English verse of four stresses is chiefly to be divided into two groups: that representing the primitive Germanic tendency to emphasize the element of accent rather than the counting of syllables, and that produced under foreign influence, showing comparative regularity in the number of syllables to the verse. The first group is made up of the various descendants of the original "long line," sometimes rimed and sometimes unrimed; the second group of forms of the familiar octosyllabic couplet. (Of modern verse only iambic measures are included here.)

A.—NON-SYLLABLE-COUNTING

The earliest English verse, like early Germanic verse generally, is based on the recurrence of strong accents, and is composed of a long line made up of two short lines, or half-lines, which are bound together by alliteration. As to the number of accents to be counted in the line, there are two theories, the "two-accent" and the "four-accent." According to the first, we should count two accents to the half-line, and four to the long line; according to the second, we should count four to the half-line and eight to the long line. The distinction is not so marked, however, as would appear at first thought; for the two-accent theorists recognize a considerable number of secondary accents in addition to the principal ones, while the four-accent theorists recognize half the accents as being commonly weaker than the other half.

Aside from the two-part structure of the long line, the number of accents, and the alliteration, Anglo-Saxon verse is marked by the usual coincidence of the principal accents with long syllables. The unaccented parts of the line vary in both the number and length of the syllables. In general, each half-line is divided into two feet, or measures; and, according to the structure of these feet, the ordinary half-lines of Anglo-Saxon verse have been reduced by Sievers to five fundamental types.

Type A is represented by such a half-line as "stiÐum wordum."

Type B inverts the rhythm of A, as in the half-line "ne winterscur."

Type C is characterized by the juxtaposition of the two accents, as in the half-line "and forÐ gangan."

Type D commonly has only the accented syllable in the first foot, while the second foot is characterized by a sort of dactylic rhythm, as in the half-lines "s?liÐende" and "flet innanweard."

Type E inverts the rhythm of D, as in the half-line "gylp-wordum sprÆc."[16]

In all the types many variations are found. The beginning of the line may show anacrusis, and two short syllables may take the place of a long syllable; while an indeterminate number of light syllables may often be introduced before or after the principal accents.

(From the Anglo-Saxon Phoenix. ab. 700 A.D.)

These closing lines of the poem furnish an important opportunity to compare the Latin half-lines with those in Anglo-Saxon. Each half seems to be influenced by the metrical nature of the other; the Anglo-Saxon being a little more regular in the number of syllables than usual, the Latin less regular. Since, to the ear of the writer, the two halves of each verse were doubtless fairly equivalent, metrically, and since each of the Latin half-lines appears to have two accents, these combination verses have been thought to be an argument for the "two-accent" theory of Anglo-Saxon verse. On the other hand, the advocates of the four-accent theory would read the Latin half-lines with four stresses each, on the ground that nearly every syllable was stressed in the chanting of such religious verse (lÚ-cÍs aÚc-tÓr, etc.).

See also the specimens on pp. 13 and 14, above.

(King Horn, ll. 1-12. ab. 1200-1250.)

The metre of King Horn is very irregular, and has proved somewhat puzzling to scholars. It seems to be the direct result of the primitive "long line" broken into two halves by internal rime. The number of accents varies greatly: we may have verses which are easily read with two, such as—

Yet these it is evident might also be read with three accents, as in the following couplet also:

According as one reads the Anglo-Saxon verse with two or four accents to the half-line, he will regard the typical half-line of King Horn as made up of two or four accents. If the fundamental number was two, the additional accented syllables were doubtless introduced under the influence of the French eight-syllable couplet. It is not difficult to see how the more regular (Latin or French) and the less regular (native) measures might have been confused, and soon have coalesced in popular use. Ten Brink, reading the King Horn lines with four accents, speaks of them as "formed entirely on the Teutonic principle, with two accents upon the sonorous close of the verse, so that it appears to be an organic continuation of the chief form in Layamon and in Ælfred's Proverbs. This circumstance makes the poem exceptional among the early English romances." He also speaks of "an unmistakably strophic construction in the text as we have it." (English Literature, Kennedy translation, vol. i. p. 227.)

(Patience, ll. 137-147. ab. 1375.)

(Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, strophe xviii. ab. 1375.)

These two specimens, both doubtless the work of the same author (to whom are also attributed the Pearl and Cleanness), represent the patriotic revival of the alliterative long line by contemporaries of Chaucer in the latter half of the fourteenth century. In Sir Gawayne the rimeless long line is gathered into strophes, each of which concludes with four riming lines. (See above, p. 109.)

(Ballad of Bewick and Grahame. In Gummere's English Ballads, p. 176.)

The regular stanza of the old ballads was of this four-stress type, with extra light syllables admitted anywhere yet not in great numbers. More commonly, however, the fourth stress was lost from the second and fourth lines. (See p. 264, below.)

(York Mystery Plays: The Trial before Pilate. Ed. L. T. Smith, p. 322.)

(Gammer Gurton's Needle, Prologue. 1566.)

In these specimens we have the later descendant of the long line as used in the early drama of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,—the "tumbling verse," regular in rhythm and rime, but indifferent to the number of syllables.[17] Sometimes, where most regular, as in lines 2-4 of the second specimen, the measure approximates closely to regular four-stress anapestic.

(Spenser: The Shepherd's Calendar, May. 1579.)

Spenser's use of the tumbling verse in the Shepherd's Calendar was a part of his imitation of older forms for the sake of an uncultivated, bucolic effect. In his hands the irregular measure showed a tendency to reduce itself to regular ten-syllable lines, like the first two of the present specimen, which, by themselves, might easily be read as decasyllabic iambics. On this, see further under Five-Stress Verse. Spenser was perhaps the last cultivated poet to use the irregular measure, until we come to modern imitators of the early popular poetry. The following specimen is of this class.

(William Morris: The Folk-Mote by the River. In Poems by the Way. 1896.)

B.—SYLLABLE-COUNTING (OCTOSYLLABIC COUPLET)

The more regular four-stress verse, in rimed couplets showing a tendency to be octosyllabic, we have seen to be generally attributed to the influence of the French octosyllabics, which were in common use in late mediÆval French poetry, such as that of Wace and Chrestien de Troyes.

(The Pater Noster, ab. 1175. In Morris's Old English Homilies, p. 55.)

This poem is sometimes said to show the first appearance of the octosyllabic couplet in English. It suggests the struggle between native indifference to syllable-counting and imitation of the greater regularity of its models. As Dr. Morris says of the next specimen: "The essence of the system of versification which the poet has adopted is, briefly, that every line shall have four accented syllables in it, the unaccented syllables being left in some measure, as it were, to take care of themselves." But this does not altogether do justice to the new regularity. Schipper says that of the first 100 lines of the poem 20 are perfectly regular. (See his notes in vol. i. p. 109.) In the following specimens we may trace the gradual growth of skill and accuracy.

(Genesis and Exodus, ll. 1285-1290. ab. 1250-1300.)

(The Owl and the Nightingale, ll. 835-842. Thirteenth century.)

(Barbour: Bruce, v. 89-98. ab. 1375.)

(Robert Manning of Brunne: Handlyng Synne, ll. 339-350. ab. 1300.)

(Lay of Havelok the Dane. ll. 1-16. ab. 1300.)

For lays and romances, both French and English, the four-stress couplet was an easy and favorite form. Compare the remarks of ten Brink: "We see how the short couplet, which is the standing form of the court-romance, was not only transmitted to it from the legendary, didactic, and historical poems, but was also suggested to it by those songs to which it was indebted for its own subject-matter. Other tokens indicate that a short strophe composed of eight-syllabled lines, with single or alternating rhymes, was a favorite form for many subjects in this jongleur poetry.... The simple form of the short couplet offered to the romance-poet no scope to compete in metrical technique with the skilled court-lyrists. He could prove his art only within a limited portion of this field: in the treatment of the enjambement and particularly of rhyme. The poet strove not only to form pure rhymes, but often to carry them forward with more syllables than were essential, and he was fond of all sorts of grammatical devices in rhyme." (English Literature, Kennedy trans., vol. i. pp. 174, 175.)

(John Gower: Prologue to Confessio Amantis. Ed. Pauli, vol. i. pp. 22, 23. ab. 1390.)

(Chaucer: House of Fame, ll. 1091-1108. ab. 1385.)

It was Gower and Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, who brought the use of the eight-syllable couplet to the point of accuracy and perfection. Gower made it the vehicle of the interminable narrative of the Confessio Amantis, using it with regularity but with great monotony. Chaucer transformed it into a much more flexible form (with freedom of cesura, enjambement, and inversions), using it in about 3500 lines of his poetry (excluding the translation of the Roman de la Rose), but early leaving it for the decasyllabic verse. In modern English poetry this short couplet has rarely been used for continuous narrative of a serious character, except by Byron and Wordsworth.

(Milton: Il Penseroso, ll. 155-166. 1634.)

(Samuel Butler: Hudibras, Part I. 1663.)

Butler made the octosyllabic couplet so entirely his own, for the purposes of his jogging satiric verse, that ever since it has frequently been called "Hudibrastic." The ingenuity of his rimes added not a little to its effectiveness. In the Spectator (No. 249) Addison said that burlesque poetry runs best "in doggrel like that of Hudibras, ... when a hero is to be pulled down and degraded;" otherwise in the heroic measure. He speaks also of "the generality" of Butler's readers as being "wonderfully pleased with the double rhymes."

(Thomas Parnell: A Night-Piece on Death, ab. 1715.)

Mr. Gosse speaks of Parnell's employment of the octosyllabic couplet in this poem as "wonderfully subtle and harmonious." (Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 137.)

(John Gay: The Hare and Many Friends, in Fables. 1727.)

Gay's use of the short couplet in his Fables sometimes shows it at its best for narrative purposes.

(Swift: On the Death of Dr. Swift. 1731.)

Swift made use of the octosyllabic couplet in nearly all his verse, and with no little vigor and originality. Mr. Gosse remarks: "His lines fall like well-directed blows of the flail, and he gives the octosyllabic measure, which he is accustomed to choose on account of the Hudibrastic opportunities it offers, a character which is entirely his own." (Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 153.)

(Collins: Ode to Liberty. 1746.)

(Burns: Tam O'Shanter, ll. 1-12. 1790.)

(Byron: The Prisoner of Chillon, iii. 1816.)

(Wordsworth: White Doe of Rylstone, canto vii. ll. 282-291. 1815.)

(Scott: The Lady of the Lake, canto v. st. xv. 1810.)

(William Morris: The Earthly Paradise; The Land East of the Sun. 1870.)

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II. FIVE-STRESS VERSE

The five-stress or decasyllabic verse (iambic pentameter) is so much more widely used in modern English poetry than any other verse-form, that its history is of special interest. It is curious that a form so completely adopted as the favorite of English verse should be borrowed rather than native; but, the syllable-counting principle once being admitted, there is nothing in five-stress verse inconsistent with native English tendencies. A very great part of such verse has really only four full accents, and this we have seen to be the number of accents in the native English verse. On this point, see further remarks in connection with the specimen from Spenser, p. 180 below.

This verse appears in two great divisions, rimed (the decasyllabic couplet) and unrimed (blank verse). The rimed form was the earlier, the unrimed being merely a modification of it under the influence of other unrimed metres.

A.—THE DECASYLLABIC COUPLET

---

(Song from Harleian MS. 2253. In BÖddeker's Altenglische Dichtungen, p. 231.)

This early religious lyric is of interest as containing the first known use of the five-stress couplet in English. Here it is only in a few lines that the couplet occurs, and so sporadic an occurrence should perhaps be regarded as due to nothing more than chance. See Schipper, vol. i. p. 439, and ten Brink's Chaucer's Sprache und Verskunst, p. 173 f. Ten Brink calls attention to another fairly regular five-stress verse, found on p. 253 of Wright's Political Songs:

(Chaucer: Legend of Good Women, Prologue, ll. 29-44. Text A. ab. 1385.)

(Chaucer: Prologue to Canterbury Tales, ll. 477-484, 525-528. ab. 1385.)

With Chaucer we have the first deliberate use of the five-stress couplet, in continuous verse, known to English poetry. His earliest use of the pentameter line was in the Compleynt to Pitee (perhaps written about 1371), in the "rime royal" stanza; his earliest use of the pentameter couplet was in the Legend of Good Women, usually dated 1385. From that time the measure became almost his only instrument, and we find altogether in his poetry some 16,000 lines in the couplet, besides some 14,000 more in rime royal. Too much praise cannot be given Chaucer's use of the couplet. Although it was an experiment in English verse, it has perhaps hardly been used since his time with greater skill. He used a variety of cesuras (see ten Brink's monograph for the enumeration of them), a very large number of feminine endings (such as the still pronounced final-e and similar syllables easily provided), free inversions in the first foot and elsewhere, and many run-on lines (in a typical 100 lines some 16 run-on lines and 7 run-on couplets appearing). The total effect is one of combined freedom and mastery, of fluent conversational style yet within the limits of guarded artistic form. "Much more regularly than the French and ProvenÇals, and yet without pedantic stiffness, he made his verse advance with a sort of iambic gait, and he was therefore able to give up and exchange for a freer arrangement the immovable cesura, which these poets had always made to coincide with a foot-ending." (Ten Brink, in English Literature, Kennedy trans., vol. ii. p. 48.) On Chaucer's verse, see, besides the monograph of ten Brink already cited, Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer, vol. iii. pp. 297 ff., and Schipper, vol. i. pp. 442 ff.

(Spenser: The Shepherd's Calendar, May. 1579.)

This specimen is properly not in five-stress verse, but in irregular four-stress ("tumbling verse"); compare the specimen on p. 158, above. We have a close approach, however, to the regular five-stress verse, in such lines as the fourth, fifth, eleventh, thirteenth, and seventeenth. On this and similar passages in the Shepherd's Calendar, as illustrating the close relation between the native measure and the newer one, see an article by Professor Gummere, in the American Journal of Philology, vol. vii. pp. 53ff. Other verses cited by Dr. Gummere are:

It is pointed out that the regular five-stress line, when having—as very frequently—only four full stresses (two or three light syllables coming together, especially at the pause), can hardly be distinguished from certain forms of the native four-stress verse. See also the Eclogues for February and August, in the Shepherd's Calendar. Dr. Gummere's conclusion is, that "practically all the elements of Anglo-Saxon verse are preserved in our modern poetry, though in different combinations, with changed proportional importance."

(Spenser: Mother Hubbard's Tale, ll. 1137-1166. 1591.)

Spenser's use of the heroic couplet for the Mother Hubbard's Tale is the earliest instance of its adoption in English for satirical verse,—a purpose for which its later history showed it to be peculiarly well fitted.

(Marlowe: Hero and Leander, ll. 17-26. ab. 1590, pub. 1598.)

(Joseph Hall: Virgidemiarum Libri VI., bk. i. satire 4. 1597.)

Joseph Hall was the most vigorous satirist of the group of Elizabethans who, in the last decade of the sixteenth century, were imitating the satires of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius. Hall's satires have a curiously eighteenth-century flavor, and his couplets are frequently very similar to those of the age of Pope. Thus Thomas Warton (in his History of English Poetry) observed of Hall that "the fabric of the couplets approaches to the modern standard;" and Anderson, who edited the British Poets in 1795, said: "Many of his lines would do honor to the most harmonious of our modern poets. The sense has generally such a pause, and will admit of such a punctuation at the close of the second line, as if it were calculated for a modern ear." On the verse of these Elizabethan satirists in general, see The Rise of Formal Satire in England, by the present editor (Publications of the Univ. of Penna.).

On the other hand, the verse of the satires of John Donne, from which the following specimen is taken, is the roughest and most difficult of all the satires of the group. The reputation of Donne's satires for metrical ruggedness has affected unjustly that of his other poetry and that of the Elizabethan satires in general. Dryden said: "Would not Donne's Satires, which abound with so much wit, appear more charming if he had taken care of his words and of his numbers?" (Essay on Satire.) And Pope "versified" two of them, so as to bring them into a form pleasing to the ear of his age.

(John Donne: Satire iv. ll. 17 ff. ab. 1593.)

(Shakspere: Love's Labor's Lost, V. ii. 315-330. ab. 1590.)

