II. FIVE-STRESS VERSE

FOOTNOTES:[16]For Sievers's analysis of Anglo-Saxon verse into these types, see his articles in Paul and Braune'sBeiträge, vols. x. and xii.; and the brief statement in the Appendix to Bright'sAnglo-Saxon Reader, from which the examples just quoted are taken.[17]The term "tumbling verse," used for obvious reasons, appears at least as early as 1585, when King James, in hisReulis and Cautelisfor Scotch Poetry, said: "For flyting, or Invectives, use this kynde of verse following, callit Rouncefallis, or Tumbling verse:'In the hinder end of harvest upon Alhallow ene,Quhen our gude nichtbors rydis (nou gif I reid richt)Some bucklit on a benwod, and some on a bene,Ay trott and into troupes fra the twylicht.'"And again: "Ye man observe that thir Tumbling verse flowis not on that fassoun, as utheris dois. For all utheris keipis the reule quhilk I gave before, To wit, the first fute short the secound lang, and sa furth. Quhair as thir hes twa short, and ane lang throuch all the lyne, quhen they keip ordour: albeit the maist part of thame be out of ordour, and keipis na kynde nor reule of Flowing, and for that cause are callit Tumbling verse."(Arber Reprint, pp. 68, 63, 64.)See further on the persistent use of this rough measure in English, side by side with the more regular syllable-counting verse, Schipper's observations and examples in theGrundriss der Englische Metrik, pp. 109 ff. As a modern example Schipper cites one of Thackeray's ballads:"This Mary was pore and in misery once,And she came to Mrs. Roney it's more than twelve monce.She adn't got no bed, nor no dinner nor no tea,And kind Mrs. Roney gave Mary all three."[18]This poem of Robert Manning's was a translation of a Norman French work, Waddington'sManuel des Pechiez. The following is the original of the passage here reproduced:"Si vus unques par folyeEntremeissez de nigremancie,Ou feites al deable sacrifise,Ou enchantement par fol aprise;Ou, a gent de tiel mesterRen donastes pur lur jugler,Ou pur demander la veriteDe chose qe vous fut a dire,—Fet avez apertementEncuntre ceo commandement;Ceo est grant mescreaunceie,Duter de ceo, ne devez mie."(Furnivall ed. of Manning, p. 12. ll. 1078-1089.)

[16]For Sievers's analysis of Anglo-Saxon verse into these types, see his articles in Paul and Braune'sBeiträge, vols. x. and xii.; and the brief statement in the Appendix to Bright'sAnglo-Saxon Reader, from which the examples just quoted are taken.

[17]The term "tumbling verse," used for obvious reasons, appears at least as early as 1585, when King James, in hisReulis and Cautelisfor Scotch Poetry, said: "For flyting, or Invectives, use this kynde of verse following, callit Rouncefallis, or Tumbling verse:'In the hinder end of harvest upon Alhallow ene,Quhen our gude nichtbors rydis (nou gif I reid richt)Some bucklit on a benwod, and some on a bene,Ay trott and into troupes fra the twylicht.'"And again: "Ye man observe that thir Tumbling verse flowis not on that fassoun, as utheris dois. For all utheris keipis the reule quhilk I gave before, To wit, the first fute short the secound lang, and sa furth. Quhair as thir hes twa short, and ane lang throuch all the lyne, quhen they keip ordour: albeit the maist part of thame be out of ordour, and keipis na kynde nor reule of Flowing, and for that cause are callit Tumbling verse."(Arber Reprint, pp. 68, 63, 64.)See further on the persistent use of this rough measure in English, side by side with the more regular syllable-counting verse, Schipper's observations and examples in theGrundriss der Englische Metrik, pp. 109 ff. As a modern example Schipper cites one of Thackeray's ballads:"This Mary was pore and in misery once,And she came to Mrs. Roney it's more than twelve monce.She adn't got no bed, nor no dinner nor no tea,And kind Mrs. Roney gave Mary all three."

