FOOTNOTES:
[154] Webster's Dictionary.
[155] Note on Musical and Rhetorical Arrangements of Verse
It has been said above (Book I. Chap. V. [Rule 41], p. [35]) that certain additional arrangements of verse may be made for musical or rhetorical purposes. This no doubt requires explanation and example, the latter especially. It shall now have them.
Tennyson's
The watch|er on | the col|umn to | the end,
and Mr. Swinburne's
The thun|der of | the trum|pets of | the night,
are both regular and unexceptionable "heroics," "five-foot iambics," "decasyllabic lines," etc. But in reading them the voice will not improbably be tempted (and need not resist the temptation) to arrange them as
The watcher | on the column | to the end
and
The thunder | of the trumpets | of the night
respectively, while in the case of the latter line other dispositions are possible. In blank-verse paragraphs especially, the poet is likely to suggest a great deal of such scansion. No doubt there are in this arrangement four-syllable divisions and three-syllable ones like amphibrachs, etc.; but that does not matter, because the line has already passed the regular prosodic tests. And no doubt the sections, or whatever they are to be called, are not strictly substitutable; but then on this scheme, which is not positively prosodic and applies to the individual line only, they need not be. So, too, there is no harm in dividing Hood's famous piece, for musical purposes, into ditrochees:
I remember | I remember,
How my little | lovers came,
or even in making what are practically eight feet out of
All ¦ peo¦ple ¦ that ¦ on ¦ earth ¦ do ¦ dwell,
in order to get an impressive musical effect. Here also the lines have passed the prosodic preliminary or matriculation; as in the one case trochaic tetrameters catalectic split in half; in the other, as ordinary "long measure."
Now it is this necessary preliminary which the plain- and fancy-stress prosodists neglect; putting their stress divisions not on the top, but in the place of it. And the probable result would be, if the proceeding were widely followed—as, indeed, it has been already to some small extent,—the creation of a new chaos like that of fifteenth-century South-English verse generally, or of blank verse and heroic couplet in the mid-seventeenth.
[156] See the larger History for fuller discussion of this. Such lines will often scan trochaically (or in some other way) so as to take in the outside syllable; but the question then arises whether such scansion will suit the context.
[157] Professor Hardie reminds me of Quintilian's assertion (Inst. Orat. IX. iv. 136) that even in Latin, iambs "omnibus pedibus insurgunt."
[158] Note on Ionic a minore as applicable to the Epilogue of Browning's Asolando
It has been proposed to scan the beautiful last words of Robert Browning—
At the midnight, in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free—
Will they pass to where, by death, fools think, imprisoned
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
—Pity me?
as an example of English Ionic a minore;[159] not (as it is taken by the present writer) as trochaic—
Ăt thĕ mīdnĭght | ĭn thĕ sīlĕnce | ŏf thĕ slēep-tī̆me;
not
Āt thĕ | midnī̆ght | īn thĕ | sīlĕnce | ōf thĕ | slēep-tī̆me.
Perhaps those who propose this have been a little bribed by conscious or unconscious desire to prevent "accenting" in and of; but no more need be said on this point. The trochees, or their sufficient equivalents, will run very well without any violent INN or OVV. But when the piece is examined by ear of body and ear of mind (for the mind's ear is as important as the mind's eye) it will be found that Ionic scansion is unsatisfactory. It is perhaps not utterly fatal to the first line (though it gives an unpleasantly "rocking-horsy" movement), and perhaps still less to the second, where the catalexis itself saves this effect to some extent. But the junction and severance of sense which it suggests in the third—
Wĭll thĕy pāss tō | whĕre, by̆ dēath, fōols | thĭnk, ĭmprīsōned,
is very ugly. And this same junction or severance becomes impossible in the short lines concluding the stanzas. To suit the Ionic measure these must run—
Pĭty̆ mē
Bĕĭng—whō?
Slĕep tŏ wāke
Thĕre ăs hēre,
a set of jumpy anapæsts which upsets the whole pathos and dignity of the composition when compared with "Pīty̆ | mē"; "Slēep tŏ | wāke"; and "Thēre ăs | hēre"; while it makes
Bēĭng|—whō?
into a mere burlesque, and flies in the face of Browning's specially indicated pause.
