.

Obviously the same system can be applied to blank verse, with the

omission of the second category in the table. A convenient method of

making such a study is to use sheets of paper ruled for twenty-five

lines and seven columns. Each horizontal line represents a line of verse

analyzed. The columns are headed "Cesura," "T," "P," "S," "A," "Run-on,"

and "Fem. Ending." A cesural pause between the third and fourth

syllables is indicated by the figures 3/4 in the first column. A trochee

in the first foot is indicated by the figure 1 in the "T" column; a

spondee in the fourth foot by the figure 4 in the "S" column; and so on.

A simple check-mark in the sixth or seventh column indicates

respectively a case of _enjambement_ or of feminine ending. When the

tabulation is complete, one can easily note the proportion of run-on

lines and exceptional cesuras, and can also determine at a glance not

only the number of exceptional feet but the parts of the verse in which

they occur.

In the following table the figures regarding the couplets of Spenser are

based on his _Mother Hubbard's Tale_; those relating to Joseph Hall, on

the Satires of his _Virgidemiarum_ (see p. 182); those relating to Leigh

Hunt, on _The Story of Rimini_; those relating to Keats, on _Endymion_;

to Browning, on _Sordello_.

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

| 1385) |(1591) |(1597) |(1616) |(ab. 1650)

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

Lines | 16 | 14 | 10 | 26 | 16

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

Couplets | 7 | 4 | 1 | 8 | 2

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

Cesura | 33 | 31 | 37 | 48 | 50

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

No | | | | |

Cesura | 58 | 64 | 58 | 29 | 42

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

Cesura | 9 | 5 | 5 | 23 | 8

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

Endings | 64 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 0

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

[a] | | | | |

Trochees | 15 | 13 | 18 | 22 | 23

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

[a] | | | | |

Pyrrhics | 26 | 29 | 24 | 35 | 46

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

[a] | | | | |

Spondees | 0 | 13 | 14 | 18 | 14

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

[a] | | | | |

Anapests | 4 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0

---------+----------+--------+---------+--------+-----------

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

|(ab. 1680) |(ab. 1725) | (1816) |(1818) |(1840)

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

Lines | 11 | 4 | 13 | 40 | 58

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

Couplets | 1 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 27

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

Cesura | 52 | 47 | 46 | 53 | 30

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

No | | | | |

Cesura | 40 | 44 | 35 | 27 | 25

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

Cesura | 8 | 9 | 19 | 20 | 45

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

Endings | 0 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 0

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

[a] | | | | |

Trochees | 15 | 25 | 29 | 29 | 34

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

[a] | | | | |

Pyrrhics | 46 | 27 | 40 | 37 | 34

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

[a] | | | | |

Spondees | 1 | 11 | 9 | 19 | 19

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

[a] | | | | |

Anapests | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1

---------+-----------+-----------+--------+-------+---------

[a] No account is taken in the table of more than a single occurrence of

the same exceptional foot in any one line.

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