The use of rimed couplets in Shakspere's dramas is especially characteristic of his earlier work. In this play, Love's Labor's Lost, Dowden says, "there are about two rhymed lines to every one of blank verse" (Shakspere Primer, p. 44). In the late plays, on the other hand, rime disappears almost altogether. It will be observed that while Shakspere's heroic verse is usually fairly regular, with not very many run-on lines, it yet differs in quality from that of satires. The dramatic use moulds it into different cadences, and the single couplet is, perhaps, less noticeably the unit of the verse.

(Fletcher: The Faithful Shepherdess, I. iii. ab. 1610.)

Fletcher uses the couplet in this drama with a freedom hardly found elsewhere until the time of Keats; see the remark of Symonds, quoted p. 210, below.

(Ben Jonson: Epigram LXXXIX, to Edward Allen. 1616.)

Jonson is thought by some to have been the founder of the classical school of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which made the heroic couplet peculiarly its own. See on this subject an article by Prof. F. E. Schelling, "Ben Jonson and the Classical School," in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, n. s. vol. vi. p. 221. Professor Schelling finds in Jonson's verse all the characteristics of the later couplet of Waller and Dryden: end-stopped lines and couplets, a preference for medial cesura, and an antithetical structure of the verse. "No better specimen of Jonson's antithetical manner could be found," he says further, than the Epigram here quoted. So far as this antithetical quality of Jonson's verse is concerned, Professor Schelling's view cannot be questioned; but that Jonson shows any singular preference for end-stopped lines and couplets may be seriously questioned.

(Waller: Of the Danger his Majesty [being Prince] escaped in the Road at St. Andrews. 1623?)

(Waller: The Battle of the Summer Islands, canto i. 1638.)

Edmund Waller is the chief representative of the early classical poetry of the seventeenth century, and of the polishing and regulating of the couplet which prepared the way for the verse of Dryden and Pope. The dominant characteristic of this verse is its avoidance of enjambement, or run-on lines, still more of run-on couplets. The growing precision of French verse at the same time was perhaps influential in England. Malherbe, who was at the French court after 1605, set rules for more regular verse, and forbade, among other things, the use of run-on lines—a precept which held good in French poetry until the nineteenth century. The influence of Waller in England was, for a considerable period, hardly less than that of Malherbe in France. Dryden said that "the excellence and dignity" of rime "were never known till Mr. Waller taught it; he first made writing easily an art; first showed us to conclude the sense most commonly in distichs, which, in the verse of those before him, runs on for so many lines together that the reader is out of breath to overtake it. This sweetness of Mr. Waller's lyric poesy was afterward followed, in the epic, by Sir John Denham, in his Cooper's Hill." (Epistle Dedicatory of The Rival Ladies.) In another place Dryden observed that only Waller, in English, had surpassed Spenser in the harmony of his verse. Dryden's view was later echoed by Pope, who exhorted his readers to

(Essay on Criticism, l. 360.)

But the most remarkable praise of Waller is found in the Preface to his posthumous poems, 1690, generally attributed to Bishop Atterbury. "He was indeed the parent of English verse, and the first that shewed us our tongue had beauty and numbers in it.... The tongue came into his hands like a rough diamond; he polished it first, and to that degree that all artists since him have admired the workmanship, without pretending to mend it.... He undoubtedly stands first in the list of refiners, and for aught I know, last, too; for I question whether in Charles the Second's reign English did not come to its full perfection; and whether it has not had its Augustan Age, as well as the Latin.... We are no less beholding to him for the new turn of verse, which he brought in, and the improvement he made in our numbers. Before his time men rhymed, indeed, and that was all: as for the harmony of measure, and that dance of words which good ears are so much pleased with, they knew nothing of it. Their poetry then was made up almost entirely of monosyllables, which, when they come together in any cluster, are certainly the most harsh, untunable things in the world. If any man doubts of this, let him read ten lines in Donne, and he'll quickly be convinced. Besides, their verses ran all into one another, and hung together, throughout a whole copy, like the hook't atoms that compose a body in Des Cartes. There was no distinction of parts, no regular stops, nothing for the ear to rest upon. But as soon as the copy began, down it went like a larum, incessantly; and the reader was sure to be out of breath before he got to the end of it. So that really verse in those days was but downright prose, tagged with rhymes. Mr. Waller removed all these faults, brought in more polysyllables and smoother measures, bound up his thoughts better and in a cadence more agreeable to the nature of the verse he wrote in: so that wherever the natural stops of that were, he contrived the little breakings of his sense so as to fall in with 'em. And for that reason, since the stress of our verse lies commonly upon the last syllable, you'll hardly ever find him using a word of no force there."[21] Waller's editor thus clearly discerns the very characteristics of his verse which are avoided by the master-poets—the coincidence of phrase-pauses and verse-pauses, and regularity in the placing of stress.

The most important discussion of the influence of Waller on English poetry, and on the heroic couplet in particular, is found in Mr. Gosse's book, From Shakespeare to Pope. Mr. Gosse regards Waller as inventing for himself the couplet of the classical school; "master," in 1623, of such verse as "was not imitated by a single poet for nearly twenty years" (p. 50). This view is criticised in an interesting article by Dr. Henry Wood, in the American Journal of Philology, vol. xi. p. 55. While Mr. Gosse places Waller's earliest couplets in 1621 and 1623, Dr. Wood would date them as late as 1626, and shows that Waller wrote nothing else until 1635. Meantime had appeared (the first volume at least as early as 1623) the translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, by George Sandys, in which, says Wood, all the characteristics of Waller's verse appear. "At all events," is his conclusion, "it was Sandys, and not Waller, who at the beginning of the third decade of the century, first of all Englishmen, made a uniform practice of writing in heroic couplets, which are, on the whole, in accord with the French rule, and which, for exactness of construction, and for harmonious sification, go far towards satisfying the demands of the later 'classical' school in England." Dr. Wood emphasizes the probable influence of the French poets on these early heroic couplets, calling attention to the fact that Sandys was in France in 1610. There is no evidence, however, that he was there for more than a few days, en route to more eastern countries. Waller was not in France till 1643. The whole question of the influence of French poetry in England before the Restoration still remains to be carefully investigated. Meantime, the cautious student will hesitate to put too much stress on any single point of departure for the new style of versification. Many influences must have combined to make it popular. We have seen Professor Schelling emphasizing the influence of Jonson; he also very justly points out "that it is a mistake to consider that the Elizabethans often practised the couplet with the freedom, not to say license, that characterizes its nineteenth century use in the hands of such poets as Keats." Compare the couplets of even so romantic a poet as Marlowe, in the specimen given above from Hero and Leander. And even Mr. Gosse, in partial divergence from the doctrines of From Shakespeare to Pope, says of the satiric verse of the Elizabethan Rowlands: "There are lines in this passage which Pope would not have disdained to use. It might, indeed, be employed as against that old heresy, not even yet entirely discarded, that smoothness of heroic verse was the invention of Waller. As a matter of fact, this, as well as all other branches of the universal art of poetry, was understood by the great Elizabethan masters; and if they did not frequently employ it, it was because they left to such humbler writers as Rowlands an instrument incapable of those noble and audacious harmonies on which they chiefly prided themselves." (Introduction to the Works of Rowlands, Hunterian Club ed., p. 16.)

A tribute to the incoming influence of the couplet is cited by Dr. Wood from the poems of Sir John Beaumont (1582-1627). In his verses To His Late Majesty, concerning the True Forme of English Poetry, Beaumont said:

(Chalmer's English Poets, vol. vi. p. 31.)[22]

(George Sandys: Ovid's Metamorphoses, bk. i. 1621.)

On the significance of Sandys's verse, see preceding notes on Waller, and the note on its possible relation to Pope, p. 201 below.

(Sir John Denham: Cooper's Hill. 1642.)

"Denham," says Mr. Gosse, "was the first writer to adopt the precise manner of versification introduced by Waller." (Ward's English Poets, vol. ii. p. 279.) On his praise by Dryden and Pope, see notes on p. 188 above. The last four lines of the specimen here given have been universally admired.

(John Oldham: Satires upon the Jesuits, Sat. i. 1679.)

"Oldham was the first," says Mr. Gosse, "to liberate himself, in the use of the distich, from this under-current of a stanza, and to write heroic verse straight on, couplet by couplet, ascending by steady strides and not by irregular leaps. (Any one who will venture to read Oldham's disagreeable Satire upon the Jesuits, written in 1679, will see the truth of this remark, and note the effect that its versification had upon that series of Dryden's satires which immediately followed it.) In Pope's best satires we see this art carried to its final perfection; after his time the connecting link between couplet and couplet became lost, and at last in the decline poems became, as some one has said, mere cases of lancets lying side by side. But in Dryden's day the connection was still only too obvious, and it strikes me that it may have been from a consciousness of this defect, that Dryden adopted that triplet, with a final alexandrine, which he is so fond of introducing." (From Shakespeare to Pope, p. 201.)

(Dryden: Absalom and Achitophel, part I. ll. 150-179. 1681.)

Dryden was the first great English poet after Chaucer to make the heroic couplet his chief vehicle of expression, and he put far more variety and vigor into it than had been achieved by his nearer predecessors. As Pope said:

(Epistle ii., 267.)

And Gray, some years later, symbolized Dryden's couplet in these fine lines of the Progress of Poesy:

On Dryden's development of the couplet, see especially Saintsbury's Life of Dryden (English Men of Letters Series), pp. 17, 171. "The whole structure of the decasyllabic line before the middle of the seventeenth century was ill calculated for the perfecting of the couplet. Accustomed either to the stately plainness of blank verse, or to the elaborate intricacies of the stanza, writers had got into the habit of communicating to their verse a slow and somewhat languid movement." (p. 17.) "In versification the great achievement of Dryden was the alteration of what may be called the balance of the line, causing it to run more quickly, and to strike its rhymes with a sharper and less prolonged sound. One obvious means of obtaining this was, as a matter of course, the isolation of the couplet, and the avoidance of overlapping the different lines one upon the other. The effect of this overlapping, by depriving the eye and voice of the expectation of rest at the end of each couplet, is always one of two things. Either the lines are converted into a sort of rhythmic prose, made musical by the rhymes rather than divided by them, or else a considerable pause is invited at the end of each, or of most lines, and the cadence of the whole becomes comparatively slow and languid. Both these forms, as may be seen in the works of Mr. Morris, as well as in the older writers, are excellently suited for narration of some considerable length. They are less well suited for satire, for argument, and for the moral reflections which the age of Dryden loved. He therefore set himself to elaborate the couplet with its sharp point, its quick delivery, and the pistol-like detonation of its rhyme. But there is an obvious objection, or rather there are several obvious objections which present themselves to the couplet. It was natural that to one accustomed to the more varied range of the older rhythm and metre, there might seem to be a danger of the snip-snap monotony into which, as we know, it did actually fall when it passed out of the hands of its first great practitioners. There might also be a fear that it would not always be possible to compress the sense of a complete clause within the narrow limits of twenty syllables. To meet these difficulties Dryden resorted to three mechanical devices—the hemistich, the alexandrine, and the triplet, all three of which could be used indifferently to eke out the space or to give variety of sound.... In poetry proper the hemistich is anything but pleasing, and Dryden, becoming convinced of the fact, almost discarded it. The alexandrine and the triplet he always continued to use." (pp. 171, 172.)

(Dryden: Marriage À la Mode, II, i. 1672.)

The use of the heroic couplet in the drama marks its effort to conquer the last citadel of English poetry; an attempt which, under the leadership of Dryden, seemed to succeed, but soon gave way to better judgment. Dryden favored the experiment in the Preface to The Rival Ladies (1663), and inserted a few couplets in that play. Etheredge accepted the suggestion, and put the serious parts of The Comical Revenge (largely prose) into couplets, in 1664. In the same year The Indian Queen (by Dryden and Sir Robert Howard) appeared in heroic verse, and the fashion soon became so general that in the Essay on Heroic Plays, prefixed to The Conquest of Granada (1672), Dryden could say: "Whether Heroic Verse ought to be admitted into serious plays, is not now to be disputed: 'tis already in possession of the stage; and I dare confidently affirm, that very few tragedies, in this age, shall be received without it." Only six years later, however, in 1678, he returned to blank verse in All for Love, saying: "I have disencumbered myself from rhyme. Not that I condemn my former way, but that this is more proper to my present purpose." In all about five plays of Dryden's are in couplets; after 1678 he rarely returned to rime for the drama. As Atterbury said in his Preface to Waller's poems: "'Twas the strength of his genius that first brought it into credit in plays; and 'tis the force of his example that has thrown it out again." "The fashion of rhyme in the drama, then, to be exact," says Mr. Gosse, "flourished from 1664 until ... 1678." Some justification for its use is to be found in the wretched condition into which blank verse had fallen. "The blank iambics of the romantic dramatists had become so execrably weak and distended, the whole movement of dramatic verse had grown so flaccid, that a little restraint in the severe limits of rhyme was absolutely necessary." (Gosse, in Seventeenth Century Studies, p. 264.)

The present specimen is from a play in which the couplet was used but slightly; but it shows Dryden's use of it at its best. In the drama, as already remarked, the couplet is naturally less epigrammatic and pointed than in didactic and satiric verse.

(Addison: The Campaign. 1704.)

(Pope: Essay on Criticism, ll. 337-361. 1711.)

(Pope: Iliad, bk. xii.)

Pope's couplet, while less vigorous and varied than Dryden's, has been generally considered the most perfect development of the typical measure of the classical school. Mr. Courthope thinks that in this speech from the Iliad, Pope "perhaps attains the highest level of which the heroic couplet is capable." (Works of Pope, vol. v. p. 167.)

Mr. Andrew Lang protests against the monotony of the verse of Pope's Iliad in some lines which cleverly adopt the same sort of measure:

(Andrew Lang: Letters to Dead Authors; Pope.)

Compare with this the equally clever defence of Pope's verse by Mr. Dobson:

(Austin Dobson: Dialogue to the Memory of Mr. Alexander Pope.)

(Goldsmith: The Deserted Village. 1770.)

"The heroic couplet," says Mr. Gosse, "was never employed, even by Pope himself, with more melody than by Goldsmith in this poem." (Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 320.) Its use at this time, when the revival of blank verse by Thomson and others had seriously affected the prestige of the couplet, was a sign of Goldsmith's reactionary tendency toward the school of Pope. His dislike of blank verse he expressed in his early work on the Present State of Polite Learning, saying that it might be reckoned among "several disagreeable instances of pedantry" lately proceeding "from a desire in the critic of grafting the spirit of ancient languages upon the English." (Works, Globe ed., p. 439.) This opinion was of course shared by Goldsmith's friend, Dr. Johnson, whose two important poems (London and The Vanity of Human Wishes) stand with the two of Goldsmith as the last notable pieces of English poetry of the classical school. While Johnson admitted that he could not "wish that Milton had been a rhymer," yet he never lost an opportunity to speak contemptuously of blank verse as a poetic form, and quoted approvingly the saying of a critic that it "seems to be verse only to the eye." (Life of Milton.)

(Cowper: Table Talk. 1782.)

(Byron: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 1809.)

(Crabbe: The Borough, letter i. 1810.)

Crabbe's poems are the latest to use the strict Popean couplet for narrative and descriptive purposes, and his couplets have a certain characteristic reticence and vigor. Professor Woodberry praises them in an interesting passage on "the old heroic rhymed couplet, that simplest form of English verse music, which could rise, nevertheless, to the almost lyric loftiness of the last lines of the Dunciad; so supple and flexible; made for easy simile and compact metaphor; lending itself so perfectly to the sudden flash of wit or turn of humor; the natural shell of an epigram; compelling the poet to practice all the virtues of brevity; checking the wandering fancy, and repressing the secondary thought; requiring in a masterly use of it the employment of more mental powers than any other metrical form; despised and neglected now because the literature which is embodied in it is despised and neglected, yet the best metrical form which intelligence, as distinct from poetical feeling, can employ." (Makers of Literature, p. 104.)

(Leigh Hunt: The Story of Rimini. 1816.)