[159] ̆ ̆ ̄ ̄. Third pæon ( ̆ ̆ ̄ ̆ ) has also been suggested, but the same counter-arguments apply to it.
[160] It would become tolerable as a four-foot anapæst, and perhaps partly suggested such a line; also as an octosyllable with substitution.
[161] Note (Second Edition) on "Skeltonic," v. sup. p. [293].—Attempts have been made to trace it to the very short lines used by Martial d'Auvergne (c. 1420-1508) and, perhaps, other French poets. But, as in some similar cases, these attempts ignore radical differences, such as the presence of the anapæst in English and its absence from French, and others still.
[CHAPTER II]
REASONED LIST OF POETS WITH SPECIAL REGARD TO THEIR PROSODIC QUALITY AND INFLUENCE
Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888).—Made various attempts (outside of his classical drama Merope) at rhymeless metres in English. Countenanced the English hexameter. Also made, but abandoned, experiments in the enjambed couplet, which anticipated William Morris.
Barham, Richard H. ("Thomas Ingoldsby") (1788-1845).—Showed the greatest proficiency in light, loose metres of the anapæstic division, and exercised much influence by them, owing to the wide and long-sustained popularity of the Ingoldsby Legends (1840, but earlier in magazines).
Beaumont, Sir John (1583-1623).—One of the earliest (before 1625) practitioners, and perhaps the very earliest champion in verse itself, of the stopped couplet exactly arranged.
Blake, William (1757-1827).—Although Blake's immediate and direct influence must have been small, there is hardly any poet who exhibits the tendency of his time in metre more variously and vehemently. In his unhesitating and brilliantly successful use of substitution in octosyllabic couplet, ballad measure, and lyrical adjustments of various kinds, as well as in media varying from actual verse to the rhythmed prose of his "Prophetic" books, Blake struck definitely away from the monotonous and select metres of the eighteenth century, and anticipated the liberty, multiplicity, and variety of the nineteenth. And he differed, almost equally, from all but one or two of his older contemporaries, and from most of his younger for many years, in the colour and "fingering" of his verse.
Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850).—A generally mediocre poet, who, however, deserves a place of honour here for the sonnets which he published in 1789, and which had an immense influence on Coleridge, Southey, and others of his juniors, not merely in restoring that great form to popularity, but by inculcating description and study of nature in connection with the thoughts and passions of men.
Browne, William (1591-1643).—A Jacobean poet of the loosely named Spenserian school—effective in various metres, but a special and early exponent of the enjambed couplet.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861).—Remarkable here for her adoption of the nineteenth-century principle of the widest possible metrical experiment and variety. In actual metre effective, though sometimes a little slipshod. In rhyme a portent and a warning. Perhaps the worst rhymester in the English language—perpetrating, and attempting to defend on a mistaken view of assonance, cacophonies so hideous that they need not sully this page.
Browning, Robert (1812-1889).—Often described as a loose and rugged metrist, and a licentious, if not criminal, rhymester. Nothing of the sort. Extraordinarily bold in both capacities, and sometimes, perhaps, as usually happens in these cases, a little too bold; but in metre practically never, in rhyme very seldom (and then only for purposes of designed contrast, like the farce in tragedy), overstepping actual bounds. A great master of broken metres, internal rhyme, heavily equivalenced lines, and all the tours de force of English prosody.
Burns, Robert (1759-1796).—Of the very greatest importance in historical prosody, because of the shock which his fresh dialect administered to the conventional poetic diction of the eighteenth century, and his unusual and broken measures (especially the famous Burns-metre) to its notions of metric. An admirable performer on the strings that he tried; a master of musical "fingering" of verse; and to some extent a pioneer of the revival of substitution.
Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788-1824).—Usually much undervalued as a prosodist, even by those who admire him as a poet. Really of great importance in this respect, owing to the variety, and in some cases the novelty, of his accomplishment, and to its immense popularity. His Spenserians in Childe Harold not of the highest class, but the light octaves of Beppo and Don Juan the very best examples of the metre in English. Some fine but rhetorical blank verse, and a great deal of fluent octosyllabic couplet imitated from Scott. But his lyrics of most importance, combining popular appeal with great variety, and sometimes positive novelty, of adjustment and cadence. Diction is his weakest point.
