Translator's Note: The basis of Italian verse is in the syllable count, and the rhythmic accent. In English verse, however, the question of the syllable count is dependent on a much more complex consideration: syllable length; and syllable length, in its turn, is conditioned not only by the phonetic situation in and around the syllable, but by rhetorical stress as well. It is clear that Signora Montessori's experiments on the simpler Italian line have little direct bearing, save as an illustration of method, on the pedagogy of English Metrics. For whereas, the principal classifications of Italian lines involve merely the problem of syllabiation (complicated by dieresis and synalepha), with a numerical terminology (quinario, ottonario, decasillabo, etc.), the study of English versification demands an analysis of measure (feet) and of number of feet, with a terminology relative to each: trochee, iambus, dactyl, spondee, anapest, etc., hexameter, pentameter, etc., to mention only the most obvious elements of a science which, applied even to simple English verse, soon becomes extremely complicated. How much, then, of the study of English metrics, beyond the elementary concepts of stanza and rhyme, should be included in the Montessori Advanced Method, and what order of presentation of facts should be followed, still remains to be experimentally determined.
However, the most illuminating fact, as regards method, which detaches from Signora Montessori's experiments with metrical forms, is that long parisyllables are more readily analyzed by children than imparisyllables; and secondly that short imparisyllables prove easier than long imparisyllables. We might wish more explicit evidence that the hardest parisyllable is easier, therefore more natural, than the easiest imparisyllable—implied in Signora Montessori's presentation of this subject. Even so, her conclusions are interesting, and from more than one point of view. It will be recalled that the most ancient and the most fortunate of the meters used in French, Spanish, and Provençal poetry is precisely the decasyllable (Song of Roland, the Provençal Boecis, etc.), whereas the favorite line of old Italian popular poetry was the octo-syllabic verse. These are both parisyllables, though the succession of theses, or rhythmic beats, is not quite analogous to that of the modern Italian verses used in this experiment. It would seem, in fact, as though the children initiated by Signora Montessori into metrical studies, were actually traversing the earlier experiences of their Latin race.
Doubtless the reason why the parisyllable submits more readily to rhythmic analysis than imparisyllables, is that when the syllables are in even numbers, the line tends to reduce to two simple rhythmic groups—the decasyllable to groups of 4 and 6, with two rhythmic beats in each group; the dodecasyllable to groups of 6 and 6 (therefore of 3 and 3 and 3 and 3); the octosyllables to groups of 4 and 4; the six syllable to groups of 3 and 3. The imparisyllables on the contrary are rarely capable of such division—of such monotony, if you wish. They lend themselves to more complex rhythm, especially to "paragraphic" treatment. They are distinctly the rhythms of erudite, "cultivated," "literary" poetry.
We should suspect, accordingly, that what appears in the above experiments as length is in reality reducibility to simpler forms; and that lines capable of such reduction should be given first in an adaptation of Signora Montessori's method. It is, however, highly improbable that in English, where the only constant element in rhythm is the stress and not the syllable count, the line compounded of two simpler rhythmic groups should prove easier for the child than either of those simpler groups themselves. We see no reason to assume, for instance, than an eight-stress line, reducible to two four-stress lines, should be more readily analyzed than a four-stress line; or that a seven-stress line, reducible to a four-stress and a three-stress line, should be easier than either one of these. In fact, the predominance of these simpler elements in the English feeling for these longer groups is indicated by the fact that such compound lines are commonly broken into their constituent parts when printed (cf. The Ancient Mariner), even in cases where the isolation of these parts is not emphasized and rendered natural by rhyme. It will be observed that in the Montessori experiment the order of presentation was first, three-stress (anapestic), then four-stress (iambic), then two-stress (iambic) lines. This situation happens to correspond to that found in the commonest popular English verse, which gives undoubted preference, as witness our nursery rimes, to three-stress and four-stress iambics. Two-stress lines constitute in reality four-stress lines divided by rhyme; just as, in poems of distinctly literary savor, the two-stress line is further reducible by interior rhyme to two one-stress lines.
Three-Stress Lines (Trimeter)
Iambic:
O lét the sólid groúnd
Not faíl beneáth my feét
Befóre my lífe has foúnd
What sóme have foúnd so sweét.
Tennyson.
The moúntain sheép are sweéter,
But the válley sheép are fátter;
We thérefore deémed it meéter
To cárry óff the látter.
We máde an éxpedítion;
We mét an hóst and quélled it;
We fórced a stróng posítion,
And kílled the mén who héld it.
Peacock.
Trochaic: