I. The "accentual" or Evangeline hexameter has, as has been said, been at times far from unpopular; but it has always dissatisfied nicer ears by a certain inappropriateness which has been differently appraised, but which is evidently pointed at by the apology of its first extensive practitioner, Southey, that he could not get spondees enough, and had to be content with trochees. This inappropriateness has since been characterised by an unsurpassed expert in theory and practice—Mr. Swinburne—in the blunt assertion that to English "all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent."
II. On the other hand, the so-called quantitative verse is repulsive to the same ears (unless, like Tennyson's experiments, it is accommodated to ordinary pronunciation) by the very fact that it sets that pronunciation expressly at defiance, and makes sheer jargon of the language.
III. Considering these facts, some (among whom the present writer is included) regard an apparent English hexameter, such as that of Kingsley's Andromeda, and, still more, that of certain verses of Mr. Swinburne himself, as an admirable and glorious metre, but as not dactylic at all—scanning it as a five-foot anapæstic with anacrusis (odd syllable at the beginning) and hypercatalexis (ditto at the end).[150]
Mid-century prosodists.
Of more general prosodic inquiry some selection-summary must be given. Guest's original work does not seem to have produced much effect, save on specially scholarly writers interested in the subject, like Archbishop Trench; though the reprint of it, forty years later, had, as we shall see, a great deal of influence. Except on the hexameter matter, there was little done between 1840 and close upon 1870. It was, however, unfortunate that, at the very opening of this time, Latham's English Language embodied some very inadequate remarks on prosody, including the symbol xa for an iamb, which has too much permeated English text-books since. The works of Archdeacon Evans and E.S. Dallas, both published in 1852, are important only to very thorough-going students. The latter was acute, but fanciful and inclined to jargon. The former, regarding stress as the only basis of modern versification, indulged in a curious undervaluation of English poetry generally: we must "forget all about classical poetry to be satisfied with blank verse"; English lyric has been "under an evil genius, and always a blank"; and Shakespeare and Milton "gained exceedingly" by translation into Greek and Latin. Any intelligent reader can judge of such a tree by such fruits.
Of really earlier date than these (for their author died in 1846) were Sidney Walker's remarks on Shakespeare's Versification, posthumously published in 1854, which contain some useful metrical observations.[151] Dallas's book produced at least two important reviews, each of which extended itself into a more important prosodic tractate. The first of these was by the late Professor Masson, who afterwards rearranged his prosodic ideas in a minute and very scholarly study of Milton's versification, appearing in his larger edition of the poet. Professor Masson perhaps admitted some unnecessary feet, such as the amphibrach, but his views are on the whole extremely sound. The other essay was by Coventry Patmore—a poet, a man of distinct originality in many ways, and a really learned student of preceding prosodists—in fact, by far the most learned up to his time. This essay is full of suggestive and ingenious notions, but exceedingly crotchety, and, for persons not thoroughly grounded in the subject, unsafe. It has the merit of recognising the division of verse into what it calls, by a rather ponderous term, "isochronous intervals" (that is to say, feet equivalent in time), and of recognising, likewise, the important metrical as well as rhetorical part played by pause. But it exaggerates this part in an impossible fashion, making a full pause-foot at the end of every heroic line; and its attention to "accent" is also excessive and, in fact, inconsistent.
Those about 1870,
On the whole, however, it was not, as has been said, till the very eve of 1870, when the Præ-Raphaelite school had made its appearance, that any considerable amount of prosodic writing came. Then, and in the very same year, 1869, there was a remarkable outburst, including A Complete Practical Guide to the Whole Subject of English Versification (by E. Wadham), which represents a modified Bysshian system—believing in elision; thinking trisyllabic feet bad, though they may exist, especially at the cæsura; discountenancing both blank and anapæstic verse; and applying to the whole subject a new terminology which has not been generally accepted. Then came also a Manual of English Prosody by R. F. Brewer (reissued many years afterwards as Orthometry), which contains a very large amount of information on the details of the matter, but little appreciation of its more important aspects. Much briefer, but, despite some errors, sounder on the whole, and giving no bad introduction to the subject, was the Rules of Rhyme of Tom Hood, son of the poet. Greater influence than that of any of these has been exercised by the prosodic part of Dr. Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, published in this year, and of his English Lessons for English People, issued (and partly written by J. R. Seeley) two years later. Unfortunately, not a few of the principles of these books are either demonstrably unsound or very doubtful, the worst of all being the insistence on "extra-metrical" syllables, or, in other words, the confession that English prosody cannot account for English poetry. 1869 also saw the beginning of a very important work, Mr. A. J. Ellis's Early English Pronunciation, which has had a great effect on some views of prosody, and contains a very elaborate scheme of syllabic values for quality and degree of force, weight, etc.
In 1874 Mr. John Addington Symonds, a critic, prose-writer, and even poet of no mean rank, published an essay, which he afterwards expanded into a tractate, on Blank Verse, denying that any preconceived metrical scheme will explain this, and arguing that each line must be treated separately according to its own sense. More minute than any book since Guest's, and written with definite purpose to teach poets their business, was Mr. Gilbert Conway's Treatise of Versification (1878), which reverts to eighteenth-century theories, not merely of the scansion but of the pronunciation of words like "ominous" and " delicate"; thinks Milton "capricious" and "inconsistent"; and proceeds entirely on the principle that the base and backbone of English prosody is accent. Two years later Mr. Ruskin issued his Elements of English Prosody, employing musical notation, but using the names of feet very strangely applied. And a year later Mr. Shadworth Hodgson published a paper on "English Verse," perhaps not uninfluenced by Guest, and advocating (as several writers about his time began to do) "stress" systems of scansion, the stress being allotted according to various considerations of sense and otherwise. Another stress-man—still more influenced, though partly in the way of correction, by Guest—was the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who in 1883 wrote in the Saturday Review some papers, republished after his death, and advocating "sections," of which there may be as many as four in a normal heroic line, though this may, on the other hand, have as many as seven or even eight "beats" on strong syllables. Much sounder than any of these—indeed, on practical matters almost irreproachable—was Professor J. B. Mayor's Chapters on English Metre (1886), on which he founded later a Handbook of the subject (1903).
and since.