CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.—THE TRIOLET.
lsewhere in the pages of The Girl’s Own Paper a writer has explained the laws of form governing and underlying what we call “classical” music. To those who love art, in whatever guise it comes to us—as symphony, picture, or poem—a very slight amount of careful study of its accepted laws will repay a thousandfold the trouble taken. Having grasped even the faintest idea of the reason for the special shape of a sonata or a sonnet, the interest in the work itself becomes more keen. Then, too, it will be seen why literary men and artists choose the higher forms of their art to clothe their ideas. There is too often a feeling that the chief difference between popular and classical art is that the one is “dry,” while the other is pleasing. This is in part true, but only when scholastic rules are obtruded too prominently. For while it may be at once conceded that too great an attention to form produces dry bones, yet genius can make these live, for subject as they are to laws, and having clear sequence of form, they have inherent vitality and strength, relying on more than mere fashion to keep their hold on the people, in spite of the varying taste of each passing year.
Nature, to whom we all come alike for our simplest as our highest thoughts, works in many ways, but all subject to inviolable laws. These may often be not evident at a cursory glance, and still more often beyond our keenest search; we can only infer the law from the result. In mere human work, what one man produces is more or less easily understood by his fellow-man, and a knowledge of the rules to which he conformed, adds interest to our pleasure in his work, and makes us able to be real critics, to some extent, while mere taste or feeling can lay claim to no more than a personal and often valueless opinion.
The laws which govern music are probably better known than those which rule verse, as our English poets choose generally a freer and more flexible mode of expression than the old writers allowed. Again, in music the form is more easily seen, for two reasons: one, that constant habit of hearing pieces in strict form has given us knowledge, without our being able to formulate it; the other, that the subjects of music, being at most vague and abstract, are left out of the title of works by the great masters, save in a very few instances. Even the “Eroica Symphony” or the “Wedding March” merely suggests abstract feelings. To describe a rose or an umbrella, for example, is impossible in music. We can only suggest praise, or grief, and similar emotional feelings. Therefore the shape only is usually given in the title, such as a march, minuet, or sonata. But in poetry the shape is rarely described. Even in the most widely used of these fixed forms, the sonnet, the shape is not by any means invariably expressed in the title. In the verses written in imitation of the Old French Troubadours it is more often used. In the rondeau, the most widely chosen, it is not always given, but the triolet, villanelle, or ballade is almost always so described in the title, the shape, as in music, ranking worthy of interest in itself. These old shapes are more akin to the fugue and canon in music, as the whole work has inner laws governing each detail, and making the choice of words or notes decided beforehand to a great extent by the form.
It is intended in this paper to describe a few of the forms which have of late found favour with the younger school of living poets, for a twofold reason: first, that their readers may better appreciate their works; secondly, that the amateur verse-writer may gain a knowledge of these verse shapes, and thereby be able to produce trifles which are worthy of attention. Although it is not given to many to produce great thoughts, yet to acquire a polished mode of displaying lesser ones to advantage, is in itself worth the trying. The tendency to diffusiveness which weakens so much verse, until the pretty trifling becomes wearisome, would be lessened if a strict form were first chosen, and the subject necessarily compressed within its limits.
The greater number of these forms originated with the Troubadours, and here, for mere brevity’s sake, only a very few words must be said. The subject of their loves and their lives has been so fully discussed that a mere résumé of all that is known would fill many parts of this magazine. Hallam says “the earliest records cannot trace them beyond A.D. 1100, and they became extinct at the end of the next century. While they flourished they numbered many hundreds of versifiers in the language of Provence, though not always natives of France.” It would be interesting, if space allowed, to quote from some of the many histories. I had intended to do so, but the growing material forbade the idea of using it here, and so I must refer would-be inquirers to some of the more easily accessible works. Foremost is Dr. Francis Hueffer’s “The Troubadours,” published in 1878; it gives a scholarly and full account of the most salient members of the school and their works. “The Troubadours: their Loves and Lives,” by Mr. John Rutherford, is also interesting; while a work by M. Theodore de Banville, the “Petit Traité de Poésie Française,” affords an exhaustive analysis of the rules of their verse and its modern imitations.
