The Art of English Poetry (1708) Part 1

The Art of English Poetry (1708).

by Edward Bysshe.

INTRODUCTION

The _Art of English Poetry_ (1702) may be roughly described as an English version of the _Gradus ad Parna.s.sum_. At least that is the tradition to which it belongs. Its immediate predecessor was the pleasant _English Parna.s.sus: Or, a Helpe to English Poesie_ (1657) compiled by a Middles.e.x schoolmaster named Joshua Poole, and this work was avowedly modeled on Ravisius Textor's _Epitheta_ and the _Thesaurus Poeticus_ of Joannes Buchler. But whereas the _English Parna.s.sus_ was designed for the schoolroom, the _Art of English Poetry_ was designed for the world of polite letters, and so may be called the first example in English of the handbook for the serious poet.

In its original form the work was an octavo of nearly four hundred pages divided into three parts: "Rules For making English Verse," a rhyming dictionary, and a poetical commonplace book containing all the "Most Natural, Agreeable, and n.o.ble _Thoughts_" of the English poets digested alphabetically by their subject. Only the first part is reproduced here, but it seems desirable to say something about the book as a whole.[1]

It is one of those works which is scorned by all, and used by all who scorn it. In the sixty years after its publication it went through nine editions, and though Charles Gildon thought it "a book too scandalously mean to name," he was constrained to admit that it had "spread, by many editions, thro' all _England_" and had "carried off so many Impressions, as have made it with the ignorant, the _Standard_ of Writing."[2] Not only with the ignorant. Pope knew and used the work, and likewise Richardson, Fielding, Isaac Watts, Johnson, Goldsmith, Walpole, Blake, Sir Walter Scott, Bulwer-Lytton, and many others. Indeed, it would be safe to say that there was hardly a literary man in the eighteenth century who was not familiar with it. If he used a rhyming dictionary, he used that in Bysshe, at least until 1775, when it was superseded by John Walker's _Dictionary of the English Language_. And if he used a poetical commonplace book, he used either Bysshe or one of the five other works which were produced in imitation of Bysshe. "Quoi qu'ils en disent," said the Abbe du Bos of a similar work in French, "ils ont tous ce livre dans leur arriere cabinet."

The _Art of English Poetry_ is dominated in every part by the concept of the heroic poem. The rhyming dictionary, which was enlarged and improved from that in Poole, contains only those words which "both for their Sense and Sound are judg'd most proper for the Rhymes of Heroick Poetry;"[3] and the quotations in the commonplace book are drawn chiefly from the heroic poem and the heroic drama. In the last revised edition (1718) the most frequently quoted authors were Lee (104 pa.s.sages), Rowe (116), Milton (117), Shakespeare (118), Blackmore (125), Otway (127), Butler (140), Cowley (143), Pope (155), and Dryden (1,201). Dryden, therefore, was the great exemplar of the heroic poet, and his _Aeneid_, which was cited 493 times, was the great exemplar of the heroic poem.

Its meter, the heroic couplet, was for Bysshe the only serious poetic instrument, all longer lines being used merely to vary and decorate it and the shorter ones being fit only for masks and operas and Pindaric odes. As for stanzas, the rhyme royal was not "follow'd" anymore, Spenser's choice was "unlucky," and in general, as Cowley had said, "no kind of Staff is proper for a Heroic Poem; as being all too lirical...."[4]

The "Rules For making English Verse," which is the most important part of Bysshe's work, is the first attempt to treat English prosody in a systematic and comprehensive way. As the t.i.tle indicates, it is prescriptive in tone, and it is strictly syllabic in what it prescribes. The English verse line, according to Bysshe, consists of a specified number of syllables, usually ten, but permissably from four to twelve with double rhyme adding an uncounted syllable. A verse with an extra or a missing syllable (as compared with the pattern established by the rest of the poem) is either a faulty verse or, more properly, just a verse of a different kind. There are no feet in English poetry.

Nevertheless, accent, which Bysshe apparently considered a variation in pitch rather than in duration or loudness, is recognized, and its role is clearly prescribed. It falls on the even syllables in verses whose total number is even and on the odd syllables in verses whose odd number is not due to double rhyme. This, of course, means duple time only, and Bysshe recognizes no other. When he quotes Congreve's verse, "Apart let me view then each Heavenly fair," he feels that the measure is somehow disagreeable, but he does not notice that the accents fall other than he had prescribed, and he apparently thinks that the line is distinguished from heroic verse only in having eleven syllables instead of ten. This is highly important because it shows that although the nomina basis of his prosody is both accentual and syllabic, the latter element is really its defining principle.