Of this poem Mr. C. H. Herford says: "The Story of Rimini is the starting-point of that free or Chaucerian treatment of the heroic couplet, and of the colloquial style, eschewing epigram and full of familiar turns, which Shelley in Julian and Maddalo and Keats in Lamia made classical." (Age of Wordsworth, p. 83.) The treatment of the couplet is still characterized by but slight use of run-on lines, and a preference for the medial cesura; but on the other hand there is a large degree of freedom in the inversion of accents and other alterations of the regular stress. Compare the last line of the present specimen, and such other lines as

The last of these lines, an alexandrine, is also characteristic. Hunt imitated Dryden in the use of both alexandrine and triplet. Of the latter he said: "I confess I like the very bracket that marks out the triplet to the reader's eye, and prepares him for the music of it. It has a look like the bridge of a lute." (Preface to Works, 1832.) Mr. A. J. Kent, in an article in the Fortnightly Review, says of Leigh Hunt that "he became the greatest master since the days of Dryden" of the heroic couplet. (1881, p. 224.)

(Keats: Endymion, ll. 1-24. 1818.)

In the couplet of Keats, and of a number of his successors, we have a really different measure from the "heroic couplet" proper. The individual line and the couplet alike cease to be prominent units of the verse. The effect is therefore closely allied to that of blank verse; the rimes, not being emphasized by marked pauses, serving rather as means of tone color than as organizers of the verse. See Mr. Saintsbury's remarks (quoted in the notes on Dryden, p. 195, above), on "lines made musical by the rhymes rather than divided by them." In like manner Mr. Symonds says that "the couplets of Marlowe, Fletcher, Shelley, and Keats follow the laws of blank verse, and add rhyme—that is to say, their periods and pauses are entirely determined by the sense." (Blank Verse, p. 66.) This is true of the couplets of Shelley and Keats, and to a less degree of those of Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, but will hardly apply to Marlowe, nor, as we have seen, to the Elizabethans in general.[24]

(Shelley: Epipsychidion, ll. 190-200. 1821.)

Shelley carries the free treatment of this measure to the utmost limit. The couplet is not felt to be of significance, and many lines are so irregular in stress as to make scansion difficult. Compare this passage:

(Browning: Sordello, ii. 1-12. 1840.)

(Swinburne: Tristram of Lyonesse; the Sailing of the Swallow.)

(Ibid.: The Last Pilgrimage.)

It will be noticed that in Swinburne's use of the couplet the single line is even less the unit of measure than in Keats and Shelley; the periods correspond closely to those in the blank verse of Milton and Tennyson. Compare the specimens of blank verse on pp. 230 and 245. The second specimen shows the occasional use of the triplet and alexandrine.

(William Morris: Life and Death of Jason, iv. 621-641. 1867.)

B.—BLANK VERSE

Unrimed five-stress verse early became the accepted form for English dramatic poetry, and in the modern English period has become the favorite form for long continuous poems, narrative and reflective as well. In general, as will appear from the specimens, it is marked not only by the absence of rime but by a prevalent freedom of structure rarely found in the couplet.

The impetus toward the writing of blank verse seems to have been given by the influence of classical humanism, the representatives of which grew sceptical as to the use of rime, on the ground that it was not found in classical poetry. In Italy Giovanni Trissino wrote his Sophonisbe and Italia Liberata (1515-1548) in rimeless verses, and was looked upon as the inventor of versi sciolti, i.e. verses "freed" from rime. (See Schipper, vol. ii. p. 4.) See also below, in the notes on Surrey, and later under Imitations of Classical Verse, for notes on the same movement.

On the nature of English blank verse, see J. A. Symonds's Blank Verse (1895), a reprint of essays in the Appendix to his Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. In his Chapters on English Metre (chap. iv.), Mr. J. B. Mayor criticises what he calls Mr. Symonds's "Æsthetic intuitivism."

On the early history of English blank verse, see the article by SchrÖer, AnfÄnge des Blankverses in England, Anglia, vol. iv. p. 1, and Mr. G. C. Macaulay's Francis Beaumont, pp. 39-49.

Of Mr. Symonds's remarks on the general nature of blank verse the following are especially interesting: "English blank verse is perhaps more various and plastic than any other national metre. It is capable of being used for the most commonplace and the most sublime utterances.... Originally instituted for the drama, it received in Milton's hands an epical treatment, and has by authors of our own day been used for idyllic and even for lyrical compositions. Plato mentions a Greek musical instrument called panharmonion, which was adapted to express the different modes and systems of melodious utterance. This name might be applied to our blank verse; there is no harmony of sound, no dignity of movement, no swiftness, no subtlety of languid sweetness, no brevity, no force of emphasis, beyond its scope." (Blank Verse, pp. 16, 17.)

"It seems adapted specially for thought in evolution; it requires progression and sustained effort. As a consequence of this, its melody is determined by the sense which it contains, and depends more upon proportion and harmony of sounds than upon recurrences and regularities of structure.... Another point about blank verse is that it admits of no mediocrity; it must be either clay or gold.... Hence, we find that blank verse has been the metre of genius, that it is only used successfully by indubitable poets, and that it is no favorite in a mean, contracted, and unimaginative age. The freedom of the renaissance created it in England. The freedom of our century has reproduced it. Blank verse is a type and symbol of our national literary spirit—uncontrolled by precedent or rule, inclined to extravagance, yet reaching perfection at intervals by an inner force and vivida vis of native inspiration." (Ibid. pp. 70-72.)

The earliest use of the term "blank verse," noted in the New English Dictionary, is in Nash's Preface to Greene's Menaphon, 1589: "the swelling bumbast of bragging blanke verse." Some ten years later Shakspere used it in Much Ado about Nothing, V. ii., where Benedick speaks of those heroes "whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of blank verse," but will not rime easily. In Chapman's All Fools (1605) the young gallant, in describing his manifold accomplishments, says he could write

Sdruciolla is the Italian term for triple-rimed endings.

(Earl of Surrey: Æneid, book IV. 223-242. ab. 1540. pub. 1557.)

Surrey's translation of two books of the Æneid may have been suggested by the translation (1541) made by Francesco Maria Molza, attributed at the time to Cardinal Ippolito de Medici. This was in Italian unrimed verse. (See Henry Morley's First Sketch of English Literature, p. 294, and his English Writers, vol. viii. p. 61.) The verse of Surrey, like Wyatt's, shows a somewhat mechanical adherence to the syllable-counting principle, in contrast to regard for accents.[26] Thus we find such lines as:

There is a fairly free use of run-on lines; according to Schipper, 35 in the first 250 of the translation. Nevertheless, the general effect is monotonous and lacking in flexibility.

(Sackville and Norton: Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, V. ii. 1-14. 1565.)

This tragedy, although Dryden curiously instanced it in defence of the use of rime on the stage, was the earliest English drama in blank verse. The metre is decidedly more monotonous than Surrey's, and gives little hint of the possibilities of the measure for dramatic expression. In general, the early experiments in blank verse suggest—what they must often have seemed to their writers—the mere use of the decasyllabic couplet deprived of its rime. Nevertheless, as Mr. Symonds remarks of a passage in Gorboduc, "we yet may trace variety and emphasis in the pauses of these lines beyond what would at that epoch have been possible in sequences of rhymed couplets." (Blank Verse, p. 20.)

For a specimen of the blank verse of Gascoigne's Steel Glass (1576, the earliest didactic poem in English blank verse), see p. 18, above.

Paris's oration to the Council of the Gods:

(George Peele: The Arraignment of Paris, IV. i. 61-75. 1584.)

This specimen shows the new measure introduced into the drama in connection with the earlier rimed septenary. Peele's verse in general is characterized by sweetness and fluency, but there is still no hint of the possibilities of the unrimed decasyllabics.

SchrÖer, in the article cited from Anglia, enumerates the following additional specimens of blank verse before the appearance of Marlowe's Tamburlaine; Grimald's Death of Zoroas and Death of Cicero, in Tottel's Songs and Sonnets, 1557; Jocasta, by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarshe, 1566; Turberville's translation of Ovid's Heroical Epistles, 1567; Spenser's unrimed sonnets, in Van der Noodt's Theatre for Worldlings, 1569; Barnaby Rich's Don Simonides, 1584; parts of Lyly's Woman in the Moon, 1584; Greene's "Description of Silvestro's Lady," in Morando, 1587; The Misfortunes of Arthur, 1587;—the last two appearing probably in the same year with Tamburlaine, whether earlier or later is uncertain. Most of these specimens are short, and all are comparatively unimportant.

(Marlowe: Tamburlaine, Part I, IV. ii. 30-46. pub. 1590.)

(Marlowe: Doctor Faustus, sc. xvi. ll. 65-81. Printed 1604; written before 1593.)

Marlowe is universally and rightly regarded as the first English poet who used blank verse with the hand of a master, and showed its possibilities. With him it became practically a new measure. Mr. Symonds says: "He found the ten-syllabled heroic line monotonous, monosyllabic, and divided into five feet of tolerably regular alternate short and long. He left it various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by a syllable, sometimes deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and changes in the beat. He found no sequence or attempt at periods; one line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were made after the same model. He grouped his verse according to the sense, obeying an internal law of melody, and allowing the thought contained in his words to dominate their form.... Used in this fashion, blank verse became a Proteus. It resembled music, which requires regular time and rhythm; but, by the employment of phrase, induces a higher kind of melody to rise above the common and despotic beat of time.... It is true that, like all great poets, he left his own peculiar imprint on it, and that his metre is marked by an almost extravagant exuberance, impetuosity, and height of coloring." (Blank Verse, pp. 22-27.) In the earlier verse of Tamburlaine, while showing these new qualities of a metrical master, Marlowe yet kept pretty closely to the individual, end-stopped line; in his later verse, as illustrated in the fragmentary text of Faustus, he seems to have attained much more freedom, resembling that of the later plays of Shakspere.[28]

(Shakspere: Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. iv. 196-208; 213, 214. ab. 1590.)

(Shakspere: Measure for Measure, III. i. 118-132. ab. 1603.)

This Mr. Symonds cites as "a single instance of the elasticity, self-restraint, and freshness of the Shaksperian blank verse; of its freedom from Marlowe's turgidity, or Fletcher's languor, or Milton's involution; of its ringing sound and lucid vigor.... It illustrates the freedom from adventitious ornament and the organic continuity of Shakspere's versification, while it also exhibits his power of varying his cadences and suiting them to the dramatic utterance of his characters." (Blank Verse, p. 31.)

(Shakspere: The Tempest, V. i. 33-50. ab. 1610.)

No attempt can be made to represent adequately the blank verse of Shakspere. The specimens, chosen respectively from his earlier, middle, and later periods, illustrate the trend of development of his verse. In the earlier period it was characterized by the slight use of feminine endings and enjambement; in the later by marked preference for both, and by general freedom and flexibility. In other words, Shakspere's own development represents, in a sort of miniature, that of the history of dramatic blank verse. According to Furnivall's tables, the proportion of run-on lines to end-stopped lines in The Two Gentlemen of Verona is one in ten, while in The Tempest it is one in three. The increased use of "light" and "weak" endings is closely analogous. Professor Wendell says of the verse of Cymbeline: "End-stopped lines are so deliberately avoided that one feels a sense of relief when a speech and a line end together. Such a phrase as

is deliberately made, not a single line, but two half-lines. Several times, in the broken dialogue, one has literally to count the syllables before the metrical regularity of the verse appears.... Clearly this puzzling style is decadent; the distinction between verse and prose is breaking down." (William Shakspere, p. 357.)[29]

(Ben Jonson: Sejanus, V. iv. 1603.)

Jonson's blank verse, says Mr. Symonds, is that "of a scholar—pointed, polished, and free from the lyricisms of his age. It lacks harmony and is often labored; but vigorous and solid it never fails to be." He also instances the opening lines of the Sad Shepherd as exceptional in their "delicate music." Beaumont's verse is in many ways similar in structure to Jonson's, yet commonly more melodious.

(Fletcher: Valentinian, IV. i. ab. 1615.)

(Fletcher: The Wild-Goose Chase, IV. i. 1621.)

The verse of Fletcher is highly individual among the Jacobean dramatists, though in a sense typical of the breaking down of blank verse, in the direction of prose, which was going on at this period. The distinguishing feature of Fletcher's verse is the constant use of feminine endings, and the extension of these to triple and even quadruple endings, by the addition of one or more syllables. Twelve-syllable lines (not alexandrines, but ordinary lines with triple endings) are not at all uncommon; and the additional syllable or syllables may even be emphatic. In general the tendency was in the direction of the freedom of conversational prose. Such a line as

would not be recognized, standing by itself, as a five-stress iambic verse; properly read, however, it takes its place without difficulty in the scheme of the metre.[30]

(Thomas Middleton: The Changeling, II. i. ab. 1623.)

Middleton carried on the work of fitting blank verse for plausibly conversational, as distinguished from poetic, effects. Often his lines are more difficult to scan than Fletcher's, and still less seek melodiousness for its own sake. Characteristic specimens are verses like these:

(John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi, IV. ii. 1623.)

"Webster," says Mr. Symonds, "used his metre as the most delicate and responsive instrument for all varieties of dramatic expression.... Scansion in the verse of Webster is subordinate to the purpose of the speaker." (Blank Verse, pp. 45-47.) He also calls attention to such remarkable lines as—

(Philip Massinger: A New Way to Pay Old Debts, IV. i. 1633.)

Massinger's verse is more regular than that of Fletcher and others, in the matter of extra final syllables and the like, but free and flexible in the use of run-on lines and generally progressive movement.[31] It is an error to assume that there was no good blank verse written in this period when the drama in general is said to have been in a state of "decadence." The verse of Ford, for example, is noticeably strong and restrained (compare the remark of Mr. Symonds, on its "glittering regularity"). On the other hand, one may see the dramas of Richard Brome for specimens of the decadent metre at its worst. Brome wrote comedies both in prose and verse, and there is little difference between the two forms in his hands. See also the crude and lax verse of some of the early plays of Dryden, illustrated on p. 234 below. It was verse of this kind which, as Mr. Gosse observes, justified the introduction of the heroic couplet in all its strictness.

(Milton: Paradise Lost, Book I. ll. 544-559; 571-587. 1667.)

(Milton: Samson Agonistes, ll. 1636-1652. 1671.)

The blank verse of Milton is characterized by greater freedom and flexibility than that of any earlier poet. The single line practically ceases to be the unit of the verse, which is divided rather into metrical paragraphs, or, as some would even call them, stanzas. Professor Corson quotes an interesting passage from a letter of Coleridge, giving an account of a conversation in which Wordsworth expressed his view of this sort of blank verse. "My friend gave his definition and notion of harmonious verse, that it consisted (the English iambic blank verse above all) in the apt arrangement of pauses and cadences, and the sweep of whole paragraphs,

and not in the even flow, much less in the prominence or antithetic vigor of single lines, which were indeed injurious to the total effect, except where they were introduced for some specific purpose." (Corson's Primer of English Verse, p. 218.) In like manner Mr. Symonds says: "The most sonorous passages begin and end with interrupted lines, including in one organic structure, periods, parentheses, and paragraphs of fluent melody.... In these structures there are many pauses which enable the ear and voice to rest themselves, but none are perfect, none satisfy the want created by the opening hemistich, until the final and deliberate close is reached." (Blank Verse pp. 56, 57.)

In Milton's own prefatory note to Paradise Lost, he called his blank verse "English heroic verse without rime." Rime he spoke of as "the invention of a barbarous age, ... graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets,"—not least among them, he might have said, being John Milton himself. He described also the special character of his verse in saying that "true musical delight ... consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another,"—that is, by enjambement. "This neglect then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, ... that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming."[32]

It appears from this note that Milton regarded his heroic blank verse as a different measure from the familiar dramatic blank verse. The latter he used in Samson Agonistes, the verse-structure of which will be seen to differ from that of Paradise Lost; the most salient distinction is the more frequent use of feminine endings. Mr. Symonds remarks interestingly on the "difference between Shaksperian and Miltonic, between dramatic and epical blank verse. The one is simple in construction and progressive, the other is complex and stationary.... The one exhibits a thought, in the process of formation, developing itself from the excited fancy of the speaker. The other presents to us an image crystallized and perfect in the poet's mind; the one is in time, the other in space—the one is a growing and the other a complete organism.... The one, if we may play upon a fancy, resembles Music, and the other Architecture." (Blank Verse, p. 58.)

(Dryden: Marriage À la Mode, III. i. 1672.)

(Dryden: All for Love, III. i. 1678.)