Their verse was distinguished by its being subject to very strict and subtle laws, often involved and carried to an artificial complexity, perilously near the triumph of sound over sense; yet it has a charm peculiarly its own. The forms of this school being still exotic, and not (except the sonnet) incorporated into English literature, gives them a special fitness when employed for fanciful trifles on subjects of an older time.
The qualities termed “conceits” by the old English writers, are admirably expressed through the medium of these old shapes; a certain amount of extravagance of compliment and affectation is not out of place here. The flavour of the verse smacks of the “Moyen Age,” or “Powder and Fan” period beloved by artists. In these forms the shape of the verse itself takes the place somewhat of the costume and accessories of a painting, and gives local colour to the subject. When used in this way, as Mr. Austin Dobson has so often shown, they can be made (like a picture by Abbey) to reproduce the past in a living way, with its own domestic sentiment, far removed from a mere archæological or academic study of olden days, which often appeals to the intellect rather than the feeling, and moves us to criticise the method employed, instead of falling under the charm of the subject described.
But they are by no means limited to this class of subject, as Mr. Swinburne’s Roundels show. Nature and her moods may be sung as fitly in these, as in the most free forms of poetry.
Many estimable but badly-informed people think that poetry or verse (unluckily these terms are synonymous to them) is either a divine outburst of feeling, expressing itself almost spontaneously in rhyme, or, sad to say, a mere vehicle to hide the poverty of ideas, and eke out a repetition of fancies intolerable in prose. The multitude are slow to realise law in any shape, and in art no less than nature look upon most results as the effect of what a critic has termed “the glorious gospel of haphazard.” To these poetry suggests no art in itself, only a more or less musical jingle of pretty sounds, gay or plaintive feelings, while the whole is unreal and fantastic.
But to avoid further preface, let us take a specimen of the aforementioned forms, choosing a dainty little epigrammatic verse known as the Triolet, to start with. This form, complete always in eight short lines, is peculiarly a product of the old French school of verse, and is in itself, to some extent, an epitome of all the rest. Almost new in English poetry, the first examples dating from a volume of poems published in 1873 by Mr. Bridges, it has yet won many friends, although, so far as diligent search by the present writer has been able to trace them, a selection of the best would fill but a few pages of this paper.
Flexible only in the rhythm and length of its lines, which are generally about six feet (syllabic feet, of course) in length, it is stern, and forbids tampering in all other respects, allowing but two rhyme-sounds for the whole of the lines. The lines themselves are repeated in a certain unalterable order; the first two serve again for the seventh and eighth, while the fourth is also a repetition of the first; no syllable even, in the best examples, is changed in these lines. But on each fresh appearance the words should, if possible, convey a fresh phase of the idea, the emphasis alone serving to mark the distinction. On studying the examples given, it will be found that the crux lies in the treatment of the fifth and sixth lines, while the way the third is connected with the fourth, and the neatness with which the final couplet is repeated to form a necessary part of the whole, and not a mere repeat to fill up the prescribed form, is almost as difficult. The following example is a very perfect one; it comes in a sequence of triolets by Mr. Austin Dobson, entitled “Rose Leaves.” The first version ran:—
“I intended an ode,
And it turned into triolets.
It began à la mode:
I intended an ode;
But Rose crossed the road
With a bunch of fresh violets;
I intended an ode,
And it turned into triolets.”
This has a literary interest apart from its own merits, as the critics, on its first introduction, blamed Mr. Dobson severely for attempting to english the word triolet. “Suppose an audacious person were to extend the license, and introduce cabriolet as a thirdsman?” said The Academy, on June 23, 1877. In spite of Mr. W. S. Gilbert, in Princess Ida, trying also to rhyme it to violet—
“Oh, dainty triolet! oh, fragrant violet! oh, gentle heigho-let! (or little sigh)”—
the word remains French; and in a later version Mr. Dobson has re-cast the poem.
“I intended an ode,
And it turned to a sonnet.
I began à la mode.
I intended an ode;
But Rose crossed the road
In her latest new bonnet.
I intended an ode,
And it turned to a sonnet.”
This may be better rhyme, but the raison d’être is gone; it has not turned to a sonnet, but is still a triolet.
To understand the form more clearly, it is best to take one and dissect it, thereby showing its structure. To avoid mutilating a master’s work, and possibly misinterpreting it, I will take one in my possession, not yet published, printing it, not as it would be, but displayed (to use a technical term), thereby exaggerating the emphasis with which the writer intended it should be read.