'In the hinder end of harvest upon Alhallow ene,Quhen our gude nichtbors rydis (nou gif I reid richt)Some bucklit on a benwod, and some on a bene,Ay trott and into troupes fra the twylicht.'"

And again: "Ye man observe that thir Tumbling verse flowis not on that fassoun, as utheris dois. For all utheris keipis the reule quhilk I gave before, To wit, the first fute short the secound lang, and sa furth. Quhair as thir hes twa short, and ane lang throuch all the lyne, quhen they keip ordour: albeit the maist part of thame be out of ordour, and keipis na kynde nor reule of Flowing, and for that cause are callit Tumbling verse."

(Arber Reprint, pp. 68, 63, 64.)

See further on the persistent use of this rough measure in English, side by side with the more regular syllable-counting verse, Schipper's observations and examples in theGrundriss der Englische Metrik, pp. 109 ff. As a modern example Schipper cites one of Thackeray's ballads:

"This Mary was pore and in misery once,And she came to Mrs. Roney it's more than twelve monce.She adn't got no bed, nor no dinner nor no tea,And kind Mrs. Roney gave Mary all three."

[18]This poem of Robert Manning's was a translation of a Norman French work, Waddington'sManuel des Pechiez. The following is the original of the passage here reproduced:"Si vus unques par folyeEntremeissez de nigremancie,Ou feites al deable sacrifise,Ou enchantement par fol aprise;Ou, a gent de tiel mesterRen donastes pur lur jugler,Ou pur demander la veriteDe chose qe vous fut a dire,—Fet avez apertementEncuntre ceo commandement;Ceo est grant mescreaunceie,Duter de ceo, ne devez mie."(Furnivall ed. of Manning, p. 12. ll. 1078-1089.)

[18]This poem of Robert Manning's was a translation of a Norman French work, Waddington'sManuel des Pechiez. The following is the original of the passage here reproduced:

"Si vus unques par folyeEntremeissez de nigremancie,Ou feites al deable sacrifise,Ou enchantement par fol aprise;Ou, a gent de tiel mesterRen donastes pur lur jugler,Ou pur demander la veriteDe chose qe vous fut a dire,—Fet avez apertementEncuntre ceo commandement;Ceo est grant mescreaunceie,Duter de ceo, ne devez mie."

(Furnivall ed. of Manning, p. 12. ll. 1078-1089.)

The five-stress or decasyllabic verse (iambic pentameter) is so much more widely used in modern English poetry than any other verse-form, that its history is of special interest. It is curious that a form so completely adopted as the favorite of English verse should be borrowed rather than native; but, the syllable-counting principle once being admitted, there is nothing in five-stress verse inconsistent with native English tendencies. A very great part of such verse has really only four full accents, and this we have seen to be the number of accents in the native English verse. On this point, see further remarks in connection with the specimen from Spenser, p.180below.

This verse appears in two great divisions, rimed (the decasyllabic couplet) and unrimed (blank verse). The rimed form was the earlier, the unrimed being merely a modification of it under the influence of other unrimed metres.

Lutel wot hit anymon,hou love hym haveþ ybounde,Þat for us oþe rode ron,ant boht us wiþ is wounde.Þe love of hym us haveþ ymaked sounde,ant ycast þe grimly gost to grounde.Ever & oo, nyht & day, he haveþ us in is þohte,He nul nout leose þat he so deore bohte.

His deope wounde bledeþ fast,of hem we ohte munne!He haþ ous out of helle ycast,ybroht us out of sunne;ffor love of us his wonges waxeþ þunne,His herte blod he ȝaf for al mon kunne.Ever & oo, etc.

(Song from Harleian MS. 2253. InBöddeker'sAltenglische Dichtungen, p. 231.)