The first of these specimens of Dryden's blank verse illustrates the loose form of it found in many of the comedies, ill distinguished from prose and used interchangeably with prose, as in the case of the late Jacobean dramatists. It was with All for Love that Dryden dropped the use of the rimed couplet in tragedy, and turned his hand toward the construction of really noble blank verse. This play was professedly an imitation of Shakspere, and the passage here quoted is a paraphrase of one in Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. Shakspere's blank verse doubtless exerted a good influence on the quality of Dryden's. "From this time on," says Mr. Gosse, "Dryden's blank verse was more severe than any which had been used, except by Milton, since Ben Jonson." (Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 14.)

(Thomas Otway: Venice Preserved, V. ii. 1682.)

This play was one of those marking the return of the serious drama to blank verse, after the brief domination of the couplet on the stage. While Otway's verse is not as good as Dryden's best, it is of fairly even merit, and shows that something had been learned from the practice of the couplet.

(Addison: Cato, V. i. ll. 10-18; 25-31. 1713.)

(Robert Blair: The Grave. 1743.)

This poem was one of those connected with the revival of blank verse, for didactic poetry, near the middle of the eighteenth century. Of Blair's verse Mr. Saintsbury says that it "is by no means to be despised. Technically its only fault is the use and abuse of the redundant syllable. The quality ... is in every respect rather moulded upon dramatic than upon purely poetical models, and he shows little trace of imitation either of Milton, or of his contemporary, Thomson." (Ward's English Poets, vol. iii. p. 217.)

(Thomson: The Seasons; Winter. 1726.)

Thomson's Seasons was undoubtedly the most influential of the poems of the blank-verse revival of this period. Saintsbury says: "His blank verse in especial cannot receive too much commendation. With that of Milton, and that of the present Poet Laureate [Tennyson], it must rank as one of the chief original models of the metre to be found in English poetry." (Ward's English Poets, vol. iii. p. 169.)

Other influential poems of the same period, written in blank verse, were Glover's Leonidas (1737), Young's Night Thoughts (1742-1744), and Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination (1744). Much earlier than these had come the curious poem of John Philips on Cider (1708). Philips is praised by Thomson as the successor of Milton in some lines of Autumn:

In general, the blank verse of all these poets shows the influence of the couplet and lacks flexibility. Thus Mr. Symonds says: "The use of the couplet had unfitted poets for its composition. Their acquired canons of regularity, when applied to loose and flowing metre, led them astray.... Hence it followed, that when blank verse began again to be written, it found itself very much at the point where it had stood before the appearance of Marlowe. Even Thomson ... wrote stiff and languid blank verse with monosyllabic terminations and monotonous cadences—a pedestrian style." (Blank Verse, pp. 61, 62.)[33]

(Cowper: The Task, book VI. ll. 295-320. 1785.)

"The blank verse of Cowper's Task is admirably adapted to the theme," says Professor Corson. "Cowper saw farther than any one before him had seen, into the secrets of the elaborate music of Milton's blank verse, and availed himself of those secrets to some extent—to as far an extent as the simplicity of his themes demanded." (Primer of English Verse, p. 221.) Professor Ward speaks, however, of the "lumbering movement" of Cowper's blank verse as being in contrast to "the neatness and ease of his rhymed couplets." (English Poets, vol. iii. p. 432.) Cowper prided himself, not without reason, on the individuality of his blank verse. In a letter to the Rev. John Newton (Dec. 11, 1784) he said: "Milton's manner was peculiar. So is Thomson's. He that should write like either of them, would, in my judgment, deserve the name of a copyist, but not of a poet.... Blank verse is susceptible of a much greater diversification of manner than verse in rhyme: and why the modern writers of it have all thought proper to cast their numbers alike, I know not." In another letter (to Lady Hesketh, March 20, 1786) Cowper reveals his careful study of Milton's verse: "When the sense requires it, or when for the sake of avoiding a monotonous cadence of the lines, of which there is always danger in so long a work, it shall appear to be prudent, I still leave a verse behind me that has some uneasiness in its formation. It is not possible to read Paradise Lost, with an ear for harmony, without being sensible of the great advantage which Milton drew from such a management.... Uncritical readers find that they perform a long journey through several hundred pages perhaps without weariness; they find the numbers harmonious, but are not aware of the art by which that harmony is brought to pass, much less suspect that a violation of all harmony on some occasions is the very thing to which they are not a little indebted for their gratification."

(Coleridge: Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni, ll. 70-85. 1802.)

(Keats: Hyperion, book II. 1820.)

"In Keats at last," says Mr. Symonds, "we find again that inner music which is the soul of true blank verse.... His Hyperion is sung, not written.... Its music is fluid, bound by no external measurement of feet, but determined by the sense and intonation of the poet's thought, while like the crotalos of the Athenian flute-player, the decasyllabic beat maintains an uninterrupted undercurrent of regular pulsations." (Blank Verse, p. 64.)

(Wordsworth: Lines Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey. 1798.)

(Shelley: Alastor, ll. 707-720. 1815.)

(Tennyson: Idylls of the King; The Passing of Arthur. 1869.)

(Tennyson: The Princess, v. 1847.)

(Tennyson: Queen Mary, V. v. 1875.)

(Tennyson: The Princess, iv.; "Tears, Idle Tears." 1847.)

The blank verse of Tennyson is probably to be regarded as the most masterly found among modern poets.[34] Its flexibility is almost infinite, yet never unmelodious. The last of the specimens just quoted illustrates his use of blank verse for short lyrical poems,—an unusual and notable achievement. Perhaps only Collins's Ode to Evening can be compared with his success in this direction, and Collins used a more elaborate strophe to fill, in part, the place of rime. Of the unrimed lyrics in The Princess, Mr. Symonds says that they "are perfect specimens of most melodious and complete minstrelsy in words." In the "Tears, Idle Tears," he goes on to say, the verse "is divided into periods of five lines, each of which terminates with the words 'days that are no more.' This recurrence of sound and meaning is a substitute for rhyme, and suggests rhyme so persuasively that it is impossible to call the poem mere blank verse." See also the specimens on p. 144 above.

In the case of both Tennyson and Browning the student should compare the form of the narrative blank verse on the one hand with that of the dramatic on the other. Yet in a sense all Browning's blank verse is dramatic. It is no less flexible than Tennyson's, but (as in most of Browning's poetry) sacrifices more of melody in adapting itself to the thought.

(Browning: The Ring and the Book; Caponsacchi. 1868.)

The Ring and the Book Professor Corson calls "the greatest achievement of the century ... in the effective use of blank verse in the treatment of a great subject.... Its blank verse, while having a most complex variety of character, is the most dramatic blank verse since the Elizabethan era.... One reads it without a sense almost of there being anything artificial in the construction of the language; ... one gets the impression that the poet thought and felt spontaneously in blank verse." (Primer of English Verse, pp. 224, 225.)

(Browning: In a Balcony. 1855.)

(Browning: Epistle of Karshish. 1855.)

(Browning: Fra Lippo Lippi. 1855.)

Of some of Browning's blank verse Mr. Mayor observes: "The extreme harshness of many of these lines is almost a match for anything in Surrey, only what in Surrey is helplessness seems the perversity of strength in Browning.... The Aristophanic vein in Browning is continually leading him to trample under foot the dignity of verse and to shock the uninitiated reader by colloquial familiarities, 'thumps upon the back,' such as the poet Cowper resented; yet no one can be more impressive than he is when he surrenders himself to the pure spirit of poetry, and flows onward in a stream of glorious music, such as that in which Balaustion pictures Athens overwhelmed by an advance of the sea (Aristophanes' Apology, p. 2)." (Chapters on English Metre, 2d ed., pp. 216, 217.)

(Matthew Arnold: Sohrab and Rustum. 1853.)

(Stephen Phillips: Paolo and Francesca, III. iii. 1901.)

The blank verse of Stephen Phillips is the most important—one may say perhaps the only important—that has been written since Tennyson's; and it is of especial interest as forming an actual revival of the form on the English stage. Aside from the dramas, it is seen at its best in Marpessa. Imitating Milton, and at the same time handling the measure with original force, Mr. Phillips introduces unusual cadences, for which he has been severely reproached by the critics. Such lines as the following are typical of these variations from the normal rhythm:

For a criticism of Mr. Phillips's verse, see Mr. William Archer's Poets of the Younger Generation, pp. 313-327.

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III. SIX-STRESS AND SEVEN-STRESS VERSE

A.—THE ALEXANDRINE (IAMBIC HEXAMETER)

The alexandrine was introduced into English from French verse, as early (according to Schipper) as the early part of the thirteenth century. Early poems in this metre alone, however, are almost wholly wanting, if they ever existed. The early alexandrines usually appear in conjunction with the septenary (seven-stress verse). The French alexandrine has almost always been characterized by a regular and strongly marked medial cesura, and this very commonly appears in the English form, but by no means universally.

The French alexandrine is of uncertain origin. Kawczynski would trace it to the classical Asclepiadean verse, as in

which at least has the requisite number of syllables. It appeared in France as early as the first part of the twelfth century, and in four-line stanzas was the favorite for didactic poetry as late as the beginning of the fifteenth century; otherwise, in the close of the fourteenth century, it was supplanted by the decasyllabic. In the middle of the sixteenth century it again won precedence over the decasyllabic—in part through the influence of Ronsard—and is of course the standard measure of modern French poetry. The name "alexandrine" seems to have been applied in the fifteenth century, from the familiar use of the measure in the Alexander romance. The earliest known mention of the term is in Herenc's Doctrinal de la secunde Retorique. (See Stengel's article in GrÖber's Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie, from which these statements are taken.)

The French alexandrine is in a sense a quite different measure from the English form. Accent is an element of so comparatively slight importance in the French language and French rhythm, that its place seems partly to be filled by regularity of cesural pause and regularity in the counting of syllables. The French alexandrine, therefore, may often be described as a verse of twelve syllables, divided into two equal parts by a pause, with marked accents on the sixth and twelfth syllables, but with the other accents irregularly disposed. Often it seems to an English reader to have an anapestic effect, and to be best described as anapestic tetrameter. In English, however, while the regularity in the number of syllables is followed, and very commonly the medial pause, there is also observed the regularity of alternate accents which gives the verse the characteristic form indicated by the term "six-stress."

(De Muliere Samaritana, ll. 51-58. In Morris's Old English Miscellany, p. 84; and Zupitza's Alt- und Mittelenglisches Übungsbuch, p. 83. ab. 1250.)

This early poem illustrates the irregular use of alexandrines near the time of their introduction into English. The poem opens with a septenary—

and septenaries and alexandrines are used interchangeably. Dr. Triggs says, in his notes on the poem in McLean's edition of Zupitza's Übungsbuch, that lines 5, 6, 9-18, 25-28, 39, 40, 43, 44, 49-54, 57, 58, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70-72, 74, 75 are alexandrines. (Introduction, p. lxii.) The English tendency toward indifference to regularity in the counting of syllables is also noticeable. In the same way the early poem called "The Passion of our Lord" (ed. Morris, E.E.T.S. xlix. 37), which is thought from the heading—"Ici cumence la passyun ihesu crist en engleys"—to be a translation from the French, shows a preponderance of alexandrines, although it opens in septenary. See also such poems as the "Death," "Doomsday," etc., in the Old English Miscellany. The alexandrine was easily confused by the Middle English writers, not only with the septenary, but with the native "long line," and it is often difficult to say just what rhythm was in the writer's mind. Thus a line like

from the Judas, may be regarded either as an alexandrine or a long four-stress line.

(Robert Manning of Brunne: Chronicle of Peter de Langtoft. Hearne ed., vol. i. p. 2. ab. 1325.)

This poem is one of the very few representatives of distinctly alexandrine verse in Middle English. The original poem being in alexandrines, Manning followed it closely. In the first part, however, he put rimes only at the ends of the verses, whereas later he introduced internal rime, thus resolving the verse into short lines of three stresses. Schipper observes that the four following lines are each representative of a familiar type of the French alexandrine:

(Englische Metrik, vol. i. p. 252.)

The so-called Legend-Cycle is also marked by a sort of alexandrine couplet. (See ten Brink's English Literature, Kennedy trans., vol. i. p. 274.)

(Earl of Surrey: Psalm. LV. ab. 1540.)

This is a not very successful experiment in unrimed alexandrines. Others of Surrey's Psalms are in rimed "Poulter's Measure" (alexandrines alternating with septenary).

(The Marriage of Wit and Science, V. ii., in Dodsley's Old English Plays, ed. Hazlitt, vol. ii. p. 386. ab. 1570.)

In this play the alexandrine is the dominant measure, though mingled with occasional septenaries still. (See Schipper, vol. i. p. 256.)

(Sidney: Astrophel and Stella, Fifth Song. [In stanzas aabccb.] ab. 1580.)

See also Sidney's sonnet in alexandrines, p. 272, below.

(Drayton: Polyolbion, ll. 1-12. 1613.)

This is by all odds the longest Modern English poem in alexandrines, and while the verse is often agreeable, it illustrates the unfitness of the measure—to English ears—for long, continuous poems.

(Wordsworth: The Pet Lamb. 1800.)

(Browning: Fifine at the Fair, ix. 1872.)

Browning has made of the alexandrine in this poem an almost new measure, hardly more like the alexandrine couplet of earlier days than the measure of Sordello is like the "heroic couplet" proper. In general, the modern use of the alexandrine is characterized by increased freedom in the placing of the cesura. It is also distinguished from the early French and Middle English forms by the fact that the cesura and the ending are commonly masculine.

By far the most frequent use of the alexandrine in English poetry is as a variant from the five-stress line. For instances of this, see the section on the Spenserian stanza, pp. 102-108, above, and Corson's chapters on the Spenserian stanza and its influence, in his Primer of English Verse. In connection with Dryden's use of the alexandrine as a variant from the heroic couplet, Mr. Saintsbury makes some interesting observations on the measure: "The metre, though a well-known English critic has maltreated it of late, is a very fine one; and some of Dryden's own lines are unmatched examples of that 'energy divine' which has been attributed to him. In an essay on the alexandrine in English poetry, which yet remains to be written, and which would be not the least valuable of contributions to poetical criticism, this use of the verse would have to be considered, as well as its regular recurrent employment at the close of the Spenserian stanza, and its continuous use.... An examination of the Polyolbion and of Fifine at the Fair, side by side, would, I think, reveal capacities, somewhat unexpected even in this form of arrangement. But so far as the occasional alexandrine is concerned, it is not a hyperbole to say that a number, out of all proportion, of the best lines in English poetry may be found in the closing verses of the Spenserian stave as used by Spenser himself, by Shelley, and by the present Laureate, and in the occasional alexandrines of Dryden. The only thing to be said against this latter use is, that it demands a very skilful ear and hand to adjust the cadence." (Life of Dryden, in Men of Letters Series, pp. 172, 173.)

B.—THE SEPTENARY

The septenary, or seven-stress verse (sometimes called the septenarius, from the Latin form of the word) was a familiar measure of mediÆval Latin poetry. There it was more commonly trochaic than iambic, as in the famous drinking song of the Goliards:

(See the "Confessio Goliae," in Latin Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, ed. Wright, p. 71.)

Another form of the measure is illustrated by some verses quoted by Schipper:

In English, naturally enough, the measure always tended to be iambic. In both Latin and English there was considerable freedom as to the number of light syllables. It will be noticed that in the specimens just quoted from the Latin there is rime not only between the ends of the verses but between the syllables just preceding the cesura. Where this was the case there was a tendency toward the breaking up of the verse into a quatrain of verses in four and three stresses, riming abab; such septenaries, indeed, were written at pleasure either in couplets or quatrains. We shall see the same phenomena in the English forms of the measure. But the seven-stress rhythm is not easily lost or mistaken, in whatever form it appears, and has a certain charm which at one time appealed very widely to metrical taste.

The earliest appearance of the septenary in English is in the Poema Morale, dated about 1170 by Zupitza, by others somewhat later. For a specimen of this, see p. 127, above. Here there is only end-rime, and the individuality of the long line is well preserved. There is some freedom, however, as to the number of light syllables, and some variation between the iambic and trochaic rhythm.

(Hymn to the Virgin, in MÄtzner's Altenglische Sprachproben, vol. i. p. 54.)

MÄtzner prints this poem in short lines of four and three stresses, the cesura making such a division natural enough. The next specimen is also frequently printed with the same division.

(The Ormulum, ll. 1-9. ab. 1200.)

