FOOTNOTES:

[11] For the almost necessary precedence, owing to the inflexional e, of the fourteener by this, and for expansion and explanation of other historic facts mentioned in this chapter, see Scanned Conspectus and [Books II]. and [III].

[12] See [Bibliography] and [Book III].

[13] This, it may be pointed out, is in flat contradiction to the older doctrine of, for instance, Dryden, that no vowel can be cut out before another in scansion which is not so in pronunciation.

[14] Examples here can hardly be needed. At any rate, one (Shenstone's, v. inf., own) may suffice:

The loose wall tottering o'er the trembling shade,

Cautions.

Here syllabic prosody would pronounce, and in strictness spell, "tott'ring."—This is perhaps as good a place as any to make some remarks on the connection of syllables with English prosody. In that prosody there are no extrametrical syllables, except at the end of lines, and (much more doubtfully) at the cæsura, which is a sort of end. Every syllable that occurs elsewhere must be part of, or constitute, a foot; and it is for this reason that the "Rules" following begin with feet, not syllables. It is practically impossible, in many, if not in most cases, to tell the prosodic value of an English syllable, or an English word, till you see it in actual verse.—Again, although there are, of course, innumerable instances where a foot coincides with a word, the composition of the foot out of syllables belonging to different words, as in

The thun|der of | the trum|pets of | the night,

To set|tle the | success|ion of | the state,

is usually more effective.—And, lastly, although there have, at different times, been strange prejudices against the use of monosyllables and of polysyllables, these prejudices are, in both cases, wholly unreasonable.

[CHAPTER IV]
SYSTEMS OF ENGLISH PROSODY—THE FOOT

General if not always consistent use of the term "foot."

Although the accentual and the syllabic systems—sometimes separate, but oftener combined—have, on the whole, dominated English preceptist prosody almost from the time when it first began to be formally studied, there has, until very recently, been a constant tendency to blend with these, if not the full acceptance, at any rate a certain borrowing, of the terminology of a third system—the foot-and-quantity one, so well known in the classical prosodies. Not before Bysshe (c. 1700) do you find any positive denial of "feet." Gascoigne (c. 1570) talks of them; Milton speaks of "committing short and long"; Dr. Johnson, though using a strict accent-and-syllable scheme, admits (whether with absolute accuracy or not does not matter) that "our heroic verse is derived from the iambic." And in more modern times, from Mitford downwards, arguments against the applicability of the terms in English have not unfrequently been found consistent with an occasional, if not a regular, employment of them.

In fact, nothing but a curious suspicion, as of something cabalistical in them, can prevent their use, or the use of some much more clumsy and inconvenient equivalents—bars, beats, sections, what not;[15] for that use is based on the most unalterable of all things, except the laws of thought, the laws of mathematics. Everybody, whatsoever his prosodic sect, admits that verse consists of alternations of two values—some would say of more than two, but that only complicates the application of an unchanged argument. Now the possible combinations of two different things, in successive numerical units of two, three, four, etc., are not arbitrary, but naturally fixed; and the names of feet—iambic, trochaic, dactylic, etc.—are merely tickets for these combinations.

Particular objections to its systematic use.

The reasons of the objection have been various, and are perhaps not always fully stated, or even fully appreciated, by those who advance them. It is most common perhaps now (though it was not so formerly) to find the objection itself lodged thus—that the so-called English iambs, anapæsts, etc., are different things from the feet so called in Greek or Latin. This is sufficiently met by the reply that they are naturally so, the languages being different, and that all that is necessary is that the English foot should stand to English prosody as the Latin or Greek foot does to Latin or Greek, that is to say, as the necessary and constituent middle stage between the syllable and the line. But a less vague and, in appearance at least, more solid objection is that the Latin and the Greek foot were constituted out of definite "quantities" attaching to definite syllables, and that there is "no syllabic quantity in English," though there may be vowel quantity. And this objection is generally, if not always, based on or backed by a further one, that "quantity" depends directly on time of pronunciation; while this again is supported, still further back, by elaborate discussions of accent and quantity,[16] by denials that accent can constitute quantity, and by learned expatiations in quest of proof that Greeks and Romans scanned their verses as they did not pronounce them—that there was a sort of amicable pitched battle, always going on, between quantity and accent.