Campbell, Thomas (1777-1844).—Not prosodically remarkable in his longer poems, but very much so in some of his shorter, especially "The Battle of the Baltic," where the bold shortening of the last line, effective in itself, has proved suggestive to others of even better things, such as the half-humorous, half-plaintive measure of Holmes's "The Last Leaf" and Locker's "Grandmamma."
Campion, Thomas (?-1619).—Equally remarkable for the sweetness and variety of his rhymed lyrics in various ordinary measures, and as the advocate and practitioner of a system of rhymeless verse, different from the usual hexametrical attempts of his contemporaries, but still adjusted to classical patterns.
Canning, George (1770-1827).—Influential, in the general breaking-up of the conventional metres and diction of the eighteenth century, by his parodies of Darwin and his light lyrical pieces in the Anti-Jacobin.
Chamberlayne, William (1619-1689).—Remarkable as, in Pharonnida, one of the chief exponents of the beauties, but still more of the dangers, of the enjambed heroic couplet; in his England's Jubile as a rather early, and by no means unaccomplished, practitioner of the rival form. To be carefully distinguished from his contemporary, Robert Chamberlain (fl. c. 1640), a very poor poetaster who wrote a few English hexameters.
Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770).—Of some interest here because his manufactured diction was a protest against the conventional language of eighteenth-century poetry. Of more, because he ventured upon equivalence in octosyllabic couplet, and wrote ballad and other lyrical stanzas, entirely different in form and cadence from those of most of his contemporaries, and less artificial even than those of Collins and Gray.
Chaucer, Geoffrey (1340?-1400).—The reducer of the first stage of English prosody to complete form and order; the greatest master of prosodic harmony in our language before the later sixteenth century, and one of the greatest (with value for capacity in language) of all time; the introducer of the decasyllabic couplet—if not absolutely, yet systematically and on a large scale—and of the seven-lined "rhyme-royal" stanza; and, finally, a poet whose command of the utmost prosodic possibilities of English, at the time of his writing, almost necessitated a temporary prosodic disorder, when those who followed attempted to imitate him with a changed pronunciation, orthography, and word-store.
Cleveland, John (1613-1658).—Of no great importance as a poet, but holding a certain position as a comparatively early experimenter with apparently anapæstic measures in his "Mark Antony" and other pieces.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834).—In the Ancient Mariner and Christabel, the great instaurator of equivalence and substitution; a master of many other kinds of metre; and an experimenter in classical versing.
Collins, William (1721-1759)—Famous in prosody for his attempt at odes less definitely "regular" than Gray's, but a vast improvement on the loose Pindaric which had preceded; and for a remarkable attempt at rhymeless verse in that "To Evening." In diction retained a good deal of artificiality.
Congreve, William (1670-1729).—Regularised Cowley's loose Pindaric.
Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667).—The most popular poet of the mid-seventeenth century; important to prosody for a wide, various, and easy, though never quite consummate command of lyric, as well as for a vigorous and effective couplet (with occasional Alexandrines) of a kind midway between that of the early seventeenth century and Dryden's; but chiefly for his introduction of the so-called Pindaric.
Cowper, William (1731-1800).—One of the first to protest, definitely and by name, against the "mechanic art" of Pope's couplet. He himself returned to Dryden for that metre; but practised very largely in blank verse, and wrote lyrics with great sweetness, a fairly varied command of metre, and, in "Boadicea," "The Castaway," and some of his hymns, no small intensity of tone and cry. His chief shortcoming, a preference of elision to substitution.
Donne, John (1573-1631).—Famous for the beauty of his lyrical poetry, the "metaphysical" strangeness of his sentiment and diction throughout, and the roughness of his couplets. This last made Jonson, who thought him "the first poet in the world for some things," declare that he nevertheless "deserved hanging for not keeping accent," and has induced others to suppose a (probably imaginary) revolt against Spenserian smoothness, and an attempt at a new prosody.
Drayton, Michael (1563-1631).—A very important poet prosodically, representing the later Elizabethan school as it passes into the Jacobean, and even the Caroline. Expresses and exemplifies the demand for the couplet (which he calls "gemell" or "geminel"), but is an adept in stanzas. In the Polyolbion produced the only long English poem in continuous Alexandrines before Browning's Fifine at the Fair (which is very much shorter). A very considerable sonneteer, and the deviser of varied and beautiful lyrical stanzas in short rhythms, the most famous being the "Ballad of Agincourt."
Dryden, John (1630-1700).—The establisher and master of the stopped heroic couplet with variations of triplets and Alexandrines; the last great writer of dramatic blank verse, after he had given up the couplet for that use; master also of any other metre—the stopped heroic quatrain, lyrics of various form, etc.—that he chose to try. A deliberate student of prosody, on which he had intended to leave a treatise, but did not.
Dixon, Richard Watson (1833-1900).—The only English poet who has attempted, and (as far perhaps as the thing is possible) successfully carried out, a long poem (Mano) in terza rima. Possessed also of great lyrical gift in various metres, especially in irregular or Pindaric arrangements.
Dunbar, William (1450?-1513? or -1530?).—The most accomplished and various master of metre in Middle Scots, including both alliterative and strictly metrical forms. If he wrote "The Friars of Berwick," the chief master of decasyllabic couplet between Chaucer and Spenser.
Dyer, John (1700?-1758?).—Derives his prosodic importance from Grongar Hill, a poem in octosyllabic couplet, studied, with independence, from Milton, and helping to keep alive in that couplet the variety of iambic and trochaic cadence derived from catalexis, or alternation of eight- and seven-syllabled lines.
Fairfax, Edward (d. 1635).—Very influential in the formation of the stopped antithetic couplet by his use of it at the close of the octaves of his translation of Tasso.
Fitzgerald, Edward (1809-1883).—Like Fairfax, famous for the prosodic feature of his translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. This is written in decasyllabic quatrains, the first, second, and fourth lines rhymed together, the third left blank.
Fletcher, Giles (1588-1623), and Phineas (1582-1650).—Both attempted alterations of the Spenserian by leaving out first one and then two lines. Phineas also a great experimenter in other directions.
Fletcher, John (1579-1625).—The dramatist. Prosodically noticeable for his extreme leaning to redundance in dramatic blank verse. A master of lyric also.
Frere, John Hookham (1769-1846).—Reintroduced the octave for comic purposes in the Monks and the Giants (1817), and taught it to Byron. Showed himself a master of varied metre in his translations of Aristophanes. Also dabbled in English hexameters, holding that extra-metrical syllables were permissible there.
Gascoigne, George (1525?-1577).—Not unremarkable as a prosodist, from having tried various lyrical measures with distinct success, and as having given the first considerable piece of non-dramatic blank verse ("The Steel Glass") after Surrey. But chiefly to be mentioned for his remarkable Notes of Instruction on English verse, the first treatise on English prosody and a very shrewd one, despite some slips due to the time.
Glover, Richard (1712-1785).—A very dull poet, but noteworthy for two points connected with prosody—his exaggeration of the Thomsonian heavy stop in the middle of blank-verse lines, and the unrhymed choruses of his Medea.
Godric, Saint (?-1170).—The first named and known author of definitely English (that is Middle English) lyric, if not of definitely English (that is Middle English) verse altogether.
Gower, John (1325?-1408).—The most productive, and perhaps the best, older master of the fluent octosyllable, rarely though sometimes varied in syllabic length, and approximating most directly to the French model.
Hampole, Richard Rolle of, most commonly called by the place-name (1290?-1347).—Noteworthy for the occasional occurrence of complete decasyllabic couplets in the octosyllables of the Prick of Conscience. Possibly the author of poems in varied lyrical measures, some of great accomplishment.
Hawes, Stephen (d. 1523?).—Notable for the contrast between the occasional poetry of his Pastime of Pleasure and its sometimes extraordinarily bad rhyme-royal—which latter is shown without any relief in his other long poem, the Example of Virtue. The chief late example of fifteenth-century degradation in this respect.
Herrick, Robert (1591-1674).—The best known (though not in his own or immediately succeeding times) of the "Caroline" poets. A great master of variegated metre, and a still greater one of sweet and various grace in diction.
Hunt, J. H. Leigh (1784-1859).—Chiefly remarkable prosodically for his revival of the enjambed decasyllabic couplet; but a wide student, and a catholic appreciator and practitioner, of English metre generally. Probably influenced Keats much at first.