In this specimen we have the septenary without rime, a rare form. Orm's septenaries are also the most regular of the Middle English period, preserving an almost painful accuracy throughout the 20,000 extant lines of the poem. In general the measure appears in this period in combination with alexandrines and other measures, and with much irregularity. Like the alexandrine, it was sometimes confused with the long four-stress line. In the well-known poem called "A Little Soth Sermun" the first line is an unquestionable septenary ("Herkneth alle gode men and stylle sitteth a-dun"), but presently we find verse of six stresses, and even short four-stress couplets.

(Sir Fyrumbras, ll. 1104-1107. In Zupitza'S Alt- und Mittelenglisches Übungsbuch, p. 107. ab. 1380.)

In this specimen—from a popular romance—we have the use of cesural rime as well as end-rime, just as in the Latin specimens cited above.

(William Warner: Albion's England, ll. 1-8. 1586.)

Here we have the measure in its "resolved" or divided form, printed as short four-stress and three-stress lines, although with rime only at the seventh stress. Compare the "common metre" of modern hymns:

(Chapman: Iliad, book VIII. 1610.)

Chapman's translation of Iliad is the longest modern English poem in septenaries. Professor Newman, however (whose translation gave rise to Matthew Arnold's lectures On Translating Homer), used the same measure unrimed and with feminine endings; thus,—

Arnold objected to Chapman's measure that "it has a jogging rapidity rather than a flowing rapidity, and a movement familiar rather than nobly easy."

(Beaumont: The Knight of the Burning Pestle, IV. v. ab. 1610.)

Here the septenary is introduced in the May-day song of Ralph, the London apprentice, doubtless because of its popularity for such unliterary verse.

(Ballad of Robin Hood and the Monk, in Gummere's English Ballads, p. 77.)

(Coleridge: The Ancient Mariner, ll. 1-4, 614-617. 1798.)

These specimens show the ballad stanza, which is made of a sort of septenary resolved into short lines of four and three accents. It is often assumed that the measure was derived from the Latin septenary; but owing to the difficulty of supposing that a foreign metre should have been adopted for the most popular of all forms of poetry, some scholars prefer to think that the ballad stanza of this form is the same as that in which all lines have four accents (see specimen on p. 157, above), the last accent of the second and fourth lines having dropped off by natural processes. On the ballad stanzas in general, see Gummere's English Ballads, Appendix II. p. 303. Compare with the present specimens the metre of Cowper's John Gilpin.

(Wordsworth: The Norman Boy. 1842.)

This is a rare instance of the use of the long septenary in nineteenth-century poetry. Certainly in Wordsworth's verses the metrical effect cannot be called happy; the measure is made especially clumsy by the introduction of hypermetrical light syllables. In the succeeding specimen the same measure is used with feminine ending.

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Cowper's Grave. 1833.)

C.—THE "POULTER'S MEASURE."

In the Elizabethan age the alexandrine and the septenary were each used chiefly in conjunction with the other, in alternation of six-stress and seven-stress verses. The name commonly applied to the combination is taken from Gascoigne's Notes of Instruction (1575), where he says: "The commonest sort of verse which we use now adayes (viz. the long verse of twelve and fourtene sillables) I know not certainly howe to name it, unlesse I should say that it doth consist of Poulters measure, which giveth xii. for one dozen and xiiii. for another." (Arber's Reprint, p. 39.) It strikes the reader with surprise to find the measure thus spoken of as "the commonest sort of verse," but a glance at any of the early Elizabethan anthologies will show the justness of Gascoigne's words. Yet the measure, while exceedingly popular, seems to have been instinctively avoided by the best poets (after the days of Surrey and Sidney); hence it is unfamiliar to modern readers.

The use of alexandrines and septenaries together, we have seen, was common even in the Middle English period, but not in regular alternation. The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (about 1300) mingles both measures, but with alexandrines predominating. In some of the early Mystery Plays they are found in alternation; for example, where Jacob, in one of the Towneley plays, is relating his hunger to Esau:

See also the specimen from The Marriage of Wit and Science, p. 256, above.

Schipper says that he does not know who first brought the two measures together in alternate use for lyrical poetry. Guest says that the Poulter's Measure came into fashion soon after 1500 (History of English Rhythms), but gives no examples so early. The history of the measure should be further investigated.

After the Elizabethan period the Poulter's Measure practically disappears from English poetry. A curious suggestion of it may be found in a little poem of Leigh Hunt's (Wealth and Womanhood), cited by Schipper, who calls the verse "Poulter's Measure in trochaics":

(Earl of Surrey: How no Age is Content with his Own Estate, in Tottel's Songs and Sonnets. Arber's Reprint, p. 30. Pub. 1557.)

(Sir Philip Sidney: Mopsa, in the Arcadia. ab. 1580.)

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IV. THE SONNET

The sonnet is an Italian verse-form, in fourteen five-stress lines, introduced into England at the time of the Italian literary influences of the sixteenth century. Almost from the first, the English sonnet has been divided into two classes: one based on more or less strict imitation of the structure of the Italian form, and variously called the Italian, the regular, or the legitimate sonnet; the other taking the Italian sonnet as the point of departure, but constructed according to more familiar English rime-schemes, and commonly called the Shaksperian or the English sonnet.

The origin of the sonnet in southern Europe is a matter of some disagreement. Some scholars trace it to the canzone strophe (e.g. Gaspary, in his Geschichte der Italienischen Literatur), others to the combination of the ottava rima with a six-line stanza (Welti, in his Geschichte des Sonettes in der deutschen Dichtung), others to ProvenÇal and even German influence. (See Schipper, vol. ii. pp. 835 ff., and Lentzner's Das Sonett und seine Gestaltung in der englischen Dichtung, p. 1.) It seems first to have been a recognized form in Italy in the latter part of the thirteenth century (see Tomlinson's The Sonnet: its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry); and was made glorious by Dante, Michael Angelo, Tasso, Ariosto, and—above all—Petrarch. On the different forms of the Italian sonnet, see Tomlinson's essay, just cited.

"The object of the regular or legitimate Italian sonnet," says Mr. Tomlinson, "is to express one, and only one, idea, mood, sentiment, or proposition, and this must be introduced ... in the first quatrain, and so far explained in the second, that this may end in a full point; while the office of the first tercet is to prepare the leading idea of the quatrains for the conclusion, which conclusion is to be perfectly carried out in the second tercet, so that it may contain the fundamental idea of the poem." (pp. 27, 28.)

The Italian form is always marked by the division into octave and sestet, although English usage has been very irregular in marking this division by a full pause. The octave is based on only two rimes (abbaabba); the sestet on either two or three, the most common arrangements being cdecde, cdcdcd, cdedce, and cddcee.

With regard to the pause at the point of division Lentzner says: "It should not be a full pause, because this would produce the effect of a gap or breaking-off, ...—not like the speaker who has reached the end of what he has to say, but like one who reflects on what has already been said, and then takes fresh breath to complete his theme."[35]

Most critics prefer those forms of sestet which avoid a final riming couplet. This Mr. Courthope explains as follows: "The reason for the avoidance of the couplet in the second portion of the sonnet is, I think, plain. In the first eight lines the thought ascends to a climax; this part of the sonnet may be said to contain the premises of the poetical syllogism. In the last six lines the idea descends to a conclusion, and as the two divisions are of unequal length it is necessary that the lesser should be the more individualised. Hence while, in the first part, the expression of the thought is massed and condensed by reduplications of sound, and the general movement is limited by quatrains; in the second part the clauses are separated by the alternation of the rhymes, the movement is measured by tercets, and the whole weight of the rhetorical emphasis is thrown into the last line." (History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 91.)

The sonnet has remained, since its introduction into English poetry, a favorite form among poets and critics, but has never become genuinely popular. It is suited, of course, only for the expression of dignified and careful thinking; and the difficulty of giving it unity and confining the content to the precise limit of fourteen lines has made perfect success in the form a rare attainment. Furthermore, the complexity of the rime-scheme—the distance at which one rime responds to another—makes the appreciation of the form a matter of some delicacy, less suited to the prevailingly simple taste of the English ear than to the more complex taste of the Italian.

The following specimens are classified only in the two principal groups of the Italian and the English form. The common test of the Italian form is that the rime-scheme shall separate the first eight lines from the rest, these eight lines ordinarily showing "inclusive rime" of the abba type; the test of the English form is that the rime-scheme shall separate the first twelve lines from the last two, the twelve lines ordinarily showing alternate rime.

Schipper groups English sonnets in five classes: (1) the strict Italian form, with pause between octave and sestet; (2) the Surrey-Shakspere or English form; (3) the Spenserian form; (4) the Miltonic form, with correct rime-arrangement but general neglect of the bipartite structure; (5) the modern Italian or Wordsworthian form, following the regular rime-scheme in general, but often with a third or even a fourth rime in the octave, and treated as a single strophe. (Englische Metrik, vol. ii. p. 878.)[36]

A.—THE REGULAR (ITALIAN) SONNET

In this group the student of the subject should note the detailed variations of the rime-scheme of the sestet, and the varying practice of the poets as to the division between octave and sestet.

In view of the connection of Petrarch's sonnets with Wyatt's introduction of the form into England, the first of them is reproduced as a typical specimen of the strict Italian form.

(Petrarca: Sonetto i.)

(Sir Thomas Wyatt: The lover hideth his desire, etc., in Tottel's Songs and Sonnets, p. 33. pub. 1557.)

It was Wyatt who introduced the sonnet into England. Thirty-one of his sonnets were published in Tottel's Miscellany, of which about a third are said to be translations or paraphrases of Petrarch's. Wyatt followed, of course, the regular Italian structure, but used unhesitatingly the form of sestet with the concluding couplet (cddcee). On this point Mr. Courthope says: "Wyatt was evidently unaware of the secret principle underlying the extremely complex structure of the Italian sonnet; ... and being unfortunately misled by his admiration for the Strambotti of Serafino, which sum up the conclusion in a couplet, he endeavored to construct his sonnets on the same principle, thereby leading all sonnet writers before Milton on a wrong path." (History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 91.)

(Sir Philip Sidney: Astrophel and Stella, i. ab. 1580.)

(Sir Philip Sidney: Astrophel and Stella, xxxi. ab. 1580.)

Sidney's favorite form for the sonnet sestet was that shown in these specimens (cdcdee), a form that suggests the influence of the Surrey or English sonnet rather than the Italian. The first of the sonnets is of course exceptional in being written in alexandrines, but is among the finest in the sequence. See also Sidney's sonnet of the English type, p. 291, below.

The Astrophel and Stella (containing 110 sonnets) is the earliest of the great sonnet-sequences or sonnet-cycles of English poetry, those of Spenser, Shakspere, Rossetti, and Mrs. Browning being later representatives. In the Elizabethan age the fashion of writing sonnets, and sonnet-sequences in particular, was at its height, especially in the last decade of the century (1590-1600). On this subject, see the Introduction to Professor Schelling's Elizabethan Lyrics, in the AthenÆum Press Series, and Mr. Sidney Lee's Life of Shakspere. Other noteworthy sonnet-sequences besides those of Sidney, Spenser, and Shakspere were Constable's Diana, Daniel's Delia, Lodge's Phyllis, Watson's Tears of Fancy, Barnes's Parthenophil, Giles Fletcher's Lycia, and Drayton's Idea,—all published in the years 1592-1594. A now forgotten poet by the name of Lok produced more than four hundred sonnets, proving himself an Elizabethan rival to Wordsworth.

(William Drummond of Hawthornden: Sense of the Fragility of All Things, etc. 1616.)

Drummond was a sonneteer of great skill, and used many original combinations of rime-schemes,—some forty in all,—yet usually approximating to the Italian type. Leigh Hunt says: "Drummond's sonnets, for the most part, are not only of the legitimate order, but they are the earliest in the language that breathe what may be called the habit of mind observable in the best Italian writers of sonnets; that is to say, a mixture of tenderness, elegance, love of country, seclusion, and conscious sweetness of verse." (Essay on the Sonnet, in The Book of the Sonnet, vol. i. pp. 78, 79.)

(John Donne: Holy Sonnets, X. 1635.)

Donne's series of "Holy Sonnets" was one of the few Elizabethan sequences, or cycles, which dealt with other than amatory subjects. The seven sonnets of the series called La Corona are bound together into a "crown of sonnets,"—an Italian fashion, according to which the first line of each sonnet is the same as the last of the sonnet preceding, and the last line of the last sonnet the same as the first line of the first.

(Milton: On his Blindness. ab. 1655.)

Milton learned the sonnet direct from the Italian, and wrote five in that language. While following the Italian rime-schemes, however, he was not careful to observe any division between octave and sestet. Like Donne, he turned the sonnet to other subjects than that of love, or—in Landor's words—

(To Lamartine.)

Compare, also, Wordsworth's saying that in Milton's hand

Besides the eighteen English sonnets in regular form, Milton wrote a "tailed," or "caudated," sonnet, following an Italian fashion,—"On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament." "He intended it," says Masson, "to be what may be called an Anti-Presbyterian and Pro-Toleration Sonnet; but by going beyond fourteen lines, converted it into what the Italians called a 'sonnet with a tail.'" (Globe ed., p. 440.) The "tail" rimes cfffgg.

(Thomas Warton: In a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's 'Monasticon.' ab. 1775.)

After Milton, the sonnet fell into disuse for a century. "Walsh," says Mr. Gosse, "is the author of the only sonnet written in English between Milton's, in 1658, and Warton's, about 1750." (Ward's English Poets, vol. iii. p. 7.) See, however, that of Gray on West, written in 1742, quoted p. 295, below. To the Warton brothers, pioneers in so many ways of the romantic revival, chief credit is given for the revival of the sonnet in the eighteenth century. Other sonneteers of the period were William Mason, Thomas Edwards, Benjamin Stillingfleet, and Thomas Russell (see Seccombe's Age of Johnson, pp. 254, 255, and Beers's English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 160, 161).

(William Lisle Bowles: To Time. 1789.)

Bowles (1762-1850) wrote numerous sonnets, and was influential in carrying on the movement begun by the Wartons. His sonnets were admired, in particular, by Coleridge and Wordsworth, the former poet dedicating to him a sonnet beginning:

His sonnets were, however, neglectful of the regular Italian structure, so that under his influence, as Leigh Hunt observed, "the illegitimate order ... became such a favorite with lovers of easy writing who could string fourteen lines together, that ... it continued to fill the press with heaps of bad verses, till the genius of Wordsworth succeeded in restoring the right system." (Essay on the Sonnet, p. 85.) But see the notes on Wordsworth's sonnets, p. 280, below.

(Cowper: To Mrs. Unwin. 1793.)

(Wordsworth: The Sonnet. 1806.)

(Wordsworth: Scorn not the Sonnet. 1827.)

(Wordsworth: The World is too much with us. 1806.)

Wordsworth's complaint as to the number of Milton's sonnets ("alas, too few!") certainly cannot be applied to his own. They number about five hundred, ranking him as the most prolific English sonneteer. These include some of the finest sonnets in the language, and very many of admittedly indifferent quality. Mr. Swinburne regards his sonnets as on the whole "the best out of sight" in our poetry. In general he followed the Italian model, but with very great liberty. He not only practised great variety of rime-arrangement in the sestet, but frequently altered the scheme of the octave to such forms as abbaacca; see, for example, the specimen beginning "Scorn not the Sonnet." Wordsworth also showed no regard for the careful division of thought between octave and sestet. Indeed in a letter to Dyce, in 1833, he said that he regarded the sonnet not as a piece of architecture, but as "an orbicular body,—a sphere or a dew-drop." (Works, ed. Knight, vol. xi. p. 232.) Its excellence seemed to him to consist mainly in a "pervading sense of intense unity." Nevertheless, he admitted that "a sonnet will often be found excellent, where the beginning, the middle, and the end are distinctly marked, and also where it is distinctly separated into two parts, to which, as I before observed, the strict Italian model, as they write it, is favorable."

(Joseph Blanco White: To Night. ab. 1825. In The Book of the Sonnet, i. 258.)

This famous sonnet was called by Coleridge "the best in the English language." He seems, however, to have been led to this opinion rather by the thought than the form.

(Shelley: Ozymandias of Egypt. 1817.)

Shelley wrote but few sonnets, and all but one (To the Nile) are irregular in structure. The rime-scheme of the present specimen is, of course, wholly eccentric.

(Keats: The Grasshopper and Cricket. 1817.)