This early religious lyric is of interest as containing the first known use of the five-stress couplet in English. Here it is only in a few lines that the couplet occurs, and so sporadic an occurrence should perhaps be regarded as due to nothing more than chance. See Schipper, vol. i. p. 439, and ten Brink'sChaucer's Sprache und Verskunst, p. 173 f. Ten Brink calls attention to another fairly regular five-stress verse, found on p. 253 of Wright'sPolitical Songs:

"For miht is riht, the loud is laweless."[19]

And, as for me, though that my wit be lyte,On bokes for to rede I me delyte,And in myn herte have hem in reverence;And to hem yeve swich lust and swich credence,That ther is wel unethe game noonThat from my bokes make me too goon,But hit be other up-on the haly-day,Or elles in the joly tyme of May;Whan that I here the smale foules singe,And that the floures ginne for to springe,Farwel my studie, as lasting that sesoun!Now have I therto this condiciounThat, of alle the floures in the mede,Than love I most these floures whyte and rede,Swiche as men callen daysies in our toun.To them have I so greet affeccioun.

(Chaucer:Legend of Good Women, Prologue, ll. 29-44. Text A. ab. 1385.)

A good man was ther of religioun,And was a povre Persoun of a toun;But riche he was of holy thoght and werk.He was also a lerned man, a clerk,That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche;His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche.Benigne he was, and wonder diligent,And in adversitee ful pacient;...He wayted after no pompe and reverence,Ne maked him a spyced conscience,But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,He taughte, and first he folwed it himselve.

(Chaucer: Prologue toCanterbury Tales, ll. 477-484, 525-528. ab. 1385.)

With Chaucer we have the first deliberate use of the five-stress couplet, in continuous verse, known to English poetry. His earliest use of the pentameter line was in theCompleynt to Pitee(perhaps written about 1371), in the "rime royal" stanza; his earliest use of the pentameter couplet was in theLegend of Good Women, usually dated 1385. From that time the measure became almost his only instrument, and we find altogether in his poetry some 16,000 lines in the couplet, besides some 14,000 more in rime royal. Too much praise cannot be given Chaucer's use of the couplet. Although it was an experiment in English verse, it has perhaps hardly been used since his time with greater skill. He used a variety of cesuras (see ten Brink's monograph for the enumeration of them), a very large number of feminine endings (such as the still pronounced final-eand similar syllables easily provided), free inversions in the first foot and elsewhere, and many run-on lines (in a typical 100 lines some 16 run-on lines and 7 run-on couplets appearing). The total effect is one of combined freedom and mastery, of fluent conversational style yet within the limits of guarded artistic form. "Much more regularly than the French and Provençals, and yet without pedantic stiffness, he made his verse advance with a sort of iambic gait, and he was therefore able to give up and exchange for a freer arrangement the immovable cesura, which these poets had always made to coincide with a foot-ending." (Ten Brink, inEnglish Literature, Kennedy trans., vol. ii. p. 48.) On Chaucer's verse, see, besides the monograph of ten Brink already cited, Lounsbury'sStudies in Chaucer, vol. iii. pp. 297 ff., and Schipper, vol. i. pp. 442 ff.

