English Verse Part 31

It strikes a modern reader as curious that Dryden and his contemporaries should have advocated the use of rime in tragedy rather than in comedy; but we have the clew to their feeling in the saying that "_serious plays_ ought not to imitate conversation too nearly." In the Restoration period the comedy was thought of as a realistic representation of life; hence its characters should speak in natural prose, as they have continued to do, for the most part, ever since. The tragedy or heroic play, on the other hand, was in the region of artistic convention, much farther removed from reality; hence its language was to be "raised above the life." This distinction between the range of comedy and that of tragedy, which would have seemed strange to the Elizabethans, explains the widely diverging lines which we find the two forms of the drama following from the time of the Restoration.

On the verse of Dryden's rimed plays, see Schipper, vol. ii. p.

214, and O. Speerschneider's _Metrische Untersuchungen uber den heroischen Vers in John Drydens Dramen_ (Halle, 1897).

But O, my muse, what numbers wilt thou find To sing the furious troops in battle join'd!

Methinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound, The victor's shouts and dying groans confound, The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies, And all the thunder of the battle rise.

'Twas then great Marlbro's mighty soul was prov'd, That, in the shock of charging hosts unmov'd, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examin'd all the dreadful scenes of war....

So, when an angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past, Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

(ADDISON: _The Campaign_. 1704.)

But most by numbers judge a poet's song, And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong: In the bright Muse, tho' thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; Who haunt Parna.s.sus but to please their ear, Not mend their minds; as some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

These equal syllables alone require, Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire; While expletives their feeble aid do join; And ten low words oft creep in one dull line; While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, With sure return of still expected rhymes; Where'er you find 'the cooling western breeze,'

In the next line, it 'whispers through the trees'; If crystal streams 'with pleasing murmurs creep,'

The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with 'sleep': Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; And praise the easy vigor of a line Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join.

(POPE: _Essay on Criticism_, ll. 337-361. 1711.)

Why boast we, Glaucus, our extended reign Where Xanthus' streams enrich the Lycian plain, Our numerous herds that range the fruitful field, And hills where vines their purple harvest yield, Our foaming bowls with purer nectar crowned, Our feasts enhanced with music's sprightly sound?

Why on those sh.o.r.es are we with joy surveyed, Admired as heroes, and as G.o.ds obeyed; Unless great acts superior merit prove, And vindicate the bounteous powers above?

'Tis ours, the dignity they give to grace; The first in valor, as the first in place: That when with wondering eyes our martial bands Behold our deeds transcending our commands, Such, they may cry, deserve the sovereign state, Whom those that envy dare not imitate!

Could all our care elude the gloomy grave, Which claims no less the fearful than the brave, For l.u.s.t of fame I should not vainly dare In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war.

But since, alas! ign.o.ble age must come, Disease, and death's inexorable doom; The life which others pay let us bestow, And give to fame what we to nature owe; Brave though we fall, and honored if we live, Or let us glory gain, or glory give!

(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 cla.s.sical 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.)

"What he learned from Dryden," Mr. Courthope says in another place, "was the art of expressing the social and conversational idiom of the language in a metrical form. His conception of metrical harmony was, however, altogether different from his professed master's, and rather resembled that of Sandys, whose translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ he told Spence he had read when very young, and with the greatest delight. He explains the system in a letter to Cromwell, dated November 25, 1710.

"'(1) As to the hiatus, it is certainly to be avoided as often as possible; but on the other hand, since the reason of it is only for the sake of the numbers, so if, to avoid it, we incur another fault against their smoothness, methinks the very end of that nicety is destroyed....

"'(2) I would except against the use of all expletives in verse, as _do_ before verbs plural, or even the frequent use of _did_ or _does_ to change the termination of the rhyme....

"'(3) Monosyllable lines, unless very artfully managed, are stiff, languishing, and hard.

"'(4) The repeating the same rhymes within four or six lines of each other, which tire the ear with too much of the like sound.

"'(5) The too frequent use of alexandrines, which are never graceful, but where there is some majesty added to the verse by them, or when there cannot be found a word in them but what is absolutely needful.

"'(6) Every nice ear must, I believe, have observed that in any smooth English verse of ten syllables, there is naturally a pause either at the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllables.... Now I fancy that, to preserve an exact harmony and variety, none of these pauses should be continued above three lines together, without the interposition of another; else it will be apt to weary the ear with one continued tone.'"

(_Ibid._ pp. 20, 21.)