Keats's sonnets are for the most part regular in both rime-scheme and bipartite structure; but a number of the posthumous sonnets are in the English form. The present specimen (which competes with the more familiar sonnet on Chapman's Homer for the chief place among those of Keats) is a particularly good example of the bipartite structure and its organic relation to the thought of the sonnet.

(Leigh Hunt: The Fish to the Man. 1836.)

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese, xxxv. 1850.)

The forty-four Sonnets from the Portuguese (the title, of course, being purely fanciful) constitute one of the chief sonnet-sequences of the modern period. While true to the Italian rime-structure, Mrs. Browning cannot be said to have treated the sonnet either as a two-part poem or as a unit. Only three of the series, says Professor Corson (the first, fourth, and thirteenth), "can be said to realize with any distinctness the idea and the peculiar artistic effect of the sonnet proper." Hence while calling them "the most beautiful love-poems in the language," he thinks "they cannot be classed as sonnets." (Primer of English Verse, pp. 175, 176.)

(Rossetti: Sonnet preceding The House of Life. 1881.)

(Rossetti: The House of Life: Sonnet iv. Lovesight. 1870.)

The sonnets of Rossetti are undoubtedly the most perfect representatives of the Italian form in English poetry of the nineteenth century, and The House of Life (in 101 sonnets) is probably to be regarded as the most important sonnet-sequence since the Elizabethan age. The bipartite character of Rossetti's sonnets is marked, in editions of his poems, by the printing of the octave and sestet with a space between them.

(Tennyson: Montenegro. 1877.)

It is curious that the two chief representatives of English poetry of the Victorian period, Tennyson and Browning, should neither of them have given much attention to the sonnet nor have achieved any notable success in the form. Among Tennyson's poems there are some seventeen sonnets, of which the present specimen was considered by the poet to be the best. It represents a common form of the bipartite structure, where the octave is a narrative, and the sestet a comment upon what has been narrated. In the following specimen, from Matthew Arnold, the structure is similar. Lentzner quotes the East London, in his monograph on the English sonnet, as a case where the octave represents the thought in particular, the sestet in the abstract; in other cases the order is the reverse.

(Matthew Arnold: East London. 1867.)

(Browning: Why I am a Liberal. 1885.)

Browning's sonnets are few in number, mostly occasional, and none of them can be considered notable. For a study of them, see the article by Lentzner in Anglia, vol. xi. p. 500. Dr. Lentzner includes nine in his list, not all of which are included in Browning's collected poems. Three are so closely connected as practically to form a poem in three stanzas (appended to Jochanan Hakkadosh, 1883).

(John Addington Symonds: from Sonnets on the Thought of Death. ab. 1880.)

(Theodore Watts-Dunton: The Sonnet's Voice; a Metrical Lesson by the Sea-shore. AthenÆum, Sept. 17, 1881.)

The "sonnet on the sonnet" has become so familiar in recent times that a volume of such sonnets has been compiled, and a writer of humorous verse has satirized the fashion in a "Sonnet on the Sonnet on the Sonnet." Doubtless the two specimens quoted from Wordsworth lead all others of the class; but the present specimen is an interesting attempt to represent the characteristic metrical expressiveness of the form.

(Longfellow: Sonnets on the Divina Commedia, i. 1864.)

(William Watson: To the Sultan, in The Year of Shame. 1897.)

Mr. William Archer says of Mr. Watson's political sonnets, that the form becomes in his hands "a weapon like the sling of David. In the octave he whirls it round and round with ever-gathering momentum, and in the sestet sends his scorn or rebuke singing through the air, arrow-straight to its mark." (Poets of the Younger Generation, p. 503.)

B.—THE ENGLISH (SHAKSPERIAN) SONNET

(Earl of Surrey: Description and praise of his love Geraldine. In Tottel's Songs and Sonnets, p. 9. Pub. 1557.)

Surrey experimented with the Italian sonnet as it had been introduced into England by his master Wyatt, but soon devised a variation from the Italian form, and wrote a majority of his sonnets in the new English form (nine out of the sixteen which are printed in Tottel's Miscellany). This new form is divided, not into octave and sestet, but into three quatrains, with alternate rime, and a couplet. It produces, therefore, an effect quite different from that of the legitimate Italian sonnet, the couplet at the end giving it a more epigrammatic structure. Surrey's form seems more consonant with common English taste for simplicity of rime-structure, and, besides being honored by its adoption by Shakspere, has remained a favorite side by side with the more "correct" original.[37]

(Sidney: Astrophel and Stella, xxxix. ab. 1580.)

(Samuel Daniel: Care-charmer Sleep. 1592.)

Daniel was one of the most skilful of the Elizabethans in the use of the English form of the sonnet. The greater number of his Sonnets to Delia are of this type. The subject of the present sonnet was a fashionable one in the sixteenth century (compare Sidney's, quoted above).

(Drayton: Love's Farewell. 1594.)

Rossetti called this sonnet "perhaps the best in the language." Drayton's sonnet-sequence, the Idea, follows the Shaksperian form; and the present specimen illustrates how the important division of this type of sonnet is between the quatrains and the final couplet.

(Spenser: Amoretti, lxxv. 1595.)

The sonnets in Spenser's collected poems number 177, of which fifty-six are in the common English (Surrey) form, the remainder—like the present specimen—riming ababbcbccdcdee. This order of rimes reminds us of that in the Spenserian stanza, and must have been devised by Spenser at about the same time. It has never been adopted by other poets.

(Shakspere: Sonnet xxix. 1609.)

(Shakspere: Sonnet lxxiii. 1609.)

These two specimens, perhaps the favorites of as many readers as any which could be chosen, must serve to represent the sonnets of Shakspere. The whole number of these is 154, and all are in the English form. Slight irregularities in the rime-scheme will be found in about fifteen. Number 99 has fifteen lines and 126 (sometimes called the Epilogue to the first part of the series) has only twelve. Number 20 is wholly based on feminine rimes.[38]

(George Herbert: Sin. 1631.)

(Gray: On the Death of Richard West. 1742.)

On the place of this sonnet in the eighteenth century, see p. 277, above.

(Coleridge: Fancy in Nubibus. 1819.)

The sonnets of Coleridge, as has already been noted, were written under the influence of those of Bowles, and are not of the Italian type. He defined the sonnet as "a short poem in which some lonely feeling is developed," thus emphasizing, like Wordsworth, the idea of unity rather than of progressive structure.

(William Watson: History.)

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V. THE ODE

The term Ode is used of English poetry with considerable vagueness. The Century Dictionary defines the word thus: "A lyric poem expressive of exalted or enthusiastic emotion, especially one of complex or irregular metrical form; originally and strictly, such a composition intended to be sung." Compare with this the definition of Mr. Gosse, in his collection of English Odes: "Any strain of enthusiastic and exalted lyrical verse, directed to a fixed purpose, and dealing progressively with one dignified theme."

Viewed from the purely metrical standpoint, English odes are commonly either (a) regular Pindaric odes, imitative of the structure of the Greek ode, or (b) irregular, so-called "Pindaric" or "Cowleyan" odes. A third group may be made of forms based on the imitation of the choral odes of the Greek drama. There is also a class of odes called "Horatian," made up of simple lyrical stanzas; the name "ode" is applied here only because of the content of the poem or because of resemblance to the so-called odes (properly carmina or songs) of Horace, and since these Horatian odes show no metrical peculiarities they will not be represented here.[39]

The characteristic effect of the ode is produced by the varying lengths of lines employed, and the varying distances at which the rimes answer one another. This variety, in the hands of a master of verse, is capable of splendid effectiveness, but it gives dangerous license to the unskilled writer.

A.—REGULAR PINDARIC

(Ben Jonson: A Pindaric Ode on the death of Sir H. Morison. 1629.)

This ode of Jonson's is apparently the earliest, and remained for a long time the only, notable English ode based on the strict structure of the Greek original. The Greek ode was commonly divided into the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode; the strophe and antistrophe being identical in structure, though varying in different odes, and the epode being of different structure. Jonson therefore followed the classical form carefully, and introduced English terms to express the original three divisions.

Professor Bronson observes, in his Introduction to the Odes of Collins: "It is a commonplace that the Pindaric Ode in English is an artificial exotic, of slight native force, and unable to reproduce the effects of the Greek original. The reason is obvious. The Greek odes were accompanied by music and dancing, the singers moving to one side during the strophe, retracing their steps during the antistrophe, ... and standing still during the epode. The ear was thus helped by the eye, and the divisions of the ode were distinct and significant. But in an English Pindaric the elaborate correspondences and differences between strophe, antistrophe, and epode are lost upon most readers, and even the critical reader derives from them a pleasure intellectual rather than sensuous." (Edition of Collins, AthenÆum Press Series, Introduction, pp. lxxiv, lxxv.)

(Congreve: A Pindaric Ode on the victorious progress of her Majesty's Arms. 1706.)

To Congreve is due the credit for the revival of the regular ode in the eighteenth century, after it had been long forgotten by English poets. Meantime the irregular form, devised by Cowley, had become popular; and against the license of this Congreve protested in his Discourse on the Pindaric Ode, prefixed to his Ode of 1706. (See Mr. Gosse's Introduction to English Odes, p. xvii., and his Life of Congreve, p. 158.)

(Discourse on the Pindaric Ode, in Chalmers's English Poets, vol. x. p. 300.)

(Collins: Ode to Liberty, strophe and antistrophe. 1746.)This ode consists of strophe, epode, antistrophe, and second epode. The antistrophe corresponds metrically to the strophe, as usual; the epodes are in four-stress couplets. It was Collins's habit to place the epode between the strophe and antistrophe, perhaps, as Professor Bronson suggests, in order that it may produce "an impression of its own analogous to that of the Greek epode, namely, an impression of relief and repose." Mr. Bronson says further of Collins's odes: "Collins was less scholarly than Gray, but he was bolder and more original; and consciously or unconsciously he so constructed his odes that their organic parts stand out clearly distinct and produce effects analogous to those produced by the Greek ode. In brief, his method was, first, to make large divisions of the thought correspond to the large divisions of the form; and, second, to throw out into relief the complex strophe and antistrophe by contrasting them with a simple epode. The reader may not perceive the minute correspondences in form between strophe and antistrophe, but he can hardly fail to feel that the two answer to one another in a general way." (AthenÆum Press edition of Collins, Introduction, p. lxxv.)

(Gray: The Progress of Poesy. 1757.)

Gray's Progress of Poesy is probably to be regarded as the chief of all English odes of the regular Pindaric form. Mr. Lowell said, indeed, that it "overflies all other English lyrics like an eagle." The Bard is in precisely the same form, and shows the same skill in the wielding of the intricately varying melodies of the lines of different length.

B.—IRREGULAR (COWLEYAN)

(Cowley: The Resurrection, strophes iii. and iv. 1656).

Cowley, as has already appeared, introduced the irregular ode into English poetry, calling it "Pindaric" under a misapprehension of the real structure of the Greek odes. He published fifteen "Pindarique Odes" in 1656 (see the Preface to these, in Grosart's edition of his works, vol. ii. p. 4). The present specimen illustrates the really not unskilful use which Cowley made of the varying cadences of the form, and also sets forth—in the amusing concluding lines—his own idea of its difficulties.

Under the influence of Cowley's odes, the new form speedily became popular. According to Dr. Johnson, "this lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately over-spread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they who could do nothing else could write like Pindar." (Life of Cowley.) Compare also the remarks of Mr. Gosse: "Until the days of Collins and Gray, the ode modelled upon Cowley was not only the universal medium for congratulatory lyrics and pompous occasional pieces, but it was almost the only variety permitted to the melancholy generations over whom the heroic couplet reigned supreme." (Seventeenth Century Studies, p. 216.)

It has been the habit of modern critics to treat the irregularities of the Cowleyan ode with no little contempt, and it is undoubtedly true that in the hands of small poets its liberties are dangerous; but it is also true that some of the greatest modern poets have adopted the form for some of their best work, and that they have generally preferred it to that of the regular Pindaric ode.

(Dryden: To the Pious Memory of Mistress Anne Killigrew, strophe x. 1686.)

See also specimen from the Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, quoted above, p. 52.

Dryden's odes for St. Cecilia's Day (especially the Alexander's Feast) are among the most highly esteemed of his poems; but parts, at least, of the ode on Mistress Killigrew are no less fine, and in this case we have a purely literary ode, whose irregularities are not designed—as in the case of the others—to fit choral rendering. The conclusion of the ode, here quoted, seems to owe something of both substance and form to the conclusion of Cowley's Resurrection Ode (see preceding specimen). Dr. Johnson called Dryden's Killigrew Ode "undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language ever has produced."

(Collins: The Passions. 1746.)

(Coleridge: Ode on the Departing Year, strophe iii. 1796.)

This ode was evidently intended to be in the regular Pindaric form, and was divided into strophes, antistrophes, and epodes; but it soon broke into irregularity. On Coleridge's odes see some remarks by Mr. Theodore Watts in the article on Poetry in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica.

(Wordsworth: Intimations of Immortality, strophes v. and ix. 1807.)

In this poem the English ode may be said to have reached its high-water mark. Professor Corson observes: "The several metres are felt, in the course of the reading of the Ode, to be organic—inseparable from what each is employed to express. The rhymes, too, with their varying degrees of emphasis, according to the nearness or remoteness, and the length, of the rhyming verses, are equally a part of the expression.... The feelings of the reader of English poetry get to be set, so to speak, to the pentameter measure, as in that measure the largest portion of English poetry is written; and, accordingly, other measures derive some effect from that fact. In the theme-metre, generally, the more reflective portions of the Ode, its deeper tones, are expressed. The gladder notes come in the shorter metres.... Wordsworth never wrote any poem of which it can be more truly said than of his great Ode, 'Of the soul the body form doth take.'" (Primer of English Verse, pp. 32-34.)

(Shelley: Ode to Naples, strophe ii. 1819.)

(Tennyson: On the Death of the Duke of Wellington, strophes i, ii, iii, ix (in part). 1852.)This ode of Tennyson's is one of the few poems in which he gave himself such liberty of form (compare some of the irregular measures of Maud). It shows his usual skill in the adaptation of metrical effects to the purposes of description. Dr. Henry Van Dyke has suggested that the varying—almost lawless—movements of the opening lines are designed to suggest the surging of the crowd through the streets of London, before the entrance into the cathedral for the funeral.

(Lowell: Harvard Commemoration Ode, strophe xii. 1865.)This is undoubtedly the finest of odes by American poets, and remains one of the glories of new-world poetry. Its irregular measures were designed by Mr. Lowell to fit the poem for public reading (see his letter to Mr. Gosse on the subject, quoted in the Appendix to Gosse's Seventeenth Century Studies).

(Coventry Patmore: Ode ix. Printed 1868.)

Mr. Patmore's use of the irregular ode forms is of particular interest. He made a special study of the form, and applied it more widely than is commonly done. His first odes were printed (not published) in 1868, and from one of these the present specimen is taken. Later (1877), in connection with The Unknown Eros, he set forth his view of the ode form, treating it not as lawless but as governed by laws of its own. "Nearly all English metres," he said, "owe their existence as metres to 'catalexis,' or pause, for the time of one or more feet, and, as a rule, the position and amount of catalexis, are fixed. But the verse in which this volume is written is catalectic par excellence, employing the pause (as it does the rhyme) with freedom only limited by the exigencies of poetic passion. From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character. Some persons, unlearned in the subject of this metre, have objected to this kind of verse that it is 'lawless.' But it has its laws as truly as any other. In its highest order, the lyric or 'ode,' it is a tetrameter, the line having the time of eight iambics. When it descends to narrative, or the expression of a less exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter, having the time of six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the time of four; and it is allowable to vary the tetrameter 'ode' by the occasional introduction of passages in either or both of these inferior measures, but not, I think, by the use of any other. The license to rhyme at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced ... by unusual frequency in the recurrence of the same rhyme." (From Patmore's Prefatory Note to The Unknown Eros; quoted by William Sharp, in the Introduction to Great Odes, p. xxxii.)[40]

(Bayard Taylor: National Ode, strophe iii. 1876.)

(William Vaughn Moody: An Ode in Time of Hesitation, strophes iii. and ix. 1900.)

C.—CHORAL

Different from either of the two classes of odes already represented are the irregular choral measures used by a few English poets in translation or imitation of the odes of the Greek drama.

(Milton: Samson Agonistes, ll. 1660-1707. 1671.)

