VIII. Et dans sa fosse alors le mîmes lentement ... Près du champ où sa gloire a été consommée: Ne mimes à l'endroit pierre ni monument Le laissant seul à seul avec sa Renommée!
A GOSSIP WITH SOME OLD ENGLISH POETS.
BY CHARLES OLLIER.
All hail to the octo-syllabic measure! the most cheerful, buoyant, and terse of all metres; at once familiar and refined, and fitted more than any other to the narration of a gay and laughing tale. Lord Byron, who indulged in it not a little, was pleased nevertheless to condemn it for what he called its "fatal facility;" but we believe that is facility is more a matter for the enjoyment of the reader than for the execution of the writer; since, in the latter respect, it seems to demand so much of polish, point, and neatness, as to require, in its very absence of all apparent effort, no little labour in him who would do its claims full justice. Cowper, who was ambitious to excel in this pleasant verse, declared that the "easy jingle" of Mat. Prior was inimitable; but Prior, delightful as his octo-syllabic poetry undoubtedly is, has many rivals,—not indeed among his contemporaries, but in poets who preceded and followed him. Shakespeare, for example, in whose boundless riches is found almost every variety of the Muse, has given us abundant specimens of this verse in the prologues to each act of "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," as spoken by the Ghost of old Gower, who, having, in his Confessio Amantis, told the story afterwards dramatised by Shakespeare, is evoked from his "ashes" to explain to the spectators the progress of the incidents of the play. The following notturno could hardly have been as pleasantly conveyed in any other measure:—
"Now sleep yslaked hath the rout; No din but snores, the house about, Made louder by the o'er-fed breast Of this most pompous marriage feast. The cat, with eyne of burning coal, Now couches 'fore the mouse's hole; And crickets sing at th' oven's mouth, As the blither for their drouth. Hymen hath brought the bride to bed."
Ben Johnson, too, has revelled in this metre: its sweet cheerfulness appears, for the time, to have drawn from his mind its austere and sarcastic qualities, and to have lulled the violence of his wit. Old Ben is, in short, never seen in so happy and amiable a light as when he writes in the octo-syllabic. Here in a specimen:—
"Some act of Love bound to rehearse, I thought to bind him in my verse; Which, when he felt, 'Away!' quoth he, 'Can poets hope to fetter me? It is enough they once did get Mars and my mother in their net; I wear not these my wings in vain. With which he fled me; and again Into my rhymes could ne'er be got By any art. Then wonder not That, since, my numbers are so cold, when Love is fled, and I grow old."
But what shall we say of Herrick, the English Anacreon, who fondled this measure with such graceful dalliance? We cannot resist the temptation of making an extract, and of italicising a line or two, that we may enjoy them with the reader:—
"A sweet disorder in the dresse Kindles in cloathes a wantonnesse; A lawne about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace, which here and there Enthralls the crimson stomacher; A cuffe neglectfull, and thereby Ribbands to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticote; A carelesse shooe-string, in whose tye I see a wild civility; Doe more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part."