In a syllabic prosody it is clearly necessary to determine the number of syllables in a word whenever that is doubtful and also, if convenient, to provide ways of regulating that number by syncope and elision. A large part of Bysshe's treatise, therefore, is concerned with this task, and in order to understand this part it is necessary to realize that the shortened forms which he recommends (_am'rous_, _ta'en_, and the like) were not originally "poetic" in character. By his day some very few had become slightly archaic and hence were usually restricted to poetry; others existed side by side, in both prose and poetic speech, with the longer forms which at last superseded them; but the great majority represent the regular colloquial idiom of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Bysshe wanted them used in poetry because he wanted the language of poetry to conform to that of cultivated conversation and prose and because he did not want the heroic line weakened by allowing for syllables that were not there, or were there only to the eye.

Bysshe says that he extracted his rules from the practice of the best poets, but this is not true. He extracted them almost entirely from the _Quatre Traitez de Poesies, Latine, Francoise, Italienne, et Espagnole_ (1663) by Claude Lancelot, one of the Port Royal educators. From the Italian, Spanish, and possibly the Latin sections of this work Bysshe took his rules on the position of the caesura and a few other hints; but from the French section, the "Breve Instruction sur les Regles de la Poesie Francoise," he took almost his entire prosodical system. Indeed, his "Rules" are simply a translation and adaptation of the "Breve Instruction" with English examples replacing the French. The opening sentence, for example, which contains the very heart of his doctrine, reads: "The Structure of our Verses, whether Blank, or in Rhyme, consists in a certain Number of Syllables; not in Feet compos'd of long and short Syllables, as the Verses of the _Greeks_ and _Romans_." And the source: "La structure ne consiste qu'en vn certain nombre de syllabes, & non pas en pieds composez de syllabes longues & breves, comme les vers des Grecs & des Romains."[5]

Needless to say, this description is accurate when applied to French verse, but it is not accurate when applied to English. The rhythm of English verse consists in the regular recurrence of a unit whose exact nature is variously conceived but which is easily identified by the accent which signalizes it. In French, however, stress in connected speech is too weak and uncertain to be made the basis of a satisfactory rhythm and is replaced in this function by the verse unit itself. These units are made equal by their having an equal number of syllables, and their recurrence is signalized by the final pause, by rhyme, and by the accentuation of the rhymed syllable. In each language there are, of course, other subsidiary rhythms, but the basic rhythm is founded upon the verse unit in French and upon a unit within the verse in English.

Clearly, a prosody which applied to one system could not apply to the other, and to suppose that it did was Bysshe's sole but disastrous mistake. He was not the first to make it. What prosody there had been before him had hesitated uncertainly among three systems, the quant.i.tative, the accentual, and the syllabic, but Bysshe, by formulating for the first time a complete and explicit _prosodia_, confirmed it in the one it was already favoring, the syllabic system of the French. Through him the mistake became irreparable for over a hundred years, and thus his "Rules" have an importance which is far beyond their merit. Critically, they are nothing; but historically, they dominated the popular prosodic thought of the eighteenth century.

Their supremacy was finally ended in 1816 by the preface to _Christabel_. There Coleridge wrote that the meter of the poem was not, properly speaking, irregular, though it might seem so from its being founded on "a new principle: namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables."[6] Scholars have wondered what was "new"

about this, and the answer is that it was not new in English poetry, but in English prosodical criticism it was new, for it was a departure from Bysshe.

A. Dwight Culler Yale University

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

The nine editions of the _Art of English Poetry_ were as follows: 1702, 1705, 1708, 1710, 1714, 1718, 1724, 1737, and 1762. Four of these--1705, 1708, 1710, and 1718--represent a revision of the preceding edition, that of 1718 only in the matter of adding new pa.s.sages to the commonplace book. The last revised text of the "Rules," therefore, is that of the fourth edition (1710), but since this differs from the third only by the omission of one pa.s.sage, which is of some interest, it seemed best to reproduce the text of the third edition (1708). The omitted pa.s.sage is the last five lines, beginning "and therefore ...,"

of the second paragraph on page 22.

_The PREFACE._

So many are the Qualifications, as well natural as acquir'd, that are essentially requisite to the making of a good Poet, that 'tis in vain for any Man to aim at a great Reputation on account of his Poetical Performances, by barely following the Rules of others, and reducing their Speculations into Practice. It may not be impossible indeed for Men, even of indifferent Parts, by making Examples to the Rules hereafter given, to compose Verses smooth, and well-sounding to the Ear; yet if such Verses want strong Sense, Propriety and Elevation of Thought, or Purity of Diction, they will be at best but what _Horace_ calls them, _Versus inopes rerum, nugaeque canorae_, and the Writers of them not Poets, but versifying Scriblers. I pretend not therefore by the following Sheets to teach a Man to be a Poet in spight of Fate and Nature, but only to be of Help to the few who are born to be so, and whom _audit vocatus Apollo_.