The common assumption is, that Chaucer borrowed the pentameter couplet directly from French poetry. On the history of this in France, see Stengel, in Gröber'sGrundriss der Romanischen Philologie.[20]The decasyllabic verse was fairly common in France in the fourteenth century (being called "vers commun" according to Stengel); but inthe form of the couplet it was not. Professor Skeat says: "To say that it [Chaucer's couplet] was derived from the French ten-syllable verse is not a complete solution of the mystery; for nearly all such verse is commonly either in stanzas, or else a great number of successive lines are rimed together; and these, I believe, are rather scarce. After some search I have, however, fortunately lighted upon a very interesting specimen, among the poems of Guillaume de Machault, a French writer whom Chaucer is known to have imitated, and who died in 1377. In the edition of Machault's poems edited by Tarbé, Reims and Paris, 1849, p. 89, there is a poem of exactly this character, of no great length, but fortunately dated; for its title is 'Complainte écrite après la bataille de Poitiers et avant le siège de Reims par les Anglais' (1356-1358). The first four lines run thus:"'A toy, Henry, dous amis, me complain,Pour ce que ne cueur ne mont ne plein;Car a piet suy, sans cheval et sans selle,Et si n'ay mais esmeraude, ne belle.'... Now as Chaucer was taken prisoner in France in 1359, he had an excellent opportunity for making himself acquainted with this poem, and with others, possibly, in a similar metre, which have not come down to us." (The Prioress's Tale, Introduction, pp. xix, xx.) Paris has shown that the real date of the poem in question was 1340; the title quoted by Skeat is Tarbé's modern French caption. Professor Kittredge has called my attention to the fact that there is another poem of Machault's in the same metre (P. Paris's edition ofVoir-Dit, p. 56), and also a poem by Froissart, the "Orloge Amoureus."Ten Brink calls attention to the possibility of the influence upon Chaucer's couplet of the Italian hendecasyllabic verse. TheCompleynte to Pitee, it is true, was written probably before the Italian journey of 1372-1373; but in Italy the "full significance" of the metre may have become clear to Chaucer. "After that journey the heroic verse appears almost exclusively as his poetic instrument.... Of still greater significance is the fact that Chaucer's heroic verse differs from the French decasyllabic in all the particulars in which the Italian hendecasyllabic departs from the common source, and approaches the verse of Dante and Boccaccio as closely as the metre of a Germanic language can approach a Romance metre. It may be added also thatthe heroic verse in theCompleynte to Piteestands nearer the French decasyllabic than that of theTroilusor theCanterbury Tales."Dr. Lewis, on the other hand, inThe Foreign Sources of English Versification, would minimize the foreign sources of Chaucer's couplet. Not only the unaccentual character of the French verse is opposed to the theory of the French source, but also, he believes, the fixed cesura. "In the English verse there is no such thing: indeed there is no cesura at all, in the French sense of the word.... Schipper relegates to a foot-note the suggestion that our heroic verse may have originated in a different way, either through an abridgment of the alexandrine or through an extension of the four-foot line. This is of course more nearly the true view, but it is entirely immaterial which of the last two explanations we hit upon. Accentual verses of four, six, and seven feet were already familiar long before Chaucer's time. They exhibited a more or less regular alternation of arsis and thesis. To devise a verse which should be essentially the same in principle, but should have five accents instead of four, six, or seven, was a task that Chaucer's genius might well achieve unaided" (pp. 98, 99).It is quite possible that a combination of all these views may be nearest the truth. The objection to the French influence on the ground of the syllabic (non-accentual) quality of the French verse does not seem to be serious, since any imitation of French verse by an Englishman would be likely to take on the accentual form; and, that once done, the need for the fixed cesura would vanish. But it is worth while to emphasize the fact that the genius of English verse was not so averse to the formation of a decasyllabic five-stress line as to make it a serious innovation. This view is further emphasized by the next specimen.

"'A toy, Henry, dous amis, me complain,Pour ce que ne cueur ne mont ne plein;Car a piet suy, sans cheval et sans selle,Et si n'ay mais esmeraude, ne belle.'

... Now as Chaucer was taken prisoner in France in 1359, he had an excellent opportunity for making himself acquainted with this poem, and with others, possibly, in a similar metre, which have not come down to us." (The Prioress's Tale, Introduction, pp. xix, xx.) Paris has shown that the real date of the poem in question was 1340; the title quoted by Skeat is Tarbé's modern French caption. Professor Kittredge has called my attention to the fact that there is another poem of Machault's in the same metre (P. Paris's edition ofVoir-Dit, p. 56), and also a poem by Froissart, the "Orloge Amoureus."

