In my choice of a metre I have been led by the following considerations. The beauty and completeness of the stanza of Spenser appear now to be generally acknowledged. But it certainly presents great difficulties in a language so unvocal compared with those of Southern Europe, and so little abounding in rhymes as the English. It is more difficult in a narrative and consecutive poem than in one of a descriptive and reflective character, like Childe Harold, where the topics and the order in which they shall be discussed are both at the discretion of the poet. Yet the terrible exigencies of four recurring rhymes in each stanza have led even such a master as Byron into not a few puzzling dilemmas, as in his description of Cintra (Childe Harold, i. 19), where he has completed a stanza, in which “steep,” “weep,” and “deep” had already done service, with “torrents leap,” although the faintest trickle of a torrent was never seen in that locality! As he proceeded in his task, he attained to a more perfect mastery of his materials; and, I think, the fourth canto unsurpassed in English poetry. It may be asked why I hoped to succeed in what Byron found so difficult? My answer is that I do not think the difficulty insuperable, as Byron has proved it not to be in the latter and infinitely finer part of his poem, that none but a Milton could elevate blank verse to the sublimity as well as harmony of the Paradise Lost, that rhyme, and especially such an elegant form of rhymed verse as the stanza of Childe Harold, possesses a popular and inalienable charm, that success (if achieved at all) rises with the magnitude of the difficulties encountered, and that Spenser himself, Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, his other imitators, Shenstone’s Schoolmistress, Beattie’s Minstrel and West’s Education, Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming, occasional short pieces by Wordsworth, Wiffin’s Translation of Tasso, Scott’s introductions to very many cantos of his several poems (in these two latter cases I speak merely of mechanical execution), Shelley’s Revolt of Islam and Adonais, Kirke White’s Hermit of the Pacific and Christiad, Mrs. Norton’s Child of the Islands, and a few (too few) verses of Tennyson and Milnes abundantly prove the capability of the stanza. The Italian ottava rima, although sanctified by the use of Tasso and Ariosto, adopted almost universally in the heroic poetry of one Peninsula, and most successfully introduced by Camóens into the only epic poetry of the other, appears unadapted for any but burlesque or satirical poetry in the English language, the serious passages of Don Juan deriving all their beauty from being interspersed with lighter, and the excellence and power of Fairfax’s Tasso being marred by the effect of the metre. The English heroic couplet becomes clearly, I think, monotonous in a long poem—a doom from which not all the genius of Dryden and Pope could rescue it. And if in his Corsair, Lara, and The Island, Byron proved, in the words of Jeffrey, that “the oldest and most respectable measure that is known amongst us is as flexible as any other,” and elicited from Sir E. Brydges a just tribute to his “unbroken stream of native eloquence,” it is precisely because “the narrative (as he says) is rapid,” and because the hazardous experiment is not tried of continuing rhymed distiches through a long poem. The Italian ottava rima has been observed to derive great strength from its majestic close, which is invariably in a doubly rhymed couplet, and I have occasionally introduced double rhymes in this and other parts of the stanza to relieve the tendency to monotony. The most distinguished cultivator of Southern literature that England has ever produced, Lord Holland, in his translations from Lope de Vega, Luis de Gonzaga, &c., and from Ariosto, was very successful in this imitation. The hypercatalectic syllable occurs in every line of Tasso’s Gerusalemme, and in every line of Camóens’ Lusiadas, and the Italians and Portuguese therefore call the verse “hendecasyllabic.” A poem of any length constructed on this principle in English would degenerate into pure burlesque; but Byron and others have proved that it may be advantageously introduced as a pleasing variety.
The Alexandrine at the close of each stanza of Spenser produces an equivalent, and perhaps even a more majestic effect. It has been objected to this Alexandrine that it gives a drawling tone to a long narrative poem; but I do not think with justice, since very much depends on the mode in which the line is constructed. Pope’s celebrated “needless Alexandrine” has created a prejudice against this metre, which I admit to be just where it is interspersed with heroic verse, since, as Johnson correctly observes, it disappoints the ear. But in the stanza of Spenser it is expected. How easily the form and character of a verse may be changed by transposing a word or two will appear from Pope’s famous imitative Alexandrine:
“Which like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.”
Alter two monosyllables, and it goes quite trippingly from the tongue:
“And like a wounded snake it drags its length along.”
There is no essential alteration. The adjective “slow” omitted is an incorrect epithet applied to “length,” since the quickest objects in nature, a racehorse or a greyhound, appear very long when upon full stretch, and in most rapid movement. The trick of the line is in the simple use of spondees in the place of iambuses, “which like,” “drags its,” “slow length.” How short and compact an Alexandrine may be, may be seen in Horace’s Epodes passim. Take the first line of the celebrated second ode, the “longè pulcherrima” by the consent of all critics:
“Beatus ille qui procul negotiis.”
This is a perfect Alexandrine, and though consisting of twelve syllables, does not appear longer than one of Scott’s shortest octosyllabic lines in the Lady of the Lake:
“Thy threats, thy mercy I defy.”