“A Waverer.
She has a primrose at her breast:
I almost wish I were a Tory.
I like the Radicals the best,
SHE has a primrose at HER breast,
Now is it chance she so is drest?
Or must I tell a story?
She HAS a primrose at her breast:
I almost wish I WERE a Tory.”
Here we see the whole is a soliloquy in the historic present tense. The first two lines explain the incident, the third the speaker’s own comment on it, noting in the fourth how it differs from his own opinion. In the fifth he meditates on the reason which has affected him. In the sixth he wavers between insincerity and politeness or truth and the chance of conveying a sense of unfriendliness; while in the last he concludes that it is a fact they differ, and, still undecided in action, wishes the reason had not existed so that he might sincerely agree with the supposed Primrose lady, and avoid feigning a political acquiescence of opinion. So trifling an incident will not bear analysis on its own merits, and is merely dwelt on to explain the structure of the verse.
A triolet should be complete in itself. In a very able article in the Cornhill Magazine (July, 1877) Mr. E. W. Gosse points out the danger of a fascinating tendency to connect a sequence of triolets. The constant recurrence of the lines would soon become fatally monotonous. One or two at the most are bearable.
A typical pair appeared in a number of The Century (January, 1883). Thoroughly American, they show well, first the half-bantering, half-real feeling of the poet, artificial in expression, yet not altogether untrue, while her answer shows the American girl pure and simple, the conventional courtesy of the first being happily balanced by the naïve frankness of the second.
“What He Said.
This kiss upon your fan I press—
Ah! Sainte Nitouche, you don’t refuse it?
And may it from its soft recess—
This kiss upon your fan I press—
Be blown to you a shy caress,
By this white down, whene’er you use it,
This kiss upon your fan I press—
Ah! Sainte Nitouche, you don’t refuse it.”
“What She Thought.
To kiss a fan!
What a poky poet!
The stupid man,
To kiss a fan,
When he knows that—he—can,
Or ought to know it—
To kiss a fan!
What a poky poet!”
Harrison Robertson.
Yet another American one, by H. C. Bumer, may be quoted to show a subject not at first sight so suitable to the triolet form.
“A pitcher of mignonette,
In a tenement’s highest casement;
Queer sort of a flowerpot, yet
That pitcher of mignonette
Is a garden in heaven set,
To the little sick child in the basement,
A pitcher of mignonette,
In the tenement’s highest casement.”
If space allowed there are other dainty flowerets to be culled from this bunch of French exotics, which seem to be cultivated more in America than at home at present. None of our greater poets has, I think, published a triolet. The influence of this form is seen in Mr. Swinburne’s oft-quoted poem, “A Match” (If love were what the rose is); and Longfellow has an evident translation of one, although he has not followed strictly the peculiar repetition of the lines.
But many of our younger poets have published triolets. Mr. Austin Dobson is facile princeps in this form (as indeed in nearly all these Provençal rhythms), while Mr. John Payne and Mr. Andrew Lang rarely if ever use it, although rondeaux and ballades are very frequent in their volumes. Miss Pfeiffer has used it once. Miss A. Mary F. Robinson has a very charming triolet sequence “Fiametta,” which almost reconciles one to the connected triolet. But two or three variations from the strict form, while relieving the monotony of the poem, prove yet more strongly the truth of the warning given by Mr. Gosse. Miss May Probyn in her volume a “Ballad of the Road,” has several good specimens, and here and there among periodical literature sufficient are to be found to warrant a hope that the dainty little epigrammatic verse may yet pass into accepted currency, and supply for epigram or pretty trifling fancies the place the sonnet has acquired for the presentation of stately images and profound thought. While the very care with which the accepted form may be filled up appears at first sight to augur great popularity, probably that very reason has made writers more cautious in using it, since it can be so quickly abused and made unbearable doggerel, unless the recurring lines have a reasonable pretext for their repetition. Finally, a word of advice to those who attempt a triolet. Choose a slight, fanciful incident; let the rhymes be exact and easy; and be content with the “suggestion” (which, like a clever sketch) it gives of some trivial event or idea, avoiding complex subjects or too deep thoughts, for which the form is not well suited.
(To be concluded.)