A. Lines
I. Alliterative.—Enough has probably been said above of the old alliterative line and its generic character; while the later variations, which came upon it after its revival, have also been noticed and exemplified. Its origin is quite unknown; but the presence of closely allied forms, in the different Scandinavian and Teutonic languages, assures, beyond doubt, a natural rise from some speech-rhythm or tune-rhythm proper to the race and tongue. It is also probable that the remarkable difference of lengths—short, normal, and extended—which is observable in O.E. poetry is of the highest antiquity. It has at any rate persevered to the present day in the metrical successors of this line; and there is probably no other poetry which has—at a majority of its periods, if not throughout—indulged in such variety of line-length as English. Nor, perhaps, is there any which contains, even in its oldest and roughest forms, a metrical or quasi-metrical arrangement more close to the naturally increased, but not denaturalised, emphasis of impassioned utterance, more thoroughly born from the primeval oak and rock.
II. "Short" Lines.—Despite the tendency to variation of lines above noted, A.S. poetry did not favour very short ones; and its faithful disciple and champion, Guest, accordingly condemns them in modern English poetry. This is quite wrong. In the "bobs" and other examples in Middle English we find the line shortened almost, if not actually, to the monosyllable, and this liberty has persisted through all the best periods of English verse since, though frequently frowned upon by pedantry. Its origin is, beyond all reasonable doubt, to be traced to French and Provençal influence, especially to that of the short refrain; but it is so congenial to the general tendency noted above that very little suggestion must have been needed. It must, however, be said that very short lines, in combination with long ones, almost necessitate rhyme to punctuate and illumine the divisions of symphonic effect; and, consequently, it was not till rhyme came in that they could be safely and successfully used. But when this was mastered there was no further difficulty. In all the best periods of English lyric writing—in that of Alison and its fellows, in the carols of the fifteenth century, in late Elizabethan and Caroline lyric, and in nineteenth-century poetry—the admixture of very short lines has been a main secret of lyrical success; and in most cases it has probably been hardly at all a matter of deliberate imitation, but due to an instinctive sense of the beauty and convenience of the adjustment.
III. Octosyllable.—The historical origin of the octosyllabic (or, as the accentual people call it, the four-beat or four-stress line) is one of the most typical in the whole range of prosody, though the lesson of the type may be differently interpreted. Taking it altogether, there is perhaps no metre in which so large a body of modern, including mediæval, poetry has been composed. But, although it is simply dimeter iambic, acatalectic or catalectic as the case may be, it is quite vain to try to discover frequent and continuous patterns of origin for it in strictly classical prosody.[162] Odd lines, rarely exact, in choric odes prove nothing, and the really tempting
[a]Αμμων Ολυμπου δεσποτα]
of Pindar is an uncompleted fragment which might have gone off into any varieties of Pindaric. There are a few fragments of Alcman—
[a]Ὡρας δ' εσηκε τρεις, θερος]
and of the genuine Anacreon—
[a]Μηδ' ὡστε κυμα ποντιον,]
in the metre, while the spurious verse of the "Anacreontea," a catalectic form with trisyllabic equivalence, seems to have been actually practised by the real poet. Alternately used, it is, of course, frequent in the epodes of Horace, in Martial, etc. But the fact remains that, as has been said, it is not a classical metre to any but a very small extent, though those who attach no value to anything but the "beats" may find it in bulk in the anapæstic dimeter of Greek and Latin choruses. It is in the Latin hymns—that is to say, in Latin after it had undergone a distinct foreign admixture—that the metre first appears firmly and distinctly established. In the fourth century, St. Ambrose without rhyme, and Hilary with it, employ the iambic dimeter, and it soon becomes almost the staple, though Prudentius, contemporary with both of them and more of a regular poet, while he does use it, seems to prefer other metres. By the time, however, when the modern prosodies began to take form, it was thoroughly well settled; and every Christian nation in Europe knew examples of it by heart.
It still, however, remains a problem exactly why this particular metre should, as a matter of direct literary imitation, have commended itself so widely to the northern nations. They had nearly or quite as many examples in the same class of the trochaic dimeter
Gaude, plaude, Magdalena
and they paid no attention to this, though their southern neighbours did. They had, from the time of Pope Damasus[163] downwards, and in almost all the hymn-writers, mixed dactylic metres to choose from; but for a staple they went to this. It seems impossible that there should not have been some additional and natural reasons for the adoption—reasons which, if they had not actually brought it about without any literary patterns at all, directed poets to those patterns irresistibly. Nor, as it seems to the present writer, is it at all difficult to discover, as far at least as English is concerned, what these reasons were.
The discovery might be made "out of one's own head"; but here as elsewhere Layamon is a most important assistant and safeguard. A mere glance at any edition of alliterative verse, printed in half lines, will show that it has a rough resemblance on the page to octosyllabics, though the outline is more irregular. A moderately careful study of Layamon shows, as has been indicated, that, in writing this verse with new influences at work upon him, he substitutes octosyllabic couplet for it constantly. And the history in the same way shows that this occasional substitution became a habitual one with others. Not that there is any mystical virtue in four feet, despite their frequency in the actual creation: but that, as an equivalent of the old half line, the choice lies practically between three and four. Now a three-foot line, though actually tried as in the Bestiary and in parts of Horn, is, as a general norm, too short, is ineffective and jingly, brings the rhyme too quick, and hampers the exhibition of the sense by a too staccato and piecemeal presentment. The abundant adoption of the octosyllable in French no doubt assisted the spread in English. But it is not unimportant to observe that English translators and adapters of French octosyllabic poems by no means always preserve the metre, and that English octosyllables often represent French poems which are differently metred in the original.
IV. Decasyllable.—A connected literary origin for this great line—the ancient staple of French poetry, the modern staple of English, and (in still greater modernity) of German to some extent, as well as (with the extension of one syllable necessitated by the prevailing rhythm of the language) of Italian throughout its history—has always been found extraordinarily difficult to assign. That some have even been driven to the line which furnishes the opening couplet of the Alcaic
Quam si clientum longa negotia,
or
Vides ut alta stet nive candidum,
an invariably hendecasyllabic line of the most opposite rhythm, constitution, and division, will show the straits which must have oppressed them. The fact is that there is nothing, either in Greek or Latin prosody, in the least resembling it or suggestive of it. To connect it with these prosodies at all reasonably, it would be necessary to content ourselves with the supposition, not illogical or impossible, but not very explanatory, that somebody found the iambic dimeter too short, and the iambic trimeter too long, and split the difference.
In another way, and abandoning the attempt to find parents or sponsors in antiquity for this remarkable foundling, a not wholly dissimilar conjecture becomes really illuminative—that the line of ten syllables (or eleven with "weak ending") proved itself the most useful in the modern languages. As a matter of fact it appears in the very earliest French poem we possess—the tenth- or perhaps even ninth-century Hymn of St. Eulalia:
Bel auret corps, bellezour anima,
and in the (at youngest) tenth-century Provençal Boethius:
No credet Deu lo nostre creator.
If it still seem pusillanimous to be content with such an explanation, one can share one's pusillanimity with Dante, who contents himself with saying that the line of eleven syllables "seems the stateliest and most excellent, as well by reason of the length of time it occupies as of the extent of subject, construction and language of which it is capable." And in English, with which we are specially, if not indeed wholly, concerned, history brings us the reinforcement of showing that the decasyllable literally forced itself, in practice, upon the English poet.
This all-important fact has been constantly obscured by the habit of saying that Chaucer "invented" the heroic couplet in English—that he, at any rate, borrowed it first from the French. Whether he did so as a personal fact we cannot say, for he is not here to tell us. That he need not have done so there is ample and irrefragable evidence. In the process of providing substitutes for the old unmetrical line, it is not only obvious that the decasyllable—which, from a period certainly anterior to the rise of Middle English, had been the staple metre, in long assonanced tirades or batches, of the French Chansons de geste—must have suggested itself. It is still more certain that it did. It is found in an unpolished and haphazard condition, but unmistakable, in the Orison of our Lady (early thirteenth century); it occurs in Genesis and Exodus, varying the octosyllable itself, in the middle of that age; it is scattered about the Romances, in the same company, at what must have been early fourteenth century at latest; it occurs constantly in Hampole's Prick of Conscience at the middle of this century; and there are solid blocks of it in the Vernon MS., which was written (i.e. copied from earlier work), at latest, before Chaucer is likely to have started the Legend of Good Women or the Canterbury Tales. That his practice settled and established it—though for long the octosyllable still outbid it in couplet, and it was written chiefly in the stanza form of "rhyme-royal"—is true. But by degrees the qualities which Dante had alleged made it prevail, and prepared it as the line-length for blank verse as well as for the heroic couplet, and for the bulk of narrative stanza-writing. No doubt Chaucer was assisted by the practice of Machault and other French poets. But there should be still less doubt that, without that practice, he might, and probably would, have taken it up. For the first real master of versification—whether he were Chaucer, or (in unhappy default of him) somebody else, who must have turned up sooner or later—could not but have seen, for his own language, what Dante saw for his.