Of this passage Mr. Swinburne says: "It is hard to realize and hopeless to reproduce the musical force of classic metres so recondite and exquisite as the choral parts of a Greek play. Even Milton could not; though with his godlike instinct and his godlike might of hand he made a kind of strange and enormous harmony by intermixture of assonance and rhyme with irregular blank verse, as in that last Titanic chorus of Samson which utters over the fallen Philistines the trumpet-blast and thunder of its triumphs." (Essays and Studies, pp. 162, 163.)

(Matthew Arnold: Empedocles on Etna, Act II. Song of Callicles. 1853.)

(Browning: Agamemnon; chorus. 1877.)Of the same general metrical character as the irregular odes are certain poems (like some of Patmore's) with no regularly organized structure and varying lengths of line. See, for example, Milton's verses At a Solemn Music and On Time; Swinburne's Thalassius and On the Cliffs; and William Morris's On a fair Spring Morning. Compare, also, the effect of the irregular strophic forms in Southey's Curse of Kehama, Shelley's Queen Mab, and the like.[41]

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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.

A.—LYRICAL MEASURES

(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.

(Sir Philip Sidney: Asclepiadics, from the Arcadia. ab. 1580.)

This is the measure now called "Lesser Asclepiadean."

(Sir Philip Sidney: Anacreontics, from the Arcadia. ab. 1580.)

Sidney was a member of the little group of classical students who called themselves the "Areopagus," and who were interested in introducing classical measures into English verse. Others of the group were Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser, from whose correspondence most of our information regarding the movement is derived. (See the letters in Grosart's edition of Harvey's Works, vol. i. pp. 7-9, 20-24, 35-37, 75-76, 99-107.) Spenser's only known efforts in the same direction are also preserved in this correspondence; a poem in twenty-one iambic trimeters, and this "tetrasticon":—

It would seem that Spenser was attempting, more conscientiously than Sidney did, to follow the classical rules of quantity in making his verses; hence they are more difficult to read according to English rhythm. Sidney's experiments in the classical versification are perhaps the most successful, to modern taste, of all those made in the Elizabethan period. Among the other songs in the Arcadia will be found sapphics and hexameters.

(William Webbe: Sapphic Verse, in A Discourse of English Poetrie. 1586.)

Webbe was another of those who believed "that if the true kind of versifying in immitation of Greekes and Latines, had been practised in the English tongue, ... it would long ere this have aspyred to as full perfection, as in anie other tongue whatsoever." So he added to his Discourse (see Arber Reprint, pp. 67-84) a discussion of the principles of quantitative prosody, and some specimens of what might be done by way of experiment.[42] The Sapphics from which the present specimen is taken are a paraphrase of Spenser's praise of Elizabeth in the fourth eclogue of the Shepherd's Calendar. (For a specimen of Webbe's hexameters, see p. 334, below.)

(Thomas Campion: Iambic Dimeter, "an example Lyrical," in Observations in the Art of English Poesie. 1602.)

(Thomas Campion: Trochaic Dimeter, ib.)

The full title of Campion's work was: "Observations in the Art of English Poesie; wherein it is demonstratively proved, and by example confirmed, that the English toong will receive eight severall kinds of numbers, proper to it selfe, which are all in this booke set forth, and were never before this time by any man attempted." Campion, like other classical versifiers, condemned rime as a barbarity; but in imitating the classical measures he does not violate the normal English accent, so that his verses read smoothly in English rhythm. Curiously enough, he includes among his innovations an iambic measure which proves to be ordinary decasyllabic verse:

Professor Schelling exclaims: "Where could the musical Doctor have kept his ears all this time? to propose this measure thus innocently for the drama, when the English stage had been ringing with his 'licentiate iambics' for more than two decades!"

The second of the specimens quoted above Campion describes as a dimeter "whose first foote may either be a Sponde or Trochy: the two verses following are both of them Trochaical, and consist of foure feete, the first of either of them being a Spondee or Trochy, the other three only Trochyes. The fourth and last verse is made of two Trochyes. The number is voluble and fit to expresse any amorous conceit." (See also another of Campion's measures, in Part One, p. 27.)[43]

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries few, if any, notable English poems were written in the classical measures. Goldsmith, in one of his essays (xviii, on Versification), maintained the possibility of reducing English words to the classical prosody, and said: "We have seen several late specimens of English hexameters and sapphics so happily composed that, by attaching them to the idea of ancient measure, we found them in all respects as melodious and agreeable to the ear as the works of Virgil and Anacreon, or Horace." But whose these were it seems to be impossible to say.

(Canning and Frere: Sapphics; the Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder, in the Anti-Jacobin, November, 1797).

These "Sapphics" were a burlesque of some by Southey in similar stanzas, opening:

"In this poem," said the Anti-Jacobin, not unjustly, "the pathos of the matter is not a little relieved by the absurdity of the metre."

(Tennyson: Milton; Alcaics.)

(Tennyson: Hendecasyllabics.)

On the first of these stanzas of Tennyson, compare his stanzas to Maurice, and note, p. 77, above. With the hendecasyllabics, compare the "Phaleuciakes" of Sidney, p. 331, above, and "Hendecasyllabics" in Swinburne's Poems and Ballads.

Tennyson took no little interest in the relations of classical and English metres, and seems to have believed in the possibility of genuine English quantitative verse. He did not, however, regard it as of practical value, and treated his own experiments as trifles. In his Memoirs, written by his son, Tennyson is said to have observed that he knew the quantity of every English word except scissors, a mysterious saying which may be set beside Southey's declaration that Egypt is the only spondee in the English language. His son also preserves an extemporaneous line composed by Tennyson to illustrate the observance of quantity "regardless of accent":

and a sapphic stanza, also extemporized, quantitative but conforming to common accent:

(Memoir, vol. ii. p. 231.)

(Robinson Ellis: Poems of Catullus, LXI. 1871.)

Mr. Ellis's translations from Catullus are all "in the metres of the original," and are among the most interesting specimens of modern classical versifying. "Tennyson's Alcaics and Hendecasyllabics," he said in his Preface, "suggested to me the new principle on which I was to go to work. It was not sufficient to reproduce the ancient metres, unless the ancient quantity was reproduced also." Of special interest is the imitation of the "almost unapproachable" galliambic verse of the Attis (pp. 49-53):

As Mr. Ellis observes, the metre of Tennyson's Boadicea was modelled on this of Catullus. Compare also Mr. George Meredith's PhaËthon, "attempted in the galliambic measure":

(Swinburne: Sapphics, in Poems and Ballads.)

(Swinburne: Choriambics, in Poems and Ballads, Second Series, 1878.)

Swinburne's imitations of classical measures are frankly accentual, with no effort to introduce fixed quantities into English.

B.—DACTYLIC HEXAMETER

(Sir Philip Sidney: Dorus and Zelmane, in the Arcadia. ab. 1580.)

Sidney was evidently trying to write genuinely quantitative hexameters. Thus "of love," in the third line, may be regarded as a quantitative spondee (the o being followed by two consonants), although the of would not naturally be stressed. In like manner it is very possible that "pallace" was spelled with two l's in order to make the first syllable seem long.

Sidney's hexameters are the first in literary verse which have come down to us; but there must have been earlier efforts at least by the time of Ascham's Schoolmaster (1570), which vigorously attacked "our rude beggerly ryming, brought first into Italie by Gothes and Hunnes, ... and at last receyved into England by men of excellent wit in deede, but of small learning, and less judgement in that behalfe." (Arber Reprint, p. 145.) One hexameter distich by a contemporary and friend of Ascham's, Master Watson of Cambridge, is handed down to us by Webbe, as being "common in the mouthes of all men":

(Discourse of English Poetrie, p. 72.)

(Richard Stanyhurst: Vergil's Æneid, bk. iv. 1582.)

Stanyhurst's Vergil is one of the curiosities of Elizabethan literature, not only from its verse-form but from its spelling and diction. The translator declares himself a disciple of Ascham, in his antipathy to rimed verse; "What Tom Towly is so simple," he asks, "that wyl not attempt too bee a rithmoure?" In an address to the Learned Reader he explains his system of English quantitative prosody. In 1593 Stanyhurst's hexameters were severely noticed in a passage by Thomas Nash directed primarily against the classical versifying of Gabriel Harvey. "The hexamiter verse," said Nash, "I graunt to be a gentleman of an auncient house (so is many an English begger), yet this clyme of ours he cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in; hee goes twitching and hopping in our language, like a man running upon quagmiers, up the hill in one syllable and down the dale in another, retaining no part of that stately smooth gate which he vaunts himselfe with among the Greeks and Latins.... Master Stannyhurst (though otherwise learned) trod a foule lumbring boystrous wallowing measure, in his translation of Virgil." (Works of Nash, Grosart edition, vol. ii. pp. 237, 238.)

Stanyhurst was also ridiculed by Joseph Hall, in the Satires of his Virgidemiarum (1597):

(Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v. p. 266.)

Compare the lines of Chapman, in his Hymn to Cynthia, where he says that

See also, in Arber's edition of Stanyhurst in the English Scholar's Library, an account of another work in hexameters, published anonymously in 1599: the First Booke of the Preservation of King Henry the VII. This writer admired Stanyhurst's effort, but desired "him to refile" his verses into more polished English:

In the same connection the writer tells us definitely what is to be hoped from the "trew kind of Hexametred and Pentametred verse." "First it will enrich our speach with good and significant wordes: Secondly it will bring a delight and pleasure to the skilfull Reader, when he seeth them formally compyled: And thirdly it will incourage and learne the good and godly Students, that affect Poetry, and are naturally enclyned thereunto, to make the like: Fourthly it will direct a trew Idioma, and will teach trew Orthography."[44]

(William Webbe: Vergil's First Eclogue, in A Discourse of English Poetrie. 1586.)

Webbe prefaces his hexameters with a reference to those made by Gabriel Harvey, and says: "I for my part, so farre as those examples would leade me, and mine owne small skyll affoorde me, have blundered upon these fewe; whereinto I have translated the two first Æglogues of Virgill: because I thought no matter of my owne invention, nor any other of antiquitye more fitte for tryal of thys thyng, before there were some more speciall direction, which might leade to a lesse troublesome manner of wryting." (Arber Reprint, p. 72.)

(William Taylor: Paraphrase of Ossian's Hymn to the Sun. 1796.)

When English hexameters were revived at the end of the eighteenth century, it was in good part under German influence. Bodmer, Klopstock, and Voss, followed later by Goethe, made the German hexameter popular; and William Taylor of Norwich, who in many ways helped to familiarize his countrymen with German literature, became interested in the form. In 1796, the year of Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea, he contributed to the Monthly Magazine an article called "English Hexameters Exemplified," in which occurred the paraphrase from Ossian here quoted. Taylor pointed out that the hexameter of the Germans was purely accentual. They were "obliged, by the scarceness of long vowels and the rifeness of short syllables in their language, to tolerate the frequent substitution of trochees for spondees in their hexameter verse; and they scan, like other modern nations, by emphasis, not by position." (Quoted in J. W. Robberds's Memoir of William Taylor of Norwich, vol. i. pp. 157 ff.) Most later writers of English hexameters have followed the line here indicated, and have frankly abandoned the effort to represent the quantities of classical prosody.

(Coleridge: Hymn to the Earth. 1799.)

Coleridge made several experiments in hexameters at this time, and planned, together with Southey, a long hexameter poem on Mohammed. To Wordsworth he sent an experiment of the same kind in a lighter vein:

(Wordsworth's Memoirs, quoted in Coleridge's Poems, Aldine edition, vol. ii. p. 307.)

Coleridge also translated from Schiller the well-known distich describing and exemplifying the elegiac verse of Ovid:

This distich, it is interesting to find, was revised by Tennyson so as to represent the measure quantitatively rather than accentually:

(Southey: A Vision of Judgment, ix. 1821.)

Southey followed the example of William Taylor in attempting to construct hexameters "which would be perfectly consistent with the character of our language, and capable of great richness, variety and strength," yet which should not profess to follow "rules which are inapplicable to our tongue." (Preface to Vision of Judgment, Southey's Works, ed. 1838, vol. x. p. 195.) [45] In the same Preface he briefly reviewed the history of earlier efforts to introduce the classical measures into English. It is to be feared that Southey's hexameters are to be counted among the worst of modern times.

(Longfellow: Evangeline, Part. I. 1847.)

Evangeline is undoubtedly the most popular and widely read poem in English hexameters, and may be said to have revived the vogue of the measure in the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet its metrical qualities have not pleased most careful critics. Matthew Arnold said that the reception which the poem met with indicated that the dislike for the metre "is rather among professional critics than among the general public. Yet," he went on to say, "a version of Homer in hexameters of the Evangeline type would not satisfy the judicious, nor is the definite establishment of this type to be desired." (On Translating Homer, Macmillan ed., p. 284.) Mr. Arnold had previously suggested that the "lumbering effect" of such hexameters as Longfellow's is "caused by their being much too dactylic"; more spondees should be introduced.

The editor of the Riverside edition of Evangeline remarks interestingly: "The measure lends itself easily to the lingering melancholy which marks the greater part of the poem. The fall of the verse at the end of the line and the sharp recovery at the beginning of the next will be snares to the reader, who must beware of a jerking style of delivery.... A little practice will enable one to acquire that habit of reading the hexameter which we may liken, roughly, to the climbing of a hill, resting a moment on the summit, and then descending the other side."

Longfellow's hexameters were criticised most severely by his countryman, Edgar Poe. Poe denied the possibility of any adequate representation of the classical hexameter in English, largely because of the impossibility of using English spondees. The only genuine hexameters he knew, he declared, were some he had himself made, running:

(See Poe's Works, ed. Stedman and Woodberry, vol. vi. p. 104.)

Another interesting American experiment in hexameters is found in the Home Pastorals of Bayard Taylor (1869-1874). Taylor modeled his verses after those of the Germans, particularly Goethe's in Hermann und Dorothea. See, for example, the opening lines of November:

(Arthur Hugh Clough: The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich. 1848.)

Clough's hexameters are quite unlike any others in English poetry, both in their metrical quality and in their use for serio-comic verse. As Matthew Arnold observed, they are "excessively, needlessly rough," but their free, garrulous effect has a charm of its own. Clough also wrote some hexameters intended to be strictly quantitative. (For a detailed criticism of the verse of the Bothie, see Robert Bridges's Milton's Prosody, 1901 ed., Appendix J.)

It was Clough's hexameters, together with some "English Hexameter Translations" by Dr. Hawtrey and Mr. Lockhart (1847), that chiefly encouraged Matthew Arnold to believe that the measure might be well adapted to a translation of Homer. "The hexameter, whether alone or with the pentameter, possesses a movement, an expression, which no metre hitherto in common use amongst us possesses, and which I am convinced English poetry, as our mental wants multiply, will not always be content to forego." (Ib., p. 210.) Mr. James Spedding replied to Mr. Arnold's suggestion, from the point of view of the classical scholar, urging that only hexameters purely quantitative could properly represent those of Vergil. He illustrated his views by an amusing "hexametrical dialogue," conducted alternately in Vergilian measure and "in that of Longfellow." Of the former are the lines:

(James Spedding: Reviews and Discussions, 1879. p. 327.)

Arnold, however, wisely declined to be led into a discussion of the relations of accent and quantity in English. "All we are here concerned with," he said, "is the imitation, by the English hexameter, of the ancient hexameter in its effect upon us moderns.... The received English type, in its general outlines, is, for England, the necessary given type of this metre; it is by rendering the metrical beat of its pattern, not by rendering the accentual beat of it, that the English language has adapted the Greek hexameter.... I look with hope towards continued attempts at perfecting and employing this rhythm; but my belief in the immediate success of such attempts is far less confident than has been supposed." (See the whole passage, On Translating Homer, pp. 275-284.)

The hexameters of Dr. Hawtrey, quoted by Arnold, are these:

(From English Hexameter Translations, p. 242.)

Arnold also illustrated his doctrine in some hexameters of his own, which have not usually been regarded as a happy experiment. They run in part as follows:

(Ib., p. 234.)

Tennyson evidently viewed with small respect these various efforts to render Homer in English hexameters. See his lines beginning:

(In Quantity: Hexameters and Pentameters.)

Compare the amusing lines of Walter Savage Landor:

(English Hexameters, in The Last Fruit off an Old Tree.)