"Quantity" in English.

Now it can be easily shown that, even if these contentions as to classical verse be accepted (and some of them are very doubtful), they supply no sort of bar to the application of the foot system, with such quantity as it requires, to English. It is quite true that the proportion of syllables of absolutely fixed quantity—that is fixed capacity of filling up what corresponds to the long or short places of a classical verse—is, in English, very small. There are some which the ear discovers by the awkwardness of the sound when they are forced into a "short" place. So also there are some which—by the coincidence of vowel quality, position, and absence of accent—it is practically impossible to put into a "long" place, such as the second syllable of "Deity." Nor are what are called "long vowel sounds"—the sounds of "rīte," "fāte," "bēat," "Ēurope," "ōmen," "āwkward," etc.—always sufficient to make a syllable inflexibly long; though they may be sometimes. Again, the extremest "shortness" of vowel sound, as in "and" or "if," will not prevent such syllables from being indubitably long in certain values and collocations.

The "common" syllable.

In other words, that peculiarity of being "common"—that is to say, of being capable of holding either position—which was far from unknown in the classical languages, is very much more prevalent in English. It would be quite false to say that every syllable in English is common; but it is scarcely at all false to say that almost every English monosyllable is, and an extremely large proportion of others.

The methods and movements by which this commonness is turned into length or shortness for the purposes of the poet are obvious enough, and in practice undeniable; though the processes of professional phonetics sometimes tend to obscure or even to deny them. Every well-educated and well-bred Englishman, who has been accustomed to read poetry and utter speech carefully, knows that when he emphasises a syllable like "and," "if," "the," etc., it becomes what the Germans would call versfähig—capable of performing its metrical duty—in the long position; that when he does not, it is not so capable. Every one knows in practice, though it may be denied in theory, that similar lengthening [17] follows the doubling of a consonant after a short vowel, or the placing of a group of consonants of different kinds after it—the vowel-sound running, as it were, under the penthouse of consonants till it emerges. Extreme loudness and sharpness would have the same effect in conversation, but, unless very obviously suggested by sense, would escape notice in silent reading. Not very seldom, the mere art of the poet will get weight enough on a short syllable to fit it for its place as "long," or conjure away from a long one length enough to enable it to act as "short."

At any rate, it is with these two values, and with syllables endowed with them by custom, incidental effect, place, sense, the poet's sleight of hand, or otherwise, that the English poet deals; and has dealt, ever since a period impossible to nail down with exactness to year or decade, but beginning, perhaps, early in the twelfth century and perfecting itself in the thirteenth and later. And impartial examination of the whole facts from that period shows that he deals with them on a system, in early times no doubt almost or quite unconsciously adopted, but perfectly recognisable. In still earlier or "Old" English verse this system is not discernible at all; in the earliest period of "Middle" English it is discernible, struggling to get itself into shape. Later, with advances and relapses, it perfects itself absolutely. Its principles are as follows:—

Intermediate rules of arrangement.

Every English verse consists of a certain number of feet, made up of long and short syllables, each of which is of equal consequence in the general composition of the line.

The correspondence of the foot arrangements between different lines constitutes the link between them, and determines their general character.

Some interim rules of feet (expanded in note).

But this correspondence need not be limited to repetition of feet composed of a fixed and identical number of syllables in the same order; on the contrary, the best verse admits of large substitution of feet of different syllabic length, provided—(1) that these are equal or nearly equal in prosodic value to those for which they are substituted; (2) that the substituted feet go rhythmically well with those next to which they are placed.[18]

A fuller list of observed rules for English verse generally will be found in the next chapter, but between the two a set of remarks, specially on the foot, may be extracted from the larger History, vol. i. pp. 82-84.

Every English verse which has disengaged itself from the versicle[1] is composed, and all verses that are disengaging themselves therefrom show a nisus towards being composed, of feet of one, two, or three syllables.

The foot of one syllable is always long, strong, stressed, accented, what-not.[19]

The foot of two syllables usually consists of one long and one short syllable, and though it is not essential that either should come first, the short precedes rather more commonly.

