CHAPTER III LATER NINETEENTH-CENTURY PROSODISTS

Previous
Discussions on the Evangeline hexameter.

The amount of prosodic writing during the last seventy years has been very large. In the earliest and latest parts of the period it was principally devoted to the subject of English hexameters—in the first, in regard to the accentual attempts of Longfellow, to which Evangeline gave immense popularity; in the last, to the counter-attempts at "quantitative" versification, in which the feet are constructed, not with reference to accent or to the way in which the words are ordinarily pronounced, but to independent and even opposed temporal value derived from the special sound attached to the vowel ("idol," long; "fiddle," short, etc.), or, on semi-classical principles, to what is called "position." To analyse the individual views of critics on these two bodies of questions would be here impossible, and reference must be made to the larger History, to Mr. Omond's treatises, or to the original works, the most important of which will be found duly entered in the Bibliography. But we may summarise results under three heads.

I. The "accentual" or Evangeline hexameter has, as has been said, been at times far from unpopular; but it has always dissatisfied nicer ears by a certain inappropriateness which has been differently appraised, but which is evidently pointed at by the apology of its first extensive practitioner, Southey, that he could not get spondees enough, and had to be content with trochees. This inappropriateness has since been characterised by an unsurpassed expert in theory and practice—Mr. Swinburne—in the blunt assertion that to English "all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent."

II. On the other hand, the so-called quantitative verse is repulsive to the same ears (unless, like Tennyson's experiments, it is accommodated to ordinary pronunciation) by the very fact that it sets that pronunciation expressly at defiance, and makes sheer jargon of the language.

III. Considering these facts, some (among whom the present writer is included) regard an apparent English hexameter, such as that of Kingsley's Andromeda, and, still more, that of certain verses of Mr. Swinburne himself, as an admirable and glorious metre, but as not dactylic at all—scanning it as a five-foot anapÆstic with anacrusis (odd syllable at the beginning) and hypercatalexis (ditto at the end).[150]

Mid-century prosodists.

Of more general prosodic inquiry some selection-summary must be given. Guest's original work does not seem to have produced much effect, save on specially scholarly writers interested in the subject, like Archbishop Trench; though the reprint of it, forty years later, had, as we shall see, a great deal of influence. Except on the hexameter matter, there was little done between 1840 and close upon 1870. It was, however, unfortunate that, at the very opening of this time, Latham's English Language embodied some very inadequate remarks on prosody, including the symbol xa for an iamb, which has too much permeated English text-books since. The works of Archdeacon Evans and E.S. Dallas, both published in 1852, are important only to very thorough-going students. The latter was acute, but fanciful and inclined to jargon. The former, regarding stress as the only basis of modern versification, indulged in a curious undervaluation of English poetry generally: we must "forget all about classical poetry to be satisfied with blank verse"; English lyric has been "under an evil genius, and always a blank"; and Shakespeare and Milton "gained exceedingly" by translation into Greek and Latin. Any intelligent reader can judge of such a tree by such fruits.

Of really earlier date than these (for their author died in 1846) were Sidney Walker's remarks on Shakespeare's Versification, posthumously published in 1854, which contain some useful metrical observations.[151] Dallas's book produced at least two important reviews, each of which extended itself into a more important prosodic tractate. The first of these was by the late Professor Masson, who afterwards rearranged his prosodic ideas in a minute and very scholarly study of Milton's versification, appearing in his larger edition of the poet. Professor Masson perhaps admitted some unnecessary feet, such as the amphibrach, but his views are on the whole extremely sound. The other essay was by Coventry Patmore—a poet, a man of distinct originality in many ways, and a really learned student of preceding prosodists—in fact, by far the most learned up to his time. This essay is full of suggestive and ingenious notions, but exceedingly crotchety, and, for persons not thoroughly grounded in the subject, unsafe. It has the merit of recognising the division of verse into what it calls, by a rather ponderous term, "isochronous intervals" (that is to say, feet equivalent in time), and of recognising, likewise, the important metrical as well as rhetorical part played by pause. But it exaggerates this part in an impossible fashion, making a full pause-foot at the end of every heroic line; and its attention to "accent" is also excessive and, in fact, inconsistent.

Those about 1870,

On the whole, however, it was not, as has been said, till the very eve of 1870, when the PrÆ-Raphaelite school had made its appearance, that any considerable amount of prosodic writing came. Then, and in the very same year, 1869, there was a remarkable outburst, including A Complete Practical Guide to the Whole Subject of English Versification (by E. Wadham), which represents a modified Bysshian system—believing in elision; thinking trisyllabic feet bad, though they may exist, especially at the cÆsura; discountenancing both blank and anapÆstic verse; and applying to the whole subject a new terminology which has not been generally accepted. Then came also a Manual of English Prosody by R. F. Brewer (reissued many years afterwards as Orthometry), which contains a very large amount of information on the details of the matter, but little appreciation of its more important aspects. Much briefer, but, despite some errors, sounder on the whole, and giving no bad introduction to the subject, was the Rules of Rhyme of Tom Hood, son of the poet. Greater influence than that of any of these has been exercised by the prosodic part of Dr. Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, published in this year, and of his English Lessons for English People, issued (and partly written by J. R. Seeley) two years later. Unfortunately, not a few of the principles of these books are either demonstrably unsound or very doubtful, the worst of all being the insistence on "extra-metrical" syllables, or, in other words, the confession that English prosody cannot account for English poetry. 1869 also saw the beginning of a very important work, Mr. A. J. Ellis's Early English Pronunciation, which has had a great effect on some views of prosody, and contains a very elaborate scheme of syllabic values for quality and degree of force, weight, etc.

