Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind."
"This is the very false gallop of verses," continueth the sententious man of motley. He is partly in the right; but the reader has now been told in what way the great poets, who have employed this measure of verse effectively, overcame the difficulties attending its perfect composition. In speaking of long syllables, they were before called accents; but the reader must guard against confounding these with the proper single accent, occurring in each line, and connected with the sense, as well as with the pause. As exemplifying both such accent and pause in the seven-syllabled line, the following couplets may be cited from Cowley. The accent is on the third syllable, the pause at third and fourth, as marked:—
"Fill the bowl—with rosy wine,
Round our temples—roses twine;
Crown'd with roses—we contemn
Gyges' wealthy—diadem."
These pauses must not be deemed arbitrary. The tongue is compelled to make them in the act of utterance.
The octosyllabic measure has been long the most common, if not the most popular, of all forms of English verse. It was in use among the Romancers of the Middle Ages, before England possessed a national literature, or even a proper national language. "Maister Wace" composed in this measure his "Roman de Rou;" and it was adopted by many of the early "Rhyming Chroniclers," and "Metrical Romancers" of Great Britain. Father Chaucer also, though his noblest efforts were made in what became the heroic verse (the decasyllabic) of his country, produced many pieces in the eight-syllabled measure; and Gower used it solely and wholly. So likewise did Barbour in his famous history of the Bruce, and Wyntoun in his Metrical Chronicle of Scotland. Since their days to the present, it has been ever a favourite form of verse among us, and, indeed, has been at no period more popular than during the current century. At the same time, poems of the very highest class, epic or didactic, have never been composed in the octosyllabic measure. It wants weight and dignity to serve as a fitting vehicle for the loftiest poetic inspirations. It has been the basis, however, of much of the finest lyrical poetry of England. It has likewise been splendidly wielded for the purposes of satire, as witness the burlesque or comic epos of Butler, and the works of Swift. And, in our own immediate age, it has been magnificently employed by Scott, Moore, Byron, Campbell, and others, in the composition of poetical romances.
Byron spoke of the octosyllabic verse as having about it "a fatal facility"—meaning that, from its simple brevity of construction, it was too apt to degenerate into doggerel. It is almost needless to give examples of a species of poetry so well known. Though the lines thereof are too short to permit of very full variety of cadence or emphasis, yet these are always marked and traceable, more or less. As graceful and flowing octosyllables, the following lines from the "Tam o' Shanter" of Burns have not many equals in our poetry:—