[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.