13
A METRICAL ACCIDENT
Curious instance of casual metre and rhyme in a prose narrative (The Life of Jerome of Prague). The metre is Amphibrach dimeter Catalectic ˘ ¯ ˘ | ˘ ¯, and the rhymes antistrophic.
Then Jerome did call a
From his flame-pointed Fence; b
Which under he trod, c
As upward to mount d
From the fiery flood,—e
'I summon you all, a
A hundred years hence, b
To appear before God, c
To give an account d
Of my innocent blood!' e
July 7, 1826. Now first published from an MS.
NOTES BY PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY
1. I think most ears would take these as anapaestic throughout. But the introduction of Milton's
Drunk with Idolatry, drunk with wine
as a leit-motiv is of the first interest.
Description of it, l. 4, very curious. I should have thought no one could have run 'drunk with wine' together as one foot.
2. Admirable! I hardly know better trochaics.
3. Very interesting: but the terminology odd. The dochmius, a five-syllabled foot, is (in one form—there are about thirty!) an antispast ˘ ¯ ¯ ˘ plus a syllable. Catalectic means (properly) minus a syllable. But the verses as quantified are really dochmiac, and the only attempts I have seen. Shall I own I can't get any English Rhythm on them?
4. More ordinary: but a good arrangement and wonderful for the date.
5. Not nonsense at all: but, metrically, really his usual elegiac.
6. This, if early, is almost priceless. It is not only lovely in itself, but an obvious attempt to recover the zig-zag outline and varied cadence of seventeenth century born—the things that Shelley to some extent, Beddoes and Darley more, and Tennyson and Browning most were to master. I subscribe (most humbly) to his suggestions, especially his second.
7. Very like some late seventeenth-century (Dryden time) motives and a leetle 'Moorish'.
8. Like 6, and charming.
9. A sort of recurrence to Pindaric—again pioneer, as the soul of S. T. C. had to be always.
10 and 11. Ditto.
13. Again, I should say, anapaestic—but this anapaest and amphibrach quarrel is ἄσπονδος.
FOOTNOTES:
[1014:1] 'He attributed in part, his writing so little, to the extreme care and labour which he applied in elaborating his metres. He said that when he was intent on a new experiment in metre, the time and labour he bestowed were inconceivable; that he was quite an epicure in sound.'—Wordsworth on Coleridge (as reported by Mr. Justice Coleridge), Memoirs of W. Wordsworth, 1851, ii. 306.
In a letter to Poole dated March 16, 1801, Coleridge writes: 'I shall . . . immediately publish my Christabel, with the Essays on the "Preternatural", and on Metre' (Letters of S. T. C., 1895, i. 349). Something had been done towards the collection of materials for the first 'Essay', a great deal for the second. In a notebook (No. 22) which contains dated entries of 1805, 1815, &c., but of which the greater portion, as the context and various handwritings indicate, belongs to a much earlier date, there are some forty-eight numbered specimens of various metres derived from German and Italian sources. To some of these stanzas or strophes a metrical scheme with original variants is attached, whilst other schemes are exemplified by metrical experiments in English, headed 'Nonsense Verses'. Two specimens of these experiments, headed 'A Sunset' and 'What is Life', are included in the text of P. W., 1893 (pp. 172, 178), and in that of the present issue, pp. 393, 394. They are dated 1805 in accordance with the dates of Coleridge's own comments or afterthoughts, but it is almost certain that both sets of verses were composed in 1801. The stanza entitled 'An Angel Visitant' belongs to the same period. Ten other sets of 'Nonsense Verses' of uncertain but early date are now printed for the first time.
[1014:2] Sumptuous Tyranny floating this way. [MS.] On p. 17 of Notebook 22 Coleridge writes:—
¯ ˘ ˘, ¯ ˘ ˘, ¯ ˘, ¯
Drunk with I—dolatry—drunk with, Wine.
A noble metre if I can find a metre to precede or follow.
Sūmptŭŏus Dālĭlă flōatĭng thŭs wāy
Drunk with Idolatry, drunk with wine.
Both lines are from Milton's Samson Agonistes.
