VI. IMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES
While English verse is generally admitted to be based on a different system from that of Greek and Latin poetry (the element of accent obscuring that of quantity in English prosody, as the element of quantity obscures that of accent in classical prosody), there have been repeated attempts to introduce the more familiar classical measures into English. Most of these attempts have been academic and have attracted the attention only of critics and scholars; a few have interested the reading public.
Imitations of classical verse in English may conveniently be divided into two classes: imitations of lyrical measures, and imitations of the dactylic hexameter. The latter group is of course much the larger, especially in modern poetry. It will appear that the classical measures might also be divided into two groups according to another distinction: those attempting to observe the quantitative prosody of the original language, and those in which the original measure is transmuted into frankly accentual verse.
The original impulse toward this classical or pseudo-classical verse was a product of the Renaissance, when all forms of art not based on Greek and Latin models were suspected. Rime, not being found in the poetry of the classical languages, was treated as a product of the dark ages,—the invention of "Goths and Huns." See Roger Ascham's Schoolmaster (1570) for the most characteristic representative of this phase of thought in England. The new forms of verse were, naturally enough, first tried in Italy. Schipper traces the beginning of the movement to Alberti (1404-1484). A century later Trissino wrote his Sophonisbe and Italia Liberata in unrimed verse, in professed imitation of Homer, and was looked upon as the inventor of versi sciolti, that is, verses "freed" from rime (compare the remarks of Milton in the prefatory note to Paradise Lost). In 1539 Claudio Tolomei wrote Versi e Regole della Poesia Nuova, a systematic attempt to introduce the classical versification. He also wrote hexameters and sapphics. In France there were similar efforts in the sixteenth century. Mousset translated Homer into hexameters in 1530, and A. de Baïf, a member of the "Pleiade" (1532-1589), devised some French hexameters which he called vers baïfins. The English experiments were worked out independently, and yet under the same neo-classical influences. On this subject, see Schipper, vol. ii. pp. 2-12, 439-464.
A.—LYRICAL MEASURES
Reason, tell me thy mind, if here be reason
In this strange violence, to make resistance
Where sweet graces erect the stately banner
Of Virtue's regiment, shining in harness
Of Fortune's diadems, by Beauty mustered:
Say, then, Reason, I say, what is thy counsel?
(Sir Philip Sidney: Phaleuciakes, from the Arcadia, ab. 1580.)
This is the measure commonly called "Phalæcian." Compare Tennyson's imitation of it, in his Hendecasyllabics quoted below.
O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness!
O how much I do like your solitariness!
Where man's mind hath a freed consideration
Of goodness to receive lovely direction.
Where senses do behold the order of heavenly host,
And wise thoughts do behold what the Creator is.