V. Alexandrine.—The Alexandrine or verse of twelve syllables, iambically divided, does not resemble its relation, the octosyllable, in having a doubtful classical ancestry; or its other relation, the decasyllable, in having none. It is, from a certain point of view, the exact representative of the great iambic trimeter which was the staple metre of Greek tragedy, and was largely used in Greek and Roman verse. The identity of the two was recognised in English as early as the Mirror for Magistrates, and indeed could escape no one who had the knowledge and used it in the most obvious way.
At the same time it is necessary frankly to say that this resemblance—at least, as giving the key to origin—is, in all probability, wholly delusive. There are twelve syllables in each line, and there are iambics in both. But to any one who has acquired—as it is the purpose of this book to help its readers to acquire or develop—a "prosodic" sense, like the much-talked-of historic sense, it will seem to be a matter of no small weight, that while the cæsura (central pause) of the ancient trimeter is penthemimeral (at the fifth syllable), or hepthemimeral (at the seventh), that of the modern "Alexandrine" is, save by rare, and not often justified, license, invariably at the sixth or middle—a thing which actually alters the whole rhythmical constitution and effect of the line.[164] Nor, is the name to be neglected. Despite the strenuous effort of modern times to upset traditional notions, it remains a not seriously disputed fact that the name "Alexandrine" comes from the French Roman d'Alexandre, not earlier than the late twelfth century, and itself following upon at least one decasyllabic Alexandreid. The metre, however, suited French, and, as it had done on this particular subject, ousted the decasyllable in the Chansons de geste generally; while, with some intervals and revolts, it has remained the "dress-clothes" of French poetry ever since, and even imposed itself as such upon German for a considerable time.
In English, however, though, by accident and in special and partial use, it has occupied a remarkable place, it has never been anything like a staple. One of the most singular statements in Guest's English Rhythms is that the "verse of six accents" (as he calls it) was "formerly the one most commonly used in our language." The present writer is entirely unable to identify this "formerly": and the examples which Guest produces, of single and occasional occurrence in O.E. and early M.E., seem to him for the most part to have nothing to do with the form. But it was inevitable that on the one hand the large use of the metre in French, and on the other its nearness as a metrical adjustment to the old long line or stave, should make it appear sometimes. The six-syllable lines of the Bestiary and Horn are attempts to reproduce it in halves, and Robert of Brunne reproduces it as a whole.[165] It appears not seldom in the great metrical miscellany of the Vernon MS., and many of Langland's accentual-alliterative lines reduce themselves to, or close to it; while it very often makes a fugitive and unkempt appearance in fifteenth-century doggerel. Not a few of the poems of the Mirror for Magistrates are composed in it, and as an alternative to the fourteener (this was possibly what Guest was thinking of) it figures in the "poulter's measure" of the early and middle sixteenth century. Sidney used it for the sonnet. But it was not till Drayton's Polyolbion that it obtained the position of continuous metre for a long poem: and this has never been repeated since, except in Browning's Fifine at the Fair.
So, the most important appearances by far of the Alexandrine in English are not continuous; but as employed to vary and complete other lines. There are two of these in especial: the first among the greatest metrical devices in English, the other (though variously judged and not very widely employed) a great improvement. The first is the addition, to an eight-line arrangement in decasyllables, of a ninth in Alexandrine which constitutes the Spenserian stanza and will be spoken of below. The other is the employment of the Alexandrine as a variation of decasyllable in couplet, in triplet and singly, which is, according to some, including the present writer, visible in the "riding-rhyme" of Chaucer; which is often present in the blank verse of Shakespeare; not absent from that of Milton in his earlier attempts; employed in decasyllabic couplet by Cowley, and (with far greater success) by Dryden; gradually abandoned and unfavourably spoken of by Pope; but revived with magnificent effect by Keats in Lamia.