Ten Brink calls attention to the possibility of the influence upon Chaucer's couplet of the Italian hendecasyllabic verse. TheCompleynte to Pitee, it is true, was written probably before the Italian journey of 1372-1373; but in Italy the "full significance" of the metre may have become clear to Chaucer. "After that journey the heroic verse appears almost exclusively as his poetic instrument.... Of still greater significance is the fact that Chaucer's heroic verse differs from the French decasyllabic in all the particulars in which the Italian hendecasyllabic departs from the common source, and approaches the verse of Dante and Boccaccio as closely as the metre of a Germanic language can approach a Romance metre. It may be added also thatthe heroic verse in theCompleynte to Piteestands nearer the French decasyllabic than that of theTroilusor theCanterbury Tales."

Dr. Lewis, on the other hand, inThe Foreign Sources of English Versification, would minimize the foreign sources of Chaucer's couplet. Not only the unaccentual character of the French verse is opposed to the theory of the French source, but also, he believes, the fixed cesura. "In the English verse there is no such thing: indeed there is no cesura at all, in the French sense of the word.... Schipper relegates to a foot-note the suggestion that our heroic verse may have originated in a different way, either through an abridgment of the alexandrine or through an extension of the four-foot line. This is of course more nearly the true view, but it is entirely immaterial which of the last two explanations we hit upon. Accentual verses of four, six, and seven feet were already familiar long before Chaucer's time. They exhibited a more or less regular alternation of arsis and thesis. To devise a verse which should be essentially the same in principle, but should have five accents instead of four, six, or seven, was a task that Chaucer's genius might well achieve unaided" (pp. 98, 99).

It is quite possible that a combination of all these views may be nearest the truth. The objection to the French influence on the ground of the syllabic (non-accentual) quality of the French verse does not seem to be serious, since any imitation of French verse by an Englishman would be likely to take on the accentual form; and, that once done, the need for the fixed cesura would vanish. But it is worth while to emphasize the fact that the genius of English verse was not so averse to the formation of a decasyllabic five-stress line as to make it a serious innovation. This view is further emphasized by the next specimen.

Is not thilke the mery moneth of May,When love-lads masken in fresh aray?How falles it, then, we no merrier bene,Ylike as others, girt in gawdy greene?Our bloncket liveryes bene all to saddeFor thilke same season, when all is ycladdWith pleasaunce: the grownd with grasse, the WoodsWith greene leaves, the bushes with bloosming buds.... Tho to the greene Wood they speeden hem all,To fetchen home May with their musicall:And home they bringen in a royall throne,Crowned as king: and his Queene attoneWas Lady Flora, on whom did attendA fayre flocke of Faeries, and a fresh bendOf lovely Nymphs. (O that I were there,To helpen the Ladyes their Maybush beare!)Ah! Piers, bene not thy teeth on edge, to thinke

(Spenser:The Shepherd's Calendar, May. 1579.)

This specimen is properly not in five-stress verse, but in irregular four-stress ("tumbling verse"); compare the specimen on p.158, above. We have a close approach, however, to the regular five-stress verse, in such lines as the fourth, fifth, eleventh, thirteenth, and seventeenth. On this and similar passages in theShepherd's Calendar, as illustrating the close relation between the native measure and the newer one, see an article by Professor Gummere, in theAmerican Journal of Philology, vol. vii. pp. 53ff. Other verses cited by Dr. Gummere are:

"Whose way is wildernesse, whose ynne Penaunce.""And dirks the beauty of my blossomes rownd.""That oft the blood springeth from woundes wyde.""There at the dore he cast me downe hys pack."

It is pointed out that the regular five-stress line, when having—as very frequently—only four full stresses (two or three light syllables coming together, especially at the pause), can hardly be distinguished from certain forms of the native four-stress verse. See also the Eclogues for February and August, in theShepherd's Calendar. Dr. Gummere's conclusion is, that "practically all the elements of Anglo-Saxon verse are preserved in our modern poetry, though in different combinations, with changed proportional importance."