Jonson, Benjamin, always called Ben (1573?-1637).—A great practical prosodist, and apparently (like his successor, and in some respects analogue, Dryden) only by accident not a teacher of the study. Has left a few remarks, as it is, eulogising, but in rather equivocal terms, the decasyllabic couplet, objecting to Donne's "not keeping of accent," to Spenser's metre for what exact reason we know not, and to the English hexameter apparently. His practice much plainer sailing. A fine though rather hard master of blank verse; excellent at the couplet itself; but in lyric, as far as form goes, near perfection in the simpler and more classical adjustments, as well as in pure ballad measure.
Keats, John (1795-1821).—One of the chief examples, among the greater English poets, of sedulous and successful study of prosody; in this contrasting remarkably with his contemporary, and in some sort analogue, Shelley. Began by much reading of Spenser and of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century poets, in following whose enjambed couplet he was also, to some extent, a disciple of Leigh Hunt. Exemplified the dangers as well as the beauties of this in Endymion, and corrected it by stanza-practice in Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and his great Odes, as well as by a study of Dryden which produced the stricter but more splendid couplet of Lamia. Strongly Miltonic, but with much originality also, in the blank verse of Hyperion; and a great master of the freer sonnet, which he had studied in the Elizabethans. Modified the ballad measure in La Belle Dame sans Merci with astonishing effect, and in the Eve of St. Mark recovered (perhaps from Gower) a handling of the octosyllable which remained undeveloped till Mr. William Morris took it up.
Kingsley, Charles (1819-1875).—A poet very notable, in proportion to the quantity of his work, for variety and freshness of metrical command in lyric. But chiefly so for the verse of Andromeda, which, aiming at accentual dactylic hexameter, converts itself into a five-foot anapæstic line with anacrusis and hypercatalexis, and in so doing entirely shakes off the ungainly and slovenly shamble of the Evangeline type.
Landor, Walter Savage (1775-1864).—A great master of form in all metres, but, in his longer poems and more regular measures, a little formal in the less favourable sense. In his smaller lyrics (epigrammatic in the Greek rather than the modern use) hardly second to Ben Jonson, whom he resembles not a little. His phrase of singular majesty and grace.
Langland, William (fourteenth century).—The probable name of the pretty certainly single author of the remarkable alliterative poem called The Vision of Piers Plowman. Develops the alliterative metre itself in a masterly fashion through the successive versions of his poem, but also exhibits most notably the tendency of the line to fall into definitely metrical shapes—decasyllabic, Alexandrine, and fourteener,—with not infrequent anapæstic correspondences.
Layamon (late twelfth and early thirteenth century).—Exhibits in the Brut, after a fashion hardly to be paralleled elsewhere, the passing of one metrical system into another. May have intended to write unrhymed alliteratives, but constantly passes into complete rhymed octosyllabic couplet, and generally provides something between the two. A later version, made most probably, if not certainly, after his death, accentuates the transfer.
Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818).—A very minor poet, and hardly a major man of letters in any other way than that of prosody. Here, however, in consequence partly of an early visit to Germany, he acquired love for, and command of, the anapæstic measures, which he taught to greater poets than himself from Scott downwards, and which had not a little to do with the progress of the Romantic Revival.
Locker (latterly Locker-Lampson) Frederick (1821-1895).—An author of "verse of society" who brought out the serio-comic power of much variegated and indented metre with remarkable skill.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882).—An extremely competent American practitioner of almost every metre that he tried, except perhaps the unrhymed terza rima, which is difficult and may be impossible in English. Established the popularity of the loose accentual hexameter in Evangeline, and did surprisingly well with unvaried trochaic dimeter in Hiawatha. His lyrical metres not of the first distinction, but always musical and craftsmanlike.
Lydgate, John (1370-1450?).—The most industrious and productive of the followers of Chaucer, writing indifferently rhyme-royal, "riding rhyme," and octosyllabic couplet, but especially the first and last, as well as ballades and probably other lyrical work. Lydgate seems to have made an effort to accommodate the breaking-down pronunciation of the time—especially as regarded final e's—to these measures; but as a rule he had very little success. One of his varieties of decasyllabic is elsewhere stigmatised. He is least abroad in the octosyllable, but not very effective even there.
Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1800-1859).—Best known prosodically by his spirited and well beaten-out ballad measure in the Lays of Ancient Rome. Sometimes, as in "The Last Buccaneer," tried less commonplace movements with strange success.
Maginn, William (1793-1842).—Deserves to be mentioned with Barham as a chief initiator of the earlier middle nineteenth century in the ringing and swinging comic measures which have done so much to supple English verse, and to accustom the general ear to its possibilities.
Marlowe, Christopher (1664-1693).—The greatest master, among præ-Shakespearian writers, of the blank-verse line for splendour and might, as Peele was for sweetness and brilliant colour. Seldom, though sometimes, got beyond the "single-moulded" form; but availed himself to the very utmost of the majesty to which that form rather specially lends itself. Very great also in couplet (which he freely "enjambed") and in miscellaneous measure when he tried it.
Milton, John (1608-1674).—The last of the four chief masters of English prosody. Began by various experiments in metre, both in and out of lyric stanza—reaching, in the "Nativity" hymn, almost the maximum of majesty in concerted measures. In L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and the Arcades passed to a variety of the octosyllabic couplet, which had been much practised by Shakespeare and others, but developed its variety and grace yet further, though he did not attempt the full Spenserian or Christabel variation. In Comus continued this, partly, with lyrical extensions, but wrote the major part in blank verse—not irreminiscent of the single-moulded form, but largely studied off Shakespeare and Fletcher, and with his own peculiar turns already given to it. In Lycidas employed irregularly rhymed paragraphs of mostly decasyllabic lines. Wrote some score of fine sonnets, adjusted more closely to the usual Italian models than those of most of his predecessors. After an interval, produced, in Paradise Lost, the first long poem in blank verse, and the greatest non-dramatic example of the measure ever seen—admitting the fullest variation and substitution of foot and syllable, and constructing verse-paragraphs of almost stanzaic effect by varied pause and contrasted stoppage and overrunning. Repeated this, with perhaps some slight modifications, in Paradise Regained. Finally, in Samson Agonistes, employed blank-verse dialogue with choric interludes rhymed elaborately—though in an afterthought note to Paradise Lost he had denounced rhyme—and arranged on metrical schemes sometimes unexampled in English.
Moore, Thomas (1779-1852).—A very voluminous poet in the most various metres, and a competent master of all. But especially noticeable as a trained and practising musician, who wrote a very large proportion of his lyrics directly to music, and composed or adapted settings for many of them. The double process has resulted in great variety and sweetness, but occasionally also in laxity which, from the prosodic point of view, is somewhat excessive.
Morris, William (1834-1896).—One of the best and most variously gifted of recent prosodists. In his early work, The Defence of Guenevere, achieved a great number of metres, on the most varied schemes, with surprising effect; in his longer productions, Jason and The Earthly Paradise, handled enjambed couplets, octosyllabic and decasyllabic, with an extraordinary compound of freedom and precision. In Love is Enough tried alliterative and irregular rhythm with unequal but sometimes beautiful results; and in Sigurd the Volsung fingered the old fourteener into a sweeping narrative verse of splendid quality and no small range.
Orm.—A monk of the twelfth to the thirteenth century, who composed a long versification of the Calendar Gospels in unrhymed, strictly syllabic, fifteen-syllabled verse, lending itself to regular division in eights and sevens. A very important evidence as to the experimenting tendency of the time and to the strivings for a new English prosody.
O'Shaughnessy, Arthur W. E. (1844-1881).—A lyrist of great originality, and with a fingering peculiar to himself, though most nearly resembling that of Edgar Poe.
Peele, George (1558?-1597?).—Remarkable for softening the early "decasyllabon" as Marlowe sublimed it.
Percy, Thomas (1729-1811).—As an original verse-maker, of very small value, and as a meddler with older verse to patch and piece it, somewhat mischievous; but as the editor of the Reliques, to be hallowed and canonised for that his deed, in every history of English prosody and poetry.
Poe, Edgar (1809-1849).—The greatest master of original prosodic effect that the United States have produced, and an instinctively and generally right (though, in detail, hasty, ill-informed, and crude) essayist on points of prosodic doctrine. Produced little, and that little not always equal; but at his best an unsurpassable master of music in verse and phrase.