VI. Fourteener.—On this, as indeed on most of these heads, it will be well to compare the continuous survey of scanned examples and the remarks there. This line (or its practical equivalent under the final e system, the fifteener) is probably the oldest attempt to get a single metrical equivalent for the old divided stave. Its own equivalents exist, of course, both in Greek and Latin, but it is rather doubtful whether these had much or anything to do with its genesis. A more probable source, if any source of the kind is wanted, has been suggested in the peculiar Latin thirteener so popular in the Middle Ages, and best known by the lines attributed to Mapes—
Meum est propositum in taberna mori.
With a "catch" syllable at each half[166] you get the full accentual iambic fifteener, and the fourteener follows.
Perhaps, though it is difficult to recognise the fourteener-rhythm attributed by Guest and others to Cædmon and later A.S. writers, it is not necessary to look for any foreign sources as other than auxiliary to the development of the metre in English. So soon as a definite iambic mould, with or without trochaic and anapæstic substitution, began to be impressed on the language, the amount of stuff usual in a full line would naturally fall into fourteener shape. It did so, we know, as early as the Moral Ode at least; and barely a century later, it showed its popularity by the abundant use of Robert of Gloucester and the Saints' Lives writers. Nor, although the inevitable and fortunate break-up into ballad eight-and-six encroached on its rights to a large extent, and the alliterative revival still more, did it lose its attraction, as Gamelyn and other things show, till it got half drowned in the doggerel welter of the fifteenth century. From this the earlier Elizabethans fished it out, cleaned and mended it for practice both independently and as part of the "poulter's measure," while the finest example existing was given by Chapman's Iliad in the early seventeenth century. More recently, except in the Sigurd variety, it has been seldom used for long poems, but has served as the vehicle of many of the finest short pieces in the poetry of the nineteenth century.
VII. Doggerel.—In the sense (see [Glossary]) in which this ambiguous word applies to line, it is very important to acquire some notion of its meaning, but rather difficult to put that notion except very hypothetically. It is, in this use, conveniently applied to an enormous mass of verse—sometimes hardly deserving that name, but principally produced in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—which refuses, except occasionally, to adjust itself to any standard, even liberally equivalenced, of iambic octosyllable, decasyllable, Alexandrine, and fourteener, or of the trochaic and anapæstic metres corresponding to some of these, though it comes nearest to the anapæstic division. The pure accentualist may dismiss it as lines of so many irregular beats, and trouble himself no farther. But that, on the principles of this book, will not do. An exceedingly interesting parallel between it (as well as one of its regularised forms, the anapæstic dimeter) and the Spanish long line, or "Arte Mayor," has been drawn by Professor Ker. (See [Bibliography].) But, without either taking or opposing his view, there is no doubt of the existence of this mare magnum of imperfect versification. It seems to have been fed by various streams. In the first place, as we see from the Gamelyn metre, and from some nursery songs (which, though they cannot be older than formed Middle English, may be nearly as old), like "The Queen was in the Parlour," the fourteener had a tendency to break itself into roughly balanced halves of sometimes different rhythm. The Alexandrine, never quite at home in English, would naturally bulge and straddle in the same way. On the regular and continuous anapæstic swing nobody had yet hit for long, though it probably arose in part from this very chaos. But perhaps the most abundant source of all was the attempt to write Chaucerian decasyllables with a constantly altering pronunciation, and the break-down in it. Examples of various forms of doggerel, with their corresponding metres, are given below.[167]
VIII. "Long" Lines.—Beyond the fourteener or fifteener English verse has, until quite modern times, rarely gone. There are sixteeners to be found in fourteenth-century verse, in the disorderly welter of the fifteenth, and (no doubt deliberately used) in the experiments of the Mirror for Magistrates; but neither they, nor any longer still, commended themselves much to any English poet before Mr. Swinburne. His experiments are famous, and some examples of them are given elsewhere. Their spirit and sweep has made not a few readers look on them with favour; but it may be questioned whether any lines beyond seven feet—and whether even six- and seven-foot lines when trisyllabic feet are allowed—do not tend to break themselves up in English. In Mr. Swinburne's own case certainly, and perhaps in some others, the seven-foot anapæstic line of Aristophanes gave the suggestion, while the abundant practice in so-called English hexameters may also have had not a little to do with it.