But the false Fox most kindly played his part;For whatsoever mother-wit or artCould work, he put in proof: no practice sly,No counterpoint of cunning policy,No reach, no breach, that might him profit bring,But he the same did to his purpose wring....He fed his cubs with fat of all the soil,And with the sweet of others' sweating toil;He crammed them with crumbs of benefices,And fill'd their mouths with meeds of malefices.... No statute so established might be,Nor ordinance so needful, but that heWould violate, though not with violence,Yet under color of the confidenceThe which the Ape repos'd in him alone,And reckon'd him the kingdom's corner-stone.

(Spenser:Mother Hubbard's Tale, ll. 1137-1166. 1591.)

Spenser's use of the heroic couplet for theMother Hubbard's Taleis the earliest instance of its adoption in English for satirical verse,—a purpose for which its later history showed it to be peculiarly well fitted.

Upon her head she wore a myrtle wreath,From whence her veil reach'd to the ground beneath:Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves,Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives:Many would praise the sweet smell as she past,When 'twas the odor which her breath forth cast;And there for honey bees have sought in vain,And, beat from thence, have lighted there again.About her neck hung chains of pebble-stone,Which, lighten'd by her neck, like diamonds shone.

(Marlowe:Hero and Leander, ll. 17-26. ab. 1590, pub. 1598.)

Too popular is tragic poesy,Straining his tip-toes for a farthing fee,And doth beside on rimeless numbers tread;Unbid iambics flow from careless head.Some braver brain in high heroic rhymesCompileth worm-eat stories of old times:And he, like some imperious Maronist,Conjures the Muses that they him assist.Then strives he to bombast his feeble linesWith far-fetch'd phrase.— ...Painters and poets, hold your ancient right:Write what you will, and write not what you might:Their limits be their list, their reason will.But if some painter in presuming skillShould paint the stars in centre of the earth,Could ye forbear some smiles, and taunting mirth?

(Joseph Hall:Virgidemiarum Libri VI., bk. i. satire 4. 1597.)

Joseph Hall was the most vigorous satirist of the group of Elizabethans who, in the last decade of the sixteenth century, were imitating the satires of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius. Hall's satires have a curiously eighteenth-century flavor, and his couplets are frequently very similar to those of the age of Pope. Thus Thomas Warton (in hisHistory of English Poetry) observed of Hall that "the fabric of the couplets approaches to the modern standard;" and Anderson, who edited theBritish Poetsin 1795, said: "Many of his lines would do honor to the most harmonious of our modern poets. The sense has generally such a pause, and will admit of such a punctuation at the close of the second line, as if it were calculated for a modern ear." On the verse of these Elizabethan satirists in general, seeThe Rise of Formal Satire in England, by the present editor (Publications of the Univ. of Penna.).

On the other hand, the verse of the satires of John Donne, from which the following specimen is taken, is the roughest and most difficult of all the satires of the group. The reputation of Donne's satires for metrical ruggedness has affected unjustly that of his other poetry and that of the Elizabethan satires in general. Dryden said: "Would not Donne's Satires, which abound with so much wit, appear more charming if he had taken care of his words and of his numbers?" (Essay on Satire.) And Pope "versified" two of them, so as to bring them into a form pleasing to the ear of his age.

Therefore I suffered this: towards me did runA thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sunE'er bred, or all which into Noah's ark came:A thing which would have posed Adam to name;Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies,Than Afric's monsters, Guiana's rarities;...Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had beenVelvet, but 'twas now (so much ground was seen)Become tufftaffaty; and our children shallSee it plain rash awhile, then nought at all.This thing hath travelled, and faith, speaks all tongues,And only knoweth what to all states belongs.

(John Donne:Satire iv.ll. 17 ff. ab. 1593.)

This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peas,And utters it again when God doth please.He is wit's pedlar, and retails his waresAt wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,Have not the grace to grace it with such show.This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve.Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve.He can carve too, and lisp: why, this is heThat kiss'd his hand away in courtesy;This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,That, when he plays at tables, chides the diceIn honorable terms: nay, he can singA mean most meanly, and, in ushering,Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet;The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.