In like manner Mr. Swinburne says: "I must say how inexplicable it seems to me that Mr. Arnold, of all men, should be a patron of English hexameters. His own I have tried in vain to reduce by scansion into any metrical feet at all; they look like nothing on earth, and sound like anapests broken up and driven wrong.... And at best what ugly bastards of verse are these self-styled hexameters! how human tongues or hands could utter or could write them except by way of burlesque improvisation I could never imagine, and never shall." (Essays and Studies, p. 163.) From this condemnation Mr. Swinburne excepts only the hexameters of Dr. Hawtrey, "but that is simply a graceful interlude of pastime."

See also the essay called "Remarks on English Hexameters," in the HorÆ HellenicÆ of Professor John Stuart Blackie.

(Charles Kingsley: Andromeda. 1858.)

Kingsley believed in the possibility of representing the quantitative verse of classical poetry in English, and at the same time holding to genuinely English rhythm.[46] Thus he tried to introduce more real spondees into his hexameters than Longfellow and others had done. Compare such a line as Longfellow's—

with Kingsley's—

In the former the dissyllabic feet are in no sense spondees; in the latter there is an effort to fill them with genuinely long syllables.

(William Watson: Hymn to the Sea, ii.)

Here the alternate lines represent the "pentameter" of the Latin elegiac verse, where the light syllables were omitted at the cesura and the end of the line.

(William Johnson Stone: Translation of Odyssey, vi. 85 ff., in The Use of Classical Measures in English. 1899.)

Mr. Stone, like the Elizabethan classical versifiers, seeks to write purely quantitative verse in English, and, so far from aiming at the same time to preserve the rhythm of the usual English hexameter, he regards the clash between accent and quantity as a beauty rather than a defect. The verses he intends to be read "with the natural accent unimpaired," the reader listening for the regular quantities at the same time.

---

VII. IMITATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL FRENCH LYRICAL FORMS

A number of artificial lyrical forms, originating in the ingenuity of the mediÆval ProvenÇal poets, were adopted by the Middle English imitators of the Romance lyrists, and were revived with no little vigor in the Victorian period. Chief among the influential models for these forms, in early times, were the poems of Machault (1284-1377), Deschamps (1328-1415), Froissart (1337-1410), and Villon (1431-1485). Again in the seventeenth century such forms as the rondeau were revived in France by Voiture (1598-1648), but with little effect in England. Finally, in the nineteenth century, the forms were reintroduced by M. ThÉodore de Banville, and later into England by Mr. Lang, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Gosse, and others. For the history of these fashions in outline, see the admirable introduction to Mr. Gleeson White's Ballades and Rondeaus (1893); also Mr. Andrew Lang's Lays and Lyrics of Old France (1872); Mr. Austin Dobson's "Note on some Foreign Forms of Verse," in the collection of Latter Day Lyrics (1878); and an article by Mr. Edmund Gosse in the Cornhill Magazine, July, 1877.

Says Mr. Dobson: "It may be conceded that the majority of the forms now in question are not at present suited for ... the treatment of grave or elevated themes. What is modestly advanced for some of them ... is that they may add a new charm of buoyancy,—a lyric freshness,—to amatory and familiar verse, already too much condemned to faded measures and out-worn cadences. Further, ... that they are admirable vehicles for the expression of trifles or jeux d'esprit. They have also a humbler and obscurer use. If, to quote the once-hackneyed, but now too-much-forgotten maxim of Pope—

what better discipline, among others, could possibly be devised for 'those about to versify' than a course of Rondeaux, Triolets, and Ballades?" Mr. Dobson refers to the article by Mr. Gosse already cited, and "to the Odes Funambulesques, the Petit TraitÉ de PoÉsie FranÇaise, and other works of M. ThÉodore de Banville. To M. de Banville in particular and to the second French Romantic School in general, the happy modernization in France of the old measures of Marot, Villon, and Charles of Orleans is mainly to be ascribed." (Latter Day Lyrics, ed. W. D. Adams, pp. 334 ff.)[47]

Says Mr. Gleeson White: "The taste for these tours de force in the art of verse-making is no doubt an acquired one; yet to quote the first attempt to produce a lyric with a repeated burden would take one back to the earliest civilization.... Whether the first refrains were used for decorative effect only, or to give the singer time to recollect or improvise the next verse, it matters little, since the once mere adjunct was made in later French use an integral and vital part of the verse. The charm of these strictly written verses is undoubtedly increased by some knowledge of their technical rules.... To approach ideal perfection, nothing less than implicit obedience to all the rules is the first element of success; but the task is by no means finished there. Every quality that poetry demands, whether clearness of thought, elegance of expression, harmonious sound, or faultless rhythm, is needed as much in these shapes as in unfettered verse.... It may be said, without fear of exaggeration, that all the qualities required to form a perfect lyric in poetry are equally needful here, plus a great many special ones the forms themselves demand. To the students of any art there is always a peculiar charm when the highest difficulties are surmounted with such ease that the consummate art is hidden to all who know not the magic password to unveil it." (Ballades and Rondeaus, Introduction, pp. xli, xlii.) "No one is compelled to use these complex forms, but if chosen, their laws must be obeyed to the letter if success is to be obtained. The chief pleasure they yield consists in the apparent spontaneity, which is the result of genius, if genius be indeed the art of taking infinite pains; or, if that definition is rejected, they must yet exhibit the art which conceals art, whether by intense care in every minute detail, or a happy faculty for naturally wearing these fetters." (Ib., pp. l, li.)

A.—THE BALLADE

The ballade commonly consists of three stanzas, with an envoy. In modern usage the stanzas usually contain either eight or ten lines, and the envoy half as many as the stanza; but in earlier usage both stanza and envoy varied, and the latter might be omitted altogether. The rimes in all the stanzas must be identical in the corresponding lines, but the riming words must be different. The most characteristic element is the refrain,—the keynote of the poem,—which forms the last line of each stanza, including the envoy. The favorite rime-scheme for the eight-line stanza is ababbcbc, with the envoy bcbc. Mr. White says of the envoy that it "is not only a dedication, but should be the peroration of the subject, and richer in its wording and more stately in its imagery than the preceding verses, to convey the climax of the whole matter, and avoid the suspicion that it is a mere postscript."

(Chaucer: Balade de bon conseyl. ab. 1385.)

Here Chaucer follows the rules of the ballade carefully, but in the "rime royal" stanza. It will be noticed that the rime-word "al" seems to be repeated, but it is used each time in a distinct sense, hence—according to the rules of Chaucer's time, as of modern French—is regarded as a different rime-word each time.

(Rossetti: The Ballad of Dead Ladies, from the French of FranÇois Villon, 1450.)

This is a notable translation of a notable ballade, but it will be observed that it does not follow the strict rules as to the number of rimes. In Mr. Andrew Lang's Ballades of Blue China is a formally correct translation.

(Edmund Gosse: Ballad of Dead Cities.)

In this ballade Mr. Gosse finely reproduces the more serious tones of the old form, and imitates the ancient custom of addressing the envoy to royalty. This motif, of old things lost, is a favorite one for the serious ballade, being suggested by Villon's Ballade of Dead Ladies. Compare Mr. Lang's Ballade of Dead Cities, in Ballades of Blue China.

On the other hand, the next specimen illustrates the use of the form for the light familiarity of vers de sociÉtÉ and parody.

(Andrew Lang: Ballade of Primitive Man.)

In Mr. Lang's Ballades of Blue China this appears as a double ballade, with three more stanzas.

(Frank Dempster Sherman: To Austin Dobson.)

Mr. Austin Dobson is said to have been the first to reintroduce the ballade into English poetry, and the present specimen is a tribute to his success by an American poet.

(Swinburne: Ballad of FranÇois Villon, Prince of all Ballad-Makers, st. i.)

This specimen represents the ballade in ten-line stanzas.

There is also an extended form of the ballade, called the Chant Royal, with five stanzas and envoy, the stanzas consisting of eleven verses. The usual rime-scheme is ababccddede, with envoy ddede. For admirable specimens, see Mr. Dobson's Dance of Death and Mr. Gosse's Praise of Dionysus, in Ballades and Rondeaus, pp. 98, 100. Mr. White says of this form: "The chant royal in the old form is usually devoted to the unfolding of an allegory in its five stanzas, the envoy supplying the key; but this is not always observed in modern examples. Whatever be the subject, however, it must always march in stately rhythm with splendid imagery, using all the poetic adornments of sonorous, highly-wrought lines and rich embroidery of words, to clothe a theme in itself a lofty one. Unless the whole poem is constructed with intense care, the monotony of its sixty-one lines rhymed on five sounds is unbearable." (Ballades and Rondeaus, Introduction, p. liv.)

B.—THE RONDEAU AND RONDEL

Rondel is the old French form of the word rondeau, and the terms are therefore naturally interchangeable. They have been applied to a number of different forms, all characterized by a refrain so repeated as to link together different parts of the structure. Two of these forms are particularly familiar. The first (called more commonly the rondel) consists of fourteen lines, with only two rimes; the first two lines constitute the refrain, and are commonly repeated as the seventh and eighth and again as the thirteenth and fourteenth. The rime-scheme varies, but is often ABba, abAB, abbaAB (the capitals indicating the repeated lines of the refrain). Sometimes the form is shortened to thirteen lines, the second line of the refrain not being repeated at the close. The second principal form (called more commonly the rondeau) consists of thirteen lines, with two rimes, and an unrimed refrain, taken from the opening words of the first line, which follows the eighth line and is again repeated at the end. The common rime-scheme is aabba,aab (refrain), aabba (refrain). Both these forms are found in early French poetry, together with many variations. The modern distinction between rondeau and rondel is artificial but convenient.

i. "Rondel" Type

(Chaucer: Qui bien aime a tard oublie, in The Parlement of Foules, ll. 680-692. ab. 1380.)

This is the "roundel" sung by the birds "to do Nature honour and plesaunce." "The note" we are told was made in France. It will be seen that Chaucer employs a form with three-line refrain, of which the first two lines are twice repeated, the last only once: ABB,abAB,abbABB. The same form is used in the three roundels of Merciles Beaute.

(Austin Dobson: Too hard it is to sing.)

(Edmund Gosse: After Anyte of Tegea.)

In this the second line of the refrain is omitted where we should expect it as line eight, the scheme of the first part of the rondel being changed to ABab, abbA.

(W. E. Henley: The Ways of Death.)

ii. "Rondeau" Type

(Voiture: Rondeau, ab. 1640. In Œuvres de Voiture, ed. Ubicini, vol. ii. p. 314.)

This is perhaps the most famous of rondeaus of the type which Voiture did much to make popular.

(Sir Thomas Wyatt: Rondeau in Wyatt MS., reproduced in Anglia, vol. xviii. p. 478. ab. 1540.)

Besides the rondeaus found in the Wyatt MS., three poems of Wyatt's, published in Tottel's Songs and Sonnets (1557), were evidently intended as rondeaus (see Arber's Reprint, pp. 53, 73). The editor, not understanding the form or thinking it too unfamiliar to be popular, seems to have changed it to a sort of sonnet, omitting the refrain at the end and making a complete line of it as the ninth of the poem. These hidden rondeaus were discussed by Mr. Dobson in the AthenÆum for 1878 (vol. i. p. 380); see also Alscher's Sir Thomas Wyatt und seine Stellung, etc.

(Charles Cotton: Rondeau. ab. 1675. Quoted by Guest, English Rhythms, Skeat ed., p. 645.)

(J. R. Best: Ung Bon Rondeau, in Rondeaulx. Translated from the French, ed. 1527. 1838. Quoted in Ballades and Rondeaus, Introduction, p. xxxviii.)

(Rossetti: To Death, of his Lady, from the French of Villon, 1450.)

This represents an early short form of the rondeau.

(Austin Dobson: With Pipe and Flute.)

(W. E. Henley: What is to Come.)

(Charlotte Perkins Stetson: A Man Must Live.)

(Swinburne: The Roundel, in A Century of Roundels.)

Mr. Swinburne has reintroduced the old word-form "roundel," to distinguish this style of rondeau, of his own devising, with nine long lines, riming aba, bab, aba, the refrain riming also with the b lines.

C.—THE VILLANELLE

This highly intricate form was originally used for pastoral or idyllic verse, and it is commonly reserved, as Mr. Dobson observes, for subjects "full of sweetness and simplicity." In its typical form it consists of nineteen lines, divided into five groups or stanzas of three and one of four. There are but two rimes, and the two verses which constitute the refrain recur again and again, line 1 reappearing as line 6, line 12, and line 18, while line 3 reappears as line 9, line 15, and line 19. The rime scheme of all the tercets is aba, of the conclusion abaa. Those villanelles are considered most highly finished in which the refrain recurs with slightly different significations.

On the history of this form, see J. Boulmier's Les Villanelles, Paris, 1878. The modern development of the villanelle has been largely influenced by the work of Passerat (1534-1602), whose most famous villanelle is the following specimen:

(Jean Passerat: Villanelle.)

(Austin Dobson: When I Saw You Last, Rose.)

(W. E. Henley: Villanelle.)

(Edmund Gosse: Villanelle.)

(Clinton Scollard: Spring Knocks at Winter's Frosty Door.)

D.—THE TRIOLET

The triolet is really a diminutive form of the Rondeau, and was not originally distinguished by name. It consists of eight lines, with two rimes, lines 1 and 2 recurring as lines 7 and 8, and line 1 also as line 4. The rime-scheme is ABaAabAB. Here, as in the villanelle, a change of signification in the repeated lines is thought to add to the charm of the form.

A French specimen, from Ranchin, is cited by Mr. Gleeson White as being called by some "the king of triolets":

(W. E. Henley.)

(Austin Dobson: Rose Leaves.)

In an earlier version of this last "rose-leaf" the ode is said to have "turned into triolets," when Rose crossed the road "with a bunch of fresh violets."

(Samuel Minturn Peck: Under the Rose.)

(Patrick Carey: in Trivial Poems and Triolets, 1651; reprinted by Scott, 1819; this triolet also quoted in Ballades and Rondeaus, Introduction, p. xxxvi.)

Originally, the triolet was often used for serious sentiment. The present and the following specimen are rare instances of its serious use in English.

(George Macdonald.)

E.—THE SESTINA

This form, although originally found in ProvenÇal like the others of the group, has been more used in Italy than in France, and, as the English form of the word indicates, was introduced into England under Italian influence. It was invented at the end of the thirteenth century, by the troubadour Arnaut Daniel, celebrated in the following specimen. The common form of the sestina has six stanzas of six lines each, with a tercet at the end. There is usually no rime, but the stanzas are based on six end-words, which are the same in all stanzas; in the tercet three of these words are used in the middle of the lines, and three at the ends. The order of the end-words changes in each stanza according to a complex system: thus (in the common modern form) if the end-words of the first stanza be represented by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the order in the second stanza will be 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3; in the third, 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5; in the fourth, 5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4; in the fifth, 4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2; in the sixth, 2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 1. Sometimes the end-words also rime by twos and threes.

(Edmund Gosse: Sestina.)

For a specimen of the rimed sestina, see Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Second Series, p. 46.

The Virelai, which we have seen was one of the forms used by Chaucer, though not represented in his extant poetry, has been but slightly imitated in English. It was a poem of indeterminate length, composed of longer and shorter lines, the longer lines in each stanza riming, the shorter lines in the same stanza also riming, while in the succeeding stanza the short-line rime of the previous stanza became the long-line rime. The last stanza took the unrepeated rime of the first stanza as its new rime; so that in the whole poem each rime was used in two stanzas. Charles Cotton, one of whose rondeaus has been quoted, also wrote a virelai. A modern specimen, by Mr. John Payne, is quoted in Ballades and Rondeaus, p. 276.

The Pantoum is another very interesting form belonging in this group rather than elsewhere, although it originated not in France but Malaysia. It was imitated in French by Victor Hugo and other poets, and through French influence has found a place in English verse. It consists of an indeterminate number of stanzas of four lines each, the second and fourth line of each stanza being repeated as the first and third of the succeeding stanza, while the second and fourth lines of the last stanza repeat the first and third lines of the first stanza. Thus the whole forms a sort of interwoven circle, and is used most appropriately to represent any kind of monotony,—the dull round of repetition. From Love in Idleness (1883) Mr. White reprints the following admirable specimen:

[47] On the early history of these forms in France, see Stengel's article in GrÖber's Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie. vol. ii. pp. 87-96.