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744).—Practically devoted himself to one metre, and one form of it—the stopped heroic couplet,—subjected as much as possible to a rigid absence of licence; dropping (though he sometimes used them) the triplets and Alexandrines, which even Dryden had admitted; adhering to an almost mathematically centrical pause; employing, by preference, short, sharp rhymes with little echo in them; and but very rarely, though with at least one odd exception, allowing even the possibility of a trisyllabic foot. An extraordinary artist on this practically single string, but gave himself few chances on others.
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth (1802-1839)—An early nineteenth-century Prior. Not incapable of serious verse, and hardly surpassed in laughter. His greatest triumph, the adaptation of the three-foot anapæst, alternately hypercatalectic and acatalectic or exact, which had been a ballad-burlesque metre as early as Gay, had been partly ensouled by Byron in one piece, but was made his own by Praed, and handed down by him to Mr. Swinburne to be yet further sublimated.
Prior, Matthew (1664-1721).—Of special prosodic importance for his exercises in anapæstic metres and in octosyllabic couplet, both of which forms he practically established in the security of popular favour, when the stopped heroic couplet was threatening monopoly. His phrase equally suitable to the vers de société of which he was our first great master.
Robert of Gloucester (fl. c. 1280).—Nomen clarum in prosody, as being apparently the first copious and individual producer of the great fourteener metre, which, with the octosyllabic couplet, is the source, or at least the oldest, of all modern English forms.
Rossetti, Christina Georgina (1830-1894) and Dante Gabriel (1828-1882).—A brother and sister who rank extraordinarily high in our flock. Of mainly Italian blood, though thoroughly Anglicised, and indeed partly English by blood itself, they produced the greatest English sonnets on the commoner Italian model, and displayed almost infinite capacity in other metres. Miss Rossetti had the greater tendency to metrical experiment, and perhaps the more strictly lyrical gift of the song kind; her brother, the severer command of sculpturesque but richly coloured form in poetry.
Sackville, Thomas (1536-1608).—One of the last and best practitioners of the old rhyme-royal of Chaucer, and one of the first experimenters in dramatic blank verse.
Sandys, George (1578-1644).—Has traditional place after Fairfax and with Waller (Sir John Beaumont, who ought to rank perhaps before these, being generally omitted) as a practitioner of stopped heroic couplet. Also used In Memoriam quatrain.
Sayers, Frank (1763-1817).—An apostle, both in practice and preaching, of the unrhymed verse—noteworthy at the close of the eighteenth century—which gives him his place in the story.
Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832).—The facts of his prosodic influence and performance hardly deniable, but its nature and value often strangely misrepresented. Was probably influenced by Lewis in adopting (from the German) anapæstic measures; and certainly and most avowedly influenced by Coleridge (whose Christabel he heard read or recited long before publication) in adopting equivalenced octosyllabic couplet and ballad metres in narrative verse. But probably derived as much from the old ballads and romances themselves, which he knew as no one else then did, and as few have known them since. Applied the method largely in his verse-romances, but was also a master of varied forms of lyric, no mean proficient in the Spenserian and in fragments, at least, of blank verse.
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616).—The catholicos or universal master, as of English poetry so of English prosody. In the blank verse of his plays, and in the songs interspersed in them, as well as in his immature narrative poems and more mature sonnets, every principle of English versification can be found exemplified, less deliberately "machined," it may be, than in Milton or Tennyson, but in absolutely genuine and often not earlier-found form.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822).—The great modern example of prosodic inspiration, as Keats, Tennyson, and Mr. Swinburne are of prosodic study. Shelley's early verse is as unimportant in this way as in others; but from Queen Mab to some extent, from Alastor unquestionably, onwards, he displayed totally different quality, and every metre that he touched (even if possibly suggested to some extent by others) bears the marks of his own personality.
Shenstone, William (1714-1763).—Not quite unimportant as poet, in breaking away from the couplet; but of much more weight for the few prosodic remarks in his Essays, in which he directly pleads for trisyllabic (as he awkwardly calls them "dactylic") feet, for long-echoing rhymes, and for other things adverse to the "mechanic tune by heart" of the popular prosody.
Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586).—A great experimenter in Elizabethan classical forms; but much more happy as an accomplished and very influential master of the sonnet, and a lyric poet of great sweetness and variety.
Southey, Robert (1774-1843).—A very deft and learned practitioner of many kinds of verse, his tendency to experiment leading him into rhymelessness (Thalaba) and hexameters (The Vision of Judgment); but quite sound on general principles, and the first of his school and time to champion the use of trisyllabic feet in principle, and to appeal to old practice in their favour.
Spenser, Edmund (1552?-1599).—The second founder of English prosody in his whole work; the restorer of regular form not destitute of music; the preserver of equivalence in octosyllabic couplet; and the inventor of the great Spenserian stanza, the greatest in every sense of all assemblages of lines, possessing individual beauty and capable of indefinite repetition.
Surrey, Earl of, the courtesy title of Henry Howard (1517-1547).—Our second English sonneteer, our second author of reformed literary lyric after the fifteenth-century break-down, and our first clearly intentional writer of blank verse.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909).—Of all English poets the one who has applied the widest scholarship and study, assisted by great original prosodic gift, to the varying and accomplishing of English metre. Impeccable in all kinds; in lyric nearly supreme. To some extent early, and, still more, later, experimented in very long lines, never unharmonious, but sometimes rather compounds than genuine integers. Achieved many triumphs with special metres, especially by the shortening of the last line of the Praed-stanza into the form of "Dolores," which greatly raises its passion and power.
Tennyson, Alfred (1809-1892).—A poet who very nearly, if not quite, deserves the position accorded here to Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. Coming sufficiently late after the great Romantic poets of the earlier school to generalise their results, he started with an apparent freedom (perfectly orderly, in fact) which puzzled even Coleridge. Very soon, too, he produced a practically new form of blank verse, in which the qualities of the Miltonic and Shakespearian kinds were blended, and a fresh metrical touch given. All poets since—sometimes while denying or belittling him—have felt his prosodic influence; and it is still, even after Mr. Swinburne's fifty years of extended practice of it, the pattern of modern English prosody.
Thomson, James (1700-1748).—The first really important practitioner of blank verse after Milton, and a real, though rather mannerised, master of it. Displayed an equally real, and more surprising, though much more unequal, command of the Spenserian in The Castle of Indolence.
Tusser, Thomas (1524?-1580).—A very minor poet—in fact, little more than a doggerelist; but important because, at the very time when men like Gascoigne were doubting whether English had any foot but the iambic, he produced lolloping but perfectly metrical continuous anapæsts, and mixed measures of various kinds.
Waller, Edmund (1606-1687).—A good mixed prosodist of the Caroline period, whose chief traditional importance is in connection with the popularising of the stopped couplet. His actual precedence in this is rather doubtful; but his influence was early acknowledged, and therefore is an indisputable fact. He was also early as a literary user of anapæstic measures, and tried various experiments.
Watts, Isaac (1674-1741).—By no means unnoteworthy as a prosodist. Followed Milton in blank verse, early popularised triple-time measures by his religious pieces, evidently felt the monotony of the couplet, and even attempted English Sapphics.
Whitman, Walt[er] (1819-1892).—An American poet who has pushed farther than any one before him, and with more success than any one after him, the substitution, for regular metre, of irregular rhythmed prose, arranged in versicles something like those of the English Bible, but with a much wider range of length and rhythm, the latter going from sheer prose cadence into definite verse.
Wordsworth, William (1770-1850).—Less important as a prosodist than as a poet; but prosodically remarkable both for his blank verse, for his sonnets, and for the "Pindaric" of his greatest Ode.
Wyatt, Sir Thomas (1503?-1542).—Our first English sonneteer and our first reformer, into regular literary verse, of lyric after the fifteenth-century disorder. An experimenter with terza, and in other ways prosodically eminent.
[CHAPTER III]
ORIGINS OF LINES AND STANZAS
(It has seemed desirable to give some account (to an extent which would in most cases be disproportionate for the Glossary) of the ascertained, probable, or supposed origin of the principal lines and line-combinations in English poetry. The arrangement is logical rather than alphabetical. Slight repetition, on some points, of matter previously given is unavoidable.)