[CHAPTER I]
FROM THE ORIGINS TO CHAUCER—THE CONSTITUTION OF ENGLISH VERSE[49]
Relations of "Old" to "Middle" and "New" English
The main fact, at once central and fundamental—a pivot whereon the whole structure at once rests and turns,—which it is necessary to understand in order to understand English prosody, is connected with—is indeed one side or case of—the other fact of the history of English language and English literature. So far as is known to the present writer, no other language and no other literature stand in precisely the same condition, as regards the relation of their technically "Old," "Middle," and "New" or "Modern" forms. The relation of what is called "Old" French to Modern is not that of "Old" English to Modern, but rather that of "Middle," if not a closer one still. And though "High" and "Low" German have had their various stages separated for philological purposes, the Continental Teutonic dialects have never undergone anything like the process of modification by Romance influence, older and younger, popular and literary, which turned Anglo-Saxon into English between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries.
generally,
This process was one not so much—if indeed it was one at all—of conscious borrowing: it was one not so much of deliberate imitation (though there was much of that in a way) as one of actual physical impregnation, fertilising, blending, which resulted in a true and permanent "cross" or "hybrid perpetual," possessing and exercising the faculties of self-development and self-propagation.
and in prosody.
In perhaps no way were these faculties more strikingly and remarkably exercised and illustrated than in regard to prosody; and it must, unluckily, be added that in no instance has their exercise been more frequently and more fatally misconstrued. The present writer begins a fresh attempt to set forth what really happened with the following encouragement—in the way of a reviewer's sentence on his earlier and larger effort—before his eyes: "Mr. S.'s contention is that A.S. prosody died out, and that English prosody is entirely drawn from the Latin, with the aid of French and Provençal." Now the "contention" of the History of English Prosody is as directly and deliberately bent against this doctrine as against Dr. Guest's theory, that the principles of Anglo-Saxon prosody have governed English throughout its course. These "falsehoods of extremes" appear to have more lives than a cat, if not as many heads as a hydra; and their main principle of vitality no doubt is that it is possible to put them in plump plain-looking phraseology "which the Beaver can well understand." What did actually happen was far less simple; but the attempt to explain it must once more be made.
Anglo-Saxon prosody itself.
As to what Anglo-Saxon prosody itself was, although, as in all these matters, there are minor dissidences among the authorities, the main arrangement is sun-clear. There is practically only one line; though (and the fact is of inestimable importance, and when once really understood will carry the understander through to the very present day) the syllabic lengths of that line may differ largely even in normal cases, and to an at first sight almost irrational degree in what are called the "extended" varieties.
This normal line in its most normal condition—neither cut short nor drawn out—consists usually of about nine or ten syllables. These are not arranged so as to produce a definite foot-rhythm, though there is a general suggestion of the trochee. And attempts (not to be spoken of with anything but encouragement and wishes for their success, if with some doubt as to its attainment) have been made to assign, in all cases, definite division into associations of syllables which might be called "feet." Other features are unmistakable and incontestable. There is always a sharp middle division—so strong that the lines may be, and often are, printed as halves. There are always more or fewer (most frequently two in the first half and one in the second) alliterated syllables (one consonant or any vowel). And these syllables, with occasionally another or so, are usually accented, but divided from each other by a certain or uncertain number of unaccented ones. The proportion and arrangement of these fall into the controverted things; and the extension of the normal line is a point only of indirect importance, though of very great importance indirectly, here. The attempts which have been made to trace ballad metre, nursery-rhyme metre, etc., to A.S. originals are also outside our limits. To the present writer they appear to be hopelessly vitiated by two absolutely certain facts: (1) that we do not know how Anglo-Saxon was pronounced; (2) that its pronunciation, whatever it was, must have been radically affected by the changes which made it into Middle English. But four cardinal points remain, of such importance that they cannot be too attentively studied or too constantly remembered. They are these: that the oldest English prosody rested on (1) a system of hard and fast middle pause; (2) alliteration, distributed over the whole line; (3) accented and unaccented syllables, the former usually knit to the alliteration in some kind of sub-combination; but (4) that the laws of this combination, and the principle on which the sub-combinations could be substituted, omitted, or multiplied, were of the freest description. It is said, and it can well be believed, that they forbade some things. It is certain that they permitted very many, combining the freest substitution in the same line, of the kind observable in the Latin and Greek hexameter or trimeter, with an apparent variety of lengths, in different lines, hardly inferior to that of a Greek chorus or ode.