To this End I give in the first Place _Rules for making_ English _Verse_: And these Rules I have, according to the best of my Judgment, endeavour'd to extract from the Practice, and to frame after the Examples of the Poets that are most celebrated for a fluent and numerous Turn of Verse.

Another Part of this Treatise, is a _Dictionary of Rhymes_: To which having prefix'd a large Preface shewing the Method and Usefulness of it, I shall trouble the Reader in this place no farther than to acquaint him, that if it be as useful and acceptable to the Publick, as the composing it was tedious and painful to me, I shall never repent me of the Labour.

What I shall chiefly speak of here, is the largest Part of this Treatise, which I call a _Collection of the most natural and sublime Thoughts that are in the best_ English _Poets_. And to be ingenuous in the Discovery, this was the Part of it that princ.i.p.ally induc'd me to undertake the Whole: The Task was indeed laborious, but pleasing; and the sole Praise I expected from it, was, that I made a judicious Choice and proper Disposition of the Pa.s.sages I extracted. A Mixture of so many different Subjects, and such a Variety of Thoughts upon them, may possibly not satisfy the Reader so well, as a Composition perfect in its Kind on one intire Subject; but certainly it will divert and amuse him better; for here is no Thread of Story, nor Connexion of one Part with another, to keep his Mind intent, and constrain him to any Length of Reading. I detain him therefore only to acquaint him, why it is made a Part of this Book, and how Serviceable it may be to the main Design of it.

Having drawn up Rules for making Verses, and a Dictionary of Rhymes, which are the Mechanick Tools of a Poet; I came in the next Place to consider, what other human Aid could be offer'd him; a Genius and Judgment not being mine to give. Now I imagin'd that a Man might have both these, and yet sometimes, for the sake of a Syllable or two more or less, to give a Verse its true Measure, be at a stand for Epithets and Synonymes, with which I have seen Books of this Nature in several Languages plentifully furnish'd.

Now, tho' I have differ'd from them in Method, yet I am of Opinion this Collection may serve to the same End, with equal Profit and greater Pleasure to the Reader. For, what are Epithets, but Adjectives that denote and express the Qualities of the Substantives to which they are join'd? as _Purple_, _Rosie_, _Smiling_, _Dewy_, Morning: _Dim_, _Gloomy_, _Silent_, Night. What Synonymes, but Words of a like Signification? as _Fear_, _Dread_, _Terrour_, _Consternation_, _Affright_, _Dismay_, &c. Are they not then naturally to be sought for in the Descriptions of Persons and Things? And can we not better judge by a Piece of Painting, how Beautifully Colours may be dispos'd; than by seeing the same several Colours scatter'd without Design on a Table?

When you are at a Loss therefore for proper Epithets or Synonymes, look in this Alphabetical Collection for any Word under which the Subject of your Thought may most probably be rang'd; and you will find what have been imploy'd by our best Writers, and in what Manner.

It would have been as easie a Task for me as it has been to others before me, to have threaded tedious Bead-rolls of Synonymes and Epithets together, and put them by themselves: But when they stand alone, they appear bald, insipid, uncouth, and offensive both to the Eye and Ear. In that Disposition they may indeed help the Memory, but cannot direct the Judgment in the Choice.

But besides, to confess a Secret, I am very unwilling it should be laid to my Charge, that I have furnish'd Tools, and given a Temptation of Versifying, to such as in spight of Art and Nature undertake to be Poets; and who mistake their Fondness to Rhyme, or Necessity of Writing, for a true Genius of Poetry, and lawful Call from _Apollo_. Such Debasers of Rhyme and Dablers in Poetry would do well to consider, that a Man would justly deserve a higher Esteem in the World by being a good Mason or Shoo-maker, or by excelling in any other Art that his Talent inclines him to, and that is useful to Mankind, than by being an indifferent or second-Rate Poet. Such have no Claim to that Divine Appellation:

_Neque enim concludere Versum Dixeris esse satis: Neque, si quis scribat, uti nos, Sermoni propiora, putes hunc esse Poetam.

Ingenium cui sit, cui Mens divinior, atque Os Magna sonaturum, des Nominis hujus Honorem._ Horat.