In 1874 Mr. John Addington Symonds, a critic, prose-writer, and even poet of no mean rank, published an essay, which he afterwards expanded into a tractate, on Blank Verse, denying that any preconceived metrical scheme will explain this, and arguing that each line must be treated separately according to its own sense. More minute than any book since Guest's, and written with definite purpose to teach poets their business, was Mr. Gilbert Conway's Treatise of Versification (1878), which reverts to eighteenth-century theories, not merely of the scansion but of the pronunciation of words like "ominous" and " delicate"; thinks Milton "capricious" and "inconsistent"; and proceeds entirely on the principle that the base and backbone of English prosody is accent. Two years later Mr. Ruskin issued his Elements of English Prosody, employing musical notation, but using the names of feet very strangely applied. And a year later Mr. Shadworth Hodgson published a paper on "English Verse," perhaps not uninfluenced by Guest, and advocating (as several writers about his time began to do) "stress" systems of scansion, the stress being allotted according to various considerations of sense and otherwise. Another stress-man—still more influenced, though partly in the way of correction, by Guest—was the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who in 1883 wrote in the Saturday Review some papers, republished after his death, and advocating "sections," of which there may be as many as four in a normal heroic line, though this may, on the other hand, have as many as seven or even eight "beats" on strong syllables. Much sounder than any of these—indeed, on practical matters almost irreproachable—was Professor J. B. Mayor's Chapters on English Metre (1886), on which he founded later a Handbook of the subject (1903).

and since.

In the last twenty or thirty years there has been an increasing number of books on prosody, the names of the most important of which will be found in the Bibliography. The most important of all is perhaps Mr. Robert Bridges' Prosody of Milton, increased in subsequent editions to something like a manual of Stress Prosody, and containing material also for estimating the recent attempts, by Mr. Bridges himself and by the late Mr. W. J. Stone, to revive the writing of English hexameters on a quantitative, not an accentual, basis. There have also been many attempts (of which perhaps the most remarkable is a treatise on monopressures, taken up and applied by Professor Skeat) which would reduce prosody to a branch of medical physics or physiology, by basing it on the mechanical action of the glottis or larynx. And strong and repeated efforts have also been made to bring the subject entirely under the supervision of music—using musical notation, musical terms such as "bar," and the like. The most widely influential of these was the work of the American poet and critic Sidney Lanier; the most recent, that of Mr. William Thomson of Glasgow. On the other hand, the writings of Mr. Omond, though some doubt may be entertained as to details, have the merits of absolute soundness on the general principles of the subject, and may be studied with ever-increasing advantage.

Summary.

These principles—general, and in relation to the methods of treatment more especially dealt with in the last paragraph or two—may be briefly summarised before this sketch of our prosodist history is closed. Systems of stress prosody are unsatisfactory, because the unstressed syllables of the line, and their connection or grouping with the stressed ones, are of quite as much importance to total effect as stresses themselves, and because attention to stress seems to beget the notion that regularity of time and time-interval is of no importance.[152]

Physiological-mechanical systems are altogether insufficient, even if not wrong, because they only refer to the raw material of prosody; because, in their nature, they must be applicable to verse and prose alike, and to all kinds of verse; with the additional disadvantage that, as actually explained by their advocates, they usually make verse-arrangements of the most inharmonious and unpoetical character.[153]

This latter objection applies with even greater force to the musical theorists, whose explanations of verse invariably confuse rhythm or overturn it altogether, while their whole system ignores the fact, that music and prosody are quite different things—that they may perhaps be accommodated in particular cases, but that this accommodation is by no means frequent.

In some cases, chiefly those of foreigners who have undertaken the study of English verse, return has been attempted to the rigid syllabic methods of Bysshe and his followers. But it is usually admitted by these persons that the method does not suit nineteenth-century poetry, and they are open therefore to the fatal charge of having to suppress part, and a most important part, of the historical life of the subject.

On the other hand, the system of corresponding foot-division, with equivalence and substitution allowed, which has been followed in this book, is open to none of these objections. It neither neglects nor suppresses any part of the line in any case, but accounts fully for all parts. It applies to poetry only, and, to a large extent at least, explains the difference between good poetry and bad. It adjusts itself to the entire history of English verse, since the English language took the turn which made it English in the full sense. It requires no metrical fictions, no suppression of syllables, no allowance of extra-metrical ones, no alteration in pronouncing, no conflict of accent and quantity. No period or kind of English poetry is pronounced by it to be wrong, though it may allow that certain periods have exercised their rights and privileges more fully than others. In short, it takes the poetry as it is, and has been for seven hundred years at least; bars nothing; carves, cuts, and corrects nothing; begs no questions; involves no make-believes; but accepts the facts, and makes out of them what, and what only, the facts will bear.

FOOTNOTES:

[150] For examples of all these see Scanned Conspectus.

[151] Especially one which the student should apply for himself, that Shakespeare's incomplete lines are mostly regular fractions of complete ones, scanning correctly on the same system (v. sup. p. 130).

[152] Thus Mr. Bridges, though he himself does not neglect the unstressed, and even makes combination of the two kinds which are actually feet, would allow sometimes four and sometimes only three stresses in a heroic line. Later stress (or "stress-cum-music") prosodists have even proposed to recognise two "bars" only in such a line.

[153] Thus it has been proposed to scan a line of Goldsmith:

The sheltered " cot, " the culti"vated " farm.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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