Here are implied all the characteristics of the Popean couplet. The cesura is to vary, but not from a fundamentally medial position.

The avoidance of _enjambement_ is not mentioned, doubtless because it is a.s.sumed as an essential of couplets professing any degree of correctness.

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:

My childhood fled your couplet's clarion tone, And sought for Homer in the prose of Bohn.

Still through the dust of that dim prose appears The flight of arrows and the sheen of spears; Still we may trace what hearts heroic feel, And hear the bronze that hurtles on the steel!

But ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence, Where wits, not heroes, prove their skill in fence, And great Achilles' eloquence doth show As if no centaur trained him, but Boileau!

Again, your verse is orderly,--and more,-- "The waves behind impel the waves before"; Monotonously musical they glide, Till couplet unto couplet hath replied.

But turn to Homer! How his verses sweep!

Surge answers surge and deep doth call on deep; This line in foam and thunder issues forth, Spurred by the West or smitten by the North, Sombre in all its sullen deeps, and all Clear at the crest, and foaming to the fall; The next with silver murmur dies away, Like tides that falter to Calypso's Bay!

(ANDREW LANG: _Letters to Dead Authors; Pope_.)

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

Dobson:

Suppose you say your Worst of Pope, declare His Jewels Paste, his Nature a Parterre, His Art but Artifice--I ask once more Where have you seen such Artifice before?

Where have you seen a Parterre better grac'd, Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste?

Where can you show, among your Names of Note, So much to copy and so much to quote?

And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse, A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse?

So I, that love the old Augustan Days Of formal Courtesies and formal Phrase; That like along the finish'd line to feel The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel; That like my Couplet as compact as clear; That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe, Unmix'd with Bathos and unmarr'd by Trope, I fling my Cap for Polish--and for POPE![23]

(AUSTIN DOBSON: _Dialogue to the Memory of Mr. Alexander Pope_.)

Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close Up yonder hill the village murmur rose; There, as I pa.s.sed with careless steps and slow, The mingling notes came softened from below; The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, The sober herd that lowed to meet their young; The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school; The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind; These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And filled each pause the nightingale had made.

But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the gra.s.s-grown footway tread, For all the bloomy flush of life is fled.

(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 cla.s.sical 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._)

In front of these came Addison. In him Humor, in holiday and sightly trim, Sublimity and Attic taste combined To polish, furnish, and delight the mind.

Then Pope, as harmony itself exact, In verse well-disciplined, complete, compact, Gave virtue and morality a grace That, quite eclipsing pleasure's painted face, Levied a tax of wonder and applause, Even on the fools that trampled on their laws.

But he (his musical finesse was such, So nice his ear, so delicate his touch) Made poetry a mere mechanic art, And every warbler has his tune by heart.

Nature imparting her satiric gift, Her serious mirth, to Arbuthnot and Swift, With droll sobriety they raised a smile At folly's cost, themselves unmoved the while.

That constellation set, the world in vain Must hope to look upon their like again.

(COWPER: _Table Talk_. 1782.)

Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew, For notice eager, pa.s.s in long review: Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace, And rhyme and blank maintain an equal race; Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode; And tales of terror jostle on the road; Immeasurable measures move along; For simpering folly loves a varied song, To strange mysterious dulness still the friend, Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.

Thus Lays of Minstrels--may they be the last!-- On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast; While mountain spirits prate to river sprites, That dames may listen to the sound at nights; And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood, Decoy young border-n.o.bles through the wood, And skip at every step, Lord knows how high, And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why.

(BYRON: _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. 1809.)

View now the winter storm! above, one cloud, Black and unbroken, all the skies o'ershroud: The unwieldy porpoise through the day before Had rolled in view of boding men on sh.o.r.e; And sometimes hid and sometimes showed his form, Dark as the cloud and furious as the storm.

All where the eye delights yet dreads to roam, The breaking billows cast the flying foam Upon the billows rising--all the deep Is restless change; the waves so swelled and steep, Breaking and sinking, and the sunken swells, Nor one, one moment, in its station dwells....

Darkness begins to reign; the louder wind Appals the weak and awes the firmer mind; But frights not him whom evening and the spray In part conceal--yon prowler on his way.

Lo, he has something seen; he runs apace, As if he feared companion in the chase; He sees his prize, and now he turns again, Slowly and sorrowing--"Was your search in vain?"

Gruffly he answers, "'Tis a sorry sight!

A seaman's body: there'll be more to-night!"

(CRABBE: _The Borough_, letter i. 1810.)