I resolv'd therefore to place these, the princ.i.p.al Materials, under the awful Guard of the immortal _Shakespear_, _Milton_, _Dryden_, &c.

_Procul o procul este Profani!_ Virg.

But let Men of better Minds be excited to a generous Emulation.

I have inserted not only Similes, Allusions, Characters, and Descriptions; but also the most Natural and Sublime Thoughts of our Modern Poets on all Subjects whatever. I say, of our Modern; for tho'

some of the Antient, as _Chaucer_, _Spencer_, and others, have not been excell'd, perhaps not equall'd, by any that have succeeded them, either in Justness of Description, or in Propriety and Greatness of Thought; yet their Language is now become so antiquated and obsolete, that most Readers of our Age have no Ear for them: And this is the Reason that the good _Shakespear_ himself is not so frequently cited in this Collection, as he would otherwise deserve to be.

I have endeavour'd to give the Pa.s.sages as naked and stript of Superfluities and foreign Matter, as possibly I could: but often found my self oblig'd for the sake of the Connexion of the Sense, which else would have been interrupted, and consequently obscure, to insert some of them under Heads, to which every Part or Line of them may be thought not properly to belong: Nay, I sometimes even found it difficult to chuse under what Head to place several of the best Thoughts; but the Reader may be a.s.sur'd, that if he find them not where he expects, he will not wholly lose his Labour; for

_The Search it self rewards his Pains; And if like Chymists his great End he miss, Yet things well worth his Toil he gains; And does his Charge and Labour pay With good unsought Experiments by the way._ Cowley.

That the Reader may judge of every Pa.s.sage with due Deference for each Author, he will find their Names at the End of the last Line; and as the late Versions of the Greek and Roman Poets have not a little contributed to this Collection, _Homer_, _Anacreon_, _Lucretius_, _Catullus_, _Virgil_, _Horace_, _Ovid_, _Juvenal_, &c. are cited with their Translators: And after each Author's Name are quoted their Plays and other Poems, from whence the Pa.s.sages are extracted.

The Reader will likewise observe, that I have sometimes ascrib'd to several Authors the Quotations taken from one and the same Play. Thus to those from the first and third Act of _Oedipus_, I have put _Dryden_; to those from the three other, _Lee_: Because the first and third Act of that Play were written by _Dryden_, the three other by _Lee_. To those from _Troilus_ and _Cressida_ I have sometimes put _Shakespear_, sometimes _Dryden_; because he having alter'd that Play, whatever I found not in the Edition of _Shakespear_, ought to be ascrib'd to him.

And in like manner of several other Plays.

As no Thought can be justly said to be fine, unless it be true, I have all along had a great regard for Truth; except only in Pa.s.sages that are purely Satirical, where some Allowance must be given: For Satire may be fine and true Satire, tho' it be not directly and according to the Letter, true: 'tis enough that it carry with it a Probability or Semblance of Truth. Let it not here be objected, that I have from the Translators of the Greek and Roman Poets, taken some Descriptions meerly fabulous: for the well-invented Fables of the Antients were design'd only to inculcate the Truth with more Delight, and to make it shine with greater Splendour.

_Rien n'est beau que le Vrai. Le Vrai seul est Aimable: Il doit regner par tout; & meme dans la Fable: De toute Fiction l'adroite Faussete Ne tend qu' a faire aux yeux briller la Verite._ Boileau.

I have upon every Subject given both _Pro_ and _Con_ whenever I met with them, or that I judg'd them worth giving: and if both are not always found, let none imagine that I wilfully suppress'd either; or that what is here uncontradicted must be unanswerable.

If any take Offence at the Loosness of some of the Thoughts, as particularly upon _Love_, where I have given the different Sentiments which Mankind, according to their several Temperaments, ever had, and ever will have of it; such may observe, that I have strictly avoided all manner of Obscenity throughout the whole Collection: And tho' here and there a Thought may perhaps have a Cast of Wantonness, yet the cleanly Metaphors palliate the Broadness of the Meaning, and the Chastness of the Words qualifies the Lasciviousness of the Images they represent. And let them farther know, that I have not always chosen what I most approv'd, but what carries with it the best Stroaks for Imitation: For, upon the whole matter, it was not my Business to judge any farther, than of the Vigour and Force of Thought, of the Purity of Language, of the Aptness and Propriety of Expression; and above all, of the Beauty of Colouring, in which the Poet's Art chiefly consists. Nor, in short, would I take upon me to determine what things should have been said; but have shewn only what are said, and in what manner.

RULES For making ENGLISH VERSE.