The foot of three syllables never has more than one long syllable in it, and that syllable, save in the most exceptional rhythms, is always the first or the third. In modern poetry, by no means usually, but not seldom, it has no long syllable at all.

The foot of one syllable is practically not found except

a, In the first place of a line.

b, In the last place of it.

c, At a strong cæsura or break, it being almost invariably necessary that the voice should rest on it long enough to supply the missing companion to make up the equivalent of a "time and a half" at least.

d, In very exceptional cases where the same trick of the voice is used apart from strict cæsura.

The foot of two syllables and that of three may, subject to the rules below, be found anywhere.

But:

These feet of two and three syllables may be very freely substituted for each other.

There is a certain metrical and rhythmical norm of the line which must not be confused by too frequent substitutions.

In no case, or in hardly any case,[20] must such combinations be put together so that a juxtaposition of more than three short syllables results.

But, for the purpose of this present book, illustration and example are of much more value than abstract exposition; and to them we shall now turn.

Here, for instance, is a line from Tennyson's "Brook":

Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail.

The different systems applied to a single verse of Tennyson's,

Now the system which regards syllabic precision first of all, with a minor glance at accent, but rejects "feet," surveys this line and pronounces it passable with the elision

Twinkled th' innumerable ear and tail,

but rather shakes its head at the absence of accent, or the slight and weak accent, in "innumerable," and the "inversion" of accent in "twìnkled."

The system which looks at accent first of all pronounces that there are only four proper accents [stresses] here:

Twìnkled the innùmerable èar and tàil.

Both these systems, moreover—the syllabic, as far as it recognises accent; the accentual, of necessity,—regard "twinkled" as the admittance (pardonable, censurable, or quite condemnable, according to individual theory) of "wrenched accent," "inverted stress," or something of the kind—as a thing abnormal and licentious.

The foot system simply scans it—

Twīnklĕd | thĕ ĭnnū|mĕrā|blĕ ēar | ănd tāil;

regarding "twinkled" as a trochee substituted in full right for an iamb, and "the innu-" as an anapæst in like case; "merā" as raised, by a liberty not out of accordance with the actual derivation, to a sufficiently long quantity for its position, and the other two feet as pure iambs.

and their application examined.

Now let us examine these three views.

In the first place, the bare syllabic view (which, it is fair to say, is almost obsolete, save among foreigners, though in consistency it ought to find defenders at home) takes no account of any special quality in the line at all. It is turned out to sample; the knife is applied at "th'" to fit specification; and there you are. It differs only from Southey's favourite heroic ejaculation

Aballiboozabanganorribo!

in being less "pure."

The syllabic-plus-accentual view passes it; but with certain reservations. "Twinkled" is an "aberration," a "licence" perhaps (in some views certainly), a more or even less venial sin, while "-āble" with a in a stressed or accented place is a case for more head-shaking still. The line is saved; yet so as by fire.

So is it under the looser stress-accentual system, but by a fire more devouring still. According to this latter, all rhythmical similarity with its companion five-stress lines is lost on the one hand, and on the other a jumble, with difficulty readable and absolutely heterogeneous, is created in the line itself. Your first rhythmical mouthful is "twink-," then you gabble over "led the innū-" till you rest on this last; then you repeat the process (as soon as you have breath enough) with "-merable ear," and finally you reach "and tail." But you never find your fifth stress, and instead of continuous blank verse you make the context a sort of clumsy Pindaric.[21]

Even if this last description be regarded as exaggerated, it will remain a sober fact that, in all these handlings, either the beauty of the line is obscured altogether, or it is smuggled off as a "licence," or it is converted into something individual, separated from its neighbours, and possessing no kinship to them.

Yet the line, though not "a wonder and a wild desire," is a good one; and (therein differing from their eighteenth-century ancestors) the syllabists and accentualists would mostly nowadays allow this, though their principles have to submit it to privilegia and allowances to make it out.

The foot arrangement makes no difficulty, needs no privilegium, and necessarily applies none. The line is at once recognised by the ear as a good line and correspondent to its neighbours, which, as a body, and also at once when a few have been read, informed that ear that they were five-foot lines of iambic basis. Therefore it will lend itself to foot-arrangement on that norm. The five feet may be iambs, trochees, anapæsts, spondees, tribrachs, and perhaps (this is a question of ear) dactyls and pyrrhics. These may be substituted for each other as the ear shall dictate, provided that the general iambic base is not overthrown or unduly obscured.

