English Verse Part 46

[41] The easy abuse of these irregular measures is amusingly parodied by Mr. Owen Seaman, in a burlesque of an ode of Mr. Le Gallienne's:

"Is this the Seine? And am I altogether wrong About the brain, Dreaming I hear the British tongue? Dear Heaven! what a rhyme! And yet 'tis all as good As some that I have fashioned in my time, Like _bud_ and _wood_; And on the other hand you couldn't have a more precise or neater Metre."

(_The Battle of the Bays_, p. 37.)

VI. IMITATIONS OF CLa.s.sICAL 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 quant.i.ty in English prosody, as the element of quant.i.ty obscures that of accent in cla.s.sical prosody), there have been repeated attempts to introduce the more familiar cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical verse in English may conveniently be divided into two cla.s.ses: 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 cla.s.sical measures might also be divided into two groups according to another distinction: those attempting to observe the quant.i.tative prosody of the original language, and those in which the original measure is trans.m.u.ted into frankly accentual verse.

The original impulse toward this cla.s.sical or pseudo-cla.s.sical verse was a product of the Renaissance, when all forms of art not based on Greek and Latin models were suspected. Rime, not being found in the poetry of the cla.s.sical languages, was treated as a product of the dark ages,--the invention of "Goths and Huns." See Roger Ascham's _Schoolmaster_ (1570) for the most characteristic representative of this phase of thought in England. The new forms of verse were, naturally enough, first tried in Italy. Schipper traces the beginning of the movement to Alberti (1404-1484). A century later Trissino wrote his _Sophonisbe_ and _Italia Liberata_ in unrimed verse, in professed imitation of Homer, and was looked upon as the inventor of _versi sciolti_, that is, verses "freed"

from rime (compare the remarks of Milton in the prefatory note to _Paradise Lost_). In 1539 Claudio Tolomei wrote _Versi e Regole della Poesia Nuova_, a systematic attempt to introduce the cla.s.sical versification. He also wrote hexameters and sapphics. In France there were similar efforts in the sixteenth century. Mousset translated Homer into hexameters in 1530, and A. de Baf, a member of the "Pleiade" (1532-1589), devised some French hexameters which he called _vers bafins_. The English experiments were worked out independently, and yet under the same neo-cla.s.sical influences. On this subject, see Schipper, vol. ii. pp. 2-12, 439-464.

A.--LYRICAL MEASURES

Reason, tell me thy mind, if here be reason In this strange violence, to make resistance Where sweet graces erect the stately banner Of Virtue's regiment, shining in harness Of Fortune's diadems, by Beauty mustered: Say, then, Reason, I say, what is thy counsel?

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Phaleuciakes_, from the _Arcadia_, ab. 1580.)

This is the measure commonly called "Phalaecian." Compare Tennyson's imitation of it, in his Hendecasyllabics quoted below.

O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness!

O how much I do like your solitariness!

Where man's mind hath a freed consideration Of goodness to receive lovely direction.

Where senses do behold the order of heavenly host, And wise thoughts do behold what the Creator is.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Asclepiadics_, from the _Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)

This is the measure now called "Lesser Asclepiadean."

My Muse, what ails this ardor To blaze my only secrets?

Alas, it is no glory To sing my own decay'd state.

Alas, it is no comfort To speak without an answer; Alas, it is no wisdom To show the wound without cure.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _Anacreontics_, from the _Arcadia_. ab. 1580.)

Sidney was a member of the little group of cla.s.sical students who called themselves the "Areopagus," and who were interested in introducing cla.s.sical 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":--

"See yee the blindfoulded pretie G.o.d, that feathered archer, Of lovers miseries which maketh his bloodie game?

Wote ye why his moother with a veale hath coovered his face?

Trust me, least he my loove happely chaunce to beholde."

It would seem that Spenser was attempting, more conscientiously than Sidney did, to follow the cla.s.sical rules of quant.i.ty in making his verses; hence they are more difficult to read according to English rhythm. Sidney's experiments in the cla.s.sical 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.

See especially Spenser's letter of April, 1580, and Harvey's reply (_op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 35, 99), for notable pa.s.sages indicating the seriousness with which the members of the "Areopagus" were trying to orm English verse so as to bring it under the rules of cla.s.sical prosody. The relations of quant.i.ty and accent were not understood, as indeed they may be said still not to be understood for the English language. Spenser suggests, in a frequently quoted pa.s.sage, that in the word _carpenter_ the middle syllable is "short in speech, when it shall be read long in verse,"--that is, because the vowel is followed by two consonants; hence it "seemeth like a lame gosling that draweth one legge after her.... But it is to be wonne with custome, and rough words must be subdued with use."

Harvey resented the idea that the common p.r.o.nunciation of words could be departed from in order to conform them to arbitrary metrical rules, and in his reply said: "You shall never have my subscription or consent ... to make your Carpenter our Carpenter, an inche longer or bigger, than G.o.d and his Englishe people have made him.... Else never heard I any that durst presume so much over the Englishe ... as to alter the quant.i.tie of any one sillable, otherwise than oure common speache and generall receyved custome woulde beare them oute." But while all English verse must be consistent with "the vulgare and naturall mother prosodye,"

Harvey does not despair of finding a system that shall be at the same time "countervaileable to the best tongues" in making possible quant.i.tative verse. The whole pa.s.sage is well worth reading. The best account of the movement toward cla.s.sical versification in the days of the "Areopagus" will be found in Professor Sch.e.l.ling's _Poetic and Verse Criticism in the Reign of Elizabeth_ (Publications of the University of Pennsylvania).

O ye Nymphes most fine who resort to this brooke, For to bathe there your pretty b.r.e.a.s.t.s at all times: Leave the watrish bowres, hyther and to me come at my request nowe.

And ye Virgins trymme who resort to Parna.s.s, Whence the learned well Helicon beginneth: Helpe to blase her worthy deserts, that all els mounteth above farre.

(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 quant.i.tative 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.)

Greatest in thy wars, Greater in thy peace, Dread Elizabeth; Our muse only truth, Figments cannot use, Thy ritch name to deck That itselfe adorns: But should now this age Let all poesye fayne, Fayning poesy could Nothing faine at all Worthy halfe thy fame.

(THOMAS CAMPION: Iambic Dimeter, "an example Lyrical," in _Observations in the Art of English Poesie_. 1602.)

Rose-cheekt Lawra come Sing thou smoothly with thy beawtie's Silent musick, either other Sweetely gracing.

Lovely formes do flowe From concent devinely framed, Heav'n is musick, and thy beawtie's Birth is heavenly.

(THOMAS CAMPION: Trochaic Dimeter, _ib._)

The full t.i.tle 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 cla.s.sical versifiers, condemned rime as a barbarity; but in imitating the cla.s.sical 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:

"Goe numbers boldly pa.s.se, stay not for ayde Of shifting rime, that easie flatterer, Whose witchcraft can the ruder eares beguile".

Professor Sch.e.l.ling 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 cla.s.sical measures. Goldsmith, in one of his essays (xviii, on Versification), maintained the possibility of reducing English words to the cla.s.sical 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.

Needy knife-grinder! whither are you going?

Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order-- Bleak blows the blast;--your hat has got a hole in't, So have your breeches!

Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike- road, what hard work 'tis crying all day, "Knives and Scissors to grind O!"

(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:

"Cold was the night wind, drifting fast the snow fell, Wide were the downs and shelterless and naked, When a poor wanderer struggled on her journey, Weary and way-sore."

"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."