English Verse Part 30

(WALLER: _The Battle of the Summer Islands_, canto i. 1638.)

Edmund Waller is the chief representative of the early cla.s.sical 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 surpa.s.sed Spenser in the harmony of his verse. Dryden's view was later echoed by Pope, who exhorted his readers to

"praise the easy vigor of a line Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join."

(_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 cl.u.s.ter, 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 cla.s.sical 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 'cla.s.sical' 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 Sch.e.l.ling 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 pa.s.sage 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 n.o.ble 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:

"In every language now in Europe spoke By nations which the Roman empire broke, The rellish of the Muse consists in rime, One verse must meete another like a chime....

In many changes these may be exprest, But those that joyne most simply run the best: Their forme surpa.s.sing farre the fetter'd staves, Vaine care, and needlesse repet.i.tion saves."

(CHALMER'S _English Poets_, vol. vi. p. 31.)[22]

Rough Boreas in aeolian prison laid, And those dry blasts which gathered clouds invade, Outflies the South with dropping wings; who shrouds His terrible aspect in pitchy clouds.

His white hair streams, his swol'n beard big with showers; Mists bind his brows, rain from his bosom pours.

As with his hands the hanging clouds he crushed, They roared, and down in showers together rushed.

All-colored Iris, Juno's messenger, To weeping clouds doth nourishment confer.

The corn is lodged, the husbandmen despair, Their long year's labor lost, with all their care.

Jove, not content with his ethereal rages, His brother's auxiliaric floods engages.

(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.

My eye, descending from the hill, surveys Where Thames amongst the wanton valleys strays; Thames, the most loved of all the Ocean's sons By his old sire, to his embraces runs, Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea, Like mortal life to meet eternity....

No unexpected inundations spoil The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's toil, But G.o.dlike his unwearied bounty flows, First loves to do, then loves the good he does; Nor are his blessings to his banks confined, But free and common as the sea or wind....

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.

(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.

But say, what is't that binds your hands? does fear From such a glorious action you deter?

Or is't religion? But you sure disclaim That frivolous pretence, that empty name; Mere bugbear word, devis'd by us to scare The senseless rout to slavishness and fear, Ne'er known to awe the brave, and those that dare.

Such weak and feeble things may serve for checks To rein and curb base-mettled heretics, ...

Such whom fond in-bred honesty befools, Or that old musty piece, the Bible, gulls.

(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.)

Of these the false Achitophel was first, A name to all succeeding ages curst: For close designs and crooked counsels fit, Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit, Restless, unfixed in principles and place, In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace; A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.

A daring pilot in extremity, Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high, He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin part.i.tions do their bounds divide; Else, why should he, with wealth and honor blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?

Punish a body which he could not please, Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?...

In friendship false, implacable in hate, Resolved to ruin or to rule the state; To compa.s.s this the triple bond he broke, The pillars of the public safety shook, And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke; Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame, Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.

(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:

"Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march, the energy divine."

(_Epistle ii._, 267.)

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

"Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car, Wide o'er the fields of glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace."

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 pa.s.sed out of the hands of its first great pract.i.tioners. 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 s.p.a.ce 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.)

Do you remember, when their tasks were done, How all the youth did to our cottage run?

While winter winds were whistling loud without, Our cheerful hearth was circled round about: With strokes in ashes, maids their lovers drew; And still you fell to me, and I to you....

I know too well when first my love began, When at our wake you for the chaplet ran: Then I was made the lady of the May, And, with the garland, at the goal did stay: Still, as you ran, I kept you full in view; I hoped, and wished, and ran, methought, for you.

As you came near, I hastily did rise, And stretched my arm outright, that held the prize.

The custom was to kiss whom I should crown; You kneeled, and in my lap your head laid down: I blushed, and blushed, and did the kiss delay; At last my subjects forced me to obey: But, when I gave the crown, and then the kiss, I scarce had breath to say, Take that,--and this.

(DRYDEN: _Marriage a 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 disenc.u.mbered 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.

For the arguments with which Dryden defended the use of rime in the drama, see the Preface to _The Rival Ladies_, the _Essay of Heroic Plays_, the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, and the _Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy_. "In the quickness of reparties (which in discoursive scenes fall very often), it has so particular a grace, and is so aptly suited to them, that the sudden smartness of the answer, and the sweetness of the rhyme, set off the beauty of each other. But that benefit which I consider most in it, because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circ.u.mscribes the fancy." (_Essays of Dryden_, ed. W. P. Ker, vol. i. p. 8.) In the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, Crites, representing Sir Robert Howard, opposes the use of rime on the ground of Aristotle's dictum that tragedy is best written in the kind of verse which is nearest prose. A play being an imitation of Nature, "the nearer anything comes to the imitation of it, the more it pleases." Neander, representing Dryden, answers that this line of argument will equally forbid blank verse. Blank verse is "properly but measured prose"; and rime may be "made as natural as blank verse, by the well placing of the words, etc." "But I need not go so far to prove that rhyme, as it succeeds to all other offices of Greek and Latin verse, so especially to this of plays, since the custom of all nations at this day confirms it, all the French, Italian, and Spanish tragedies are generally writ in it; and sure the universal consent of the most civilized parts of the world ought in this, as it doth in other customs, to include the rest." (_Ibid._ p. 98.) Again, while a play is a representation of Nature, it is "Nature wrought up to an higher pitch"; and for this purpose "heroic rhyme is nearest Nature, as being the n.o.blest kind of modern verse." (pp.

100, 101.) In the _Essay of Heroic Plays_ Dryden again summarizes the case for the other side by saying that "all the arguments which are formed against it can amount to no more than this, that it is not so near conversation as prose, and therefore not so natural.

But it is very clear to all who understand Poetry, that serious plays ought not to imitate conversation too nearly." If, therefore, we begin to leave the mere "imitation of ordinary converse," we should go on consistently to "the last perfection of Art. It was only custom which cozened us so long; we thought, because Shakespeare and Fletcher went no farther, that there the pillars of poetry were to be erected; that, because they excellently described pa.s.sion without rhyme, therefore rhyme was not capable of describing it. But time has now convinced most men of that error."

(_Ibid._ pp. 148, 149.)

Dryden was of course quite right in objecting to the claim that imaginative poetry ought to seek the form closest to the language of real life. The real question is whether rimed verse is a more imaginative and highly poetic form than blank verse; modern opinion would unanimously answer in the negative.