Further, these feet are composed of long and short syllables, the length and shortness of which is determined to some extent by ordinary pronunciation, but subject to various modifying influences of position and juxtaposition. Under those laws to which all its companions are equally and inevitably subject, mutatis mutandis, it makes itself out as above:

Twīnklĕd | thĕ ĭnnū|mĕrā|blĕ ēar | ănd tāil—

trochee, anapæst, iamb, iamb, iamb. The justification of ā in "āble" has already been partly given; it may be added that in the actual pronunciation of the word by good speakers there is a "secondary accent" (as they call it) on the syllable.

Here there is no straining, no "private bill" legislation, no separating of the line from its fellows, only a reasonable Reign of Law with reasonable easements.

Application further to his "Hollyhock" song.

Let us now take a more complicated instance, also from Tennyson. In that poet's first volume there was a "Song" which, unlike most of its fellows, remained practically unaltered amid the great changes which he introduced later. It has, I believe, always been a special favourite with those who have been most in sympathy with his poetry. But, nearly twenty years after its first appearance, it was described by no ill-qualified judge (an admirer of Tennyson on the whole) in the words given in the note:[22] and I believe it had been similarly objected to earlier. Now what were the lines that excited this cry of agonised indignation? They are as follows:—

A spirit haunts the year's last hours
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
To himself he talks;
For at eventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh
In the walks;
Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
Of the mouldering flowers:
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave in the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

Now it is not very difficult to perceive the defects of this extremely beautiful thing in the eyes of a syllabic-accentualist, as this critic (whether knowing it or not) probably was.

The syllabists have always, by a perhaps natural though perhaps also irrational extension of their arithmetical prepossession, disliked lines of irregular length on the page. Bysshe would have barred stanzas; a very few years before Tennyson's book, Crowe, then Public Orator at Oxford, had protested against the exquisite line-adjustments of the seventeenth century. To the pure accentualists the thing might seem an unholy jumble, accented irregularly, irregularly arranged in number, seemingly observing different rhythms in different parts.

Now see how it looks under the foot system:

the feet being sometimes, at the beginning of the lines, monosyllabic, and of course of one long syllable only (Ēarth-|, Hēa-|, Ō-|); sometimes dissyllabic, iambic mainly, but occasionally at least semi-spondaic—

Ă spīr|ĭt hāunts | thĕ yēar's | lā̆st hōurs;

often trisyllabic, and then always anapæstic—

Fŏr ăt ē|vĕntĭde līst|ĕnĭng ēarn|ĕstlȳ̆.

Even so early in the present book this should need little comment; but it may be the better for some. It is an instance of substitution carried out boldly, but unerringly; so that, iamb and anapæst being the coin of interchange and equivalence, the rhythm is now iambic, now anapæstic chiefly, the two being not muddled, but fluctuant—a prosodic part-song. And the foot system brings this out straightforwardly and on its general principles, with no beggings or assumptions whatever for the particular instance. Moreover, the structure of the piece may be paralleled freely from the songs in Shakespeare's plays.[23]

Such application possible always and everywhere.

It is indeed sometimes said that such methods of scansion as these may apply very well to nineteenth-century poets, but that they are out of place in regard to older ones. This is demonstrably false. The method applies alike, and in like measure obviates all difficulties, in examples of the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It is as applicable to the early and mostly anonymous romancers and song-writers as to Tennyson, it accommodates Shakespeare as well as Browning. To Milton as to Shelley, to Dryden and Pope as to the most celebrated of our modern experimenters, say to Miss Christina Rossetti or Mr. Swinburne, it "fits like a glove." The rules in [the next chapter], and the subjoined examples fully scanned in [Chapter VI.], will show its application as a beginning; the whole contents of this volume must give the fuller illustration and confirmation.[24]

FOOTNOTES:

[CHAPTER IV]SYSTEMS OF ENGLISH PROSODY—THE FOOT

[CHAPTER IV]
SYSTEMS OF ENGLISH PROSODY—THE FOOT