(Shakspere:Love's Labor's Lost, V. ii. 315-330. ab. 1590.)

The use of rimed couplets in Shakspere's dramas is especially characteristic of his earlier work. In this play,Love's Labor's Lost, Dowden says, "there are about two rhymed lines to every one of blank verse" (Shakspere Primer, p. 44). In the late plays, on the other hand, rime disappears almost altogether. It will be observed that while Shakspere's heroic verse is usually fairly regular, with not very many run-on lines, it yet differs in quality from that of satires. The dramatic use moulds it into different cadences, and the single couplet is, perhaps, less noticeably the unit of the verse.

Shepherd, I pray thee stay. Where hast thou been?Or whither goest thou? Here be woods as greenAs any; air likewise as fresh and sweetAs where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleetFace of the curled streams; with flowers as manyAs the young spring gives, and as choice as any;Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,Arbors o'ergrown with woodbines, caves, and dells;Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,Or gather rushes, to make many a ringFor thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,—How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyesShe took eternal fire that never dies;How she conveyed him softly in a sleep,His temples bound with poppy, to the steepHead of old Latmus, where she stoops each night,Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,To kiss her sweetest.

(Fletcher:The Faithful Shepherdess, I. iii. ab. 1610.)

Fletcher uses the couplet in this drama with a freedom hardly found elsewhere until the time of Keats; see the remark of Symonds, quoted p.210, below.

If Rome so great, and in her wisest age,Fear'd not to boast the glories of her stage,As skilful Roscius, and grave Æsop, men,Yet crown'd with honors, as with riches, then;Who had no less a trumpet of their nameThan Cicero, whose every breath was fame:How can so great example die in me,That, Allen, I should pause to publish thee?Who both their graces in thyself hast moreOutstript, than they did all that went before:And present worth in all dost so contract,As others speak, but only thou dost act.Wear this renown. 'Tis just, that who did giveSo many poets life, by one should live.

(Ben Jonson:Epigram LXXXIX, to Edward Allen.1616.)

Jonson is thought by some to have been the founder of the classical school of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which made the heroic couplet peculiarly its own. See on this subject an article by Prof. F. E. Schelling, "Ben Jonson and the Classical School," in thePublications of the Modern Language Association, n. s. vol. vi. p. 221. Professor Schelling finds in Jonson's verse all the characteristics of the later couplet of Waller and Dryden: end-stopped lines and couplets, a preference for medial cesura, and an antithetical structure of the verse. "No better specimen of Jonson's antithetical manner could be found," he says further, than the Epigram here quoted. So far as this antithetical quality of Jonson's verse is concerned, Professor Schelling's view cannot be questioned; but that Jonson shows any singular preference for end-stopped lines and couplets may be seriously questioned.

These mighty peers placed in the gilded barge,Proud with the burden of so brave a charge,With painted oars the youths begin to sweepNeptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding deep;Which soon becomes the seat of sudden warBetween the wind and tide that fiercely jar.As when a sort of lusty shepherds tryTheir force at football, care of victoryMakes them salute so rudely breast to breast,That their encounters seem too rough for jest;They ply their feet, and still the restless ball,Tossed to and fro, is urged by them all:So fares the doubtful barge 'twixt tide and winds,And like effect of their contention finds.

(Waller:Of the Danger his Majesty [being Prince] escaped in the Road at St. Andrews.1623?)

Such is the mould that the blest tenant feedsOn precious fruits, and pays his rent in weeds;With candied plantains, and the juicy pine,On choicest melons and sweet grapes they dine,And with potatoes fat their wanton swine;Nature these cates with such a lavish handPours out among them, that our coarser landTastes of that bounty, and does cloth return,Which not for warmth but ornament is worn;For the kind spring, which but salutes us here,Inhabits there and courts them all the year;Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live,At once they promise what at once they give;So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,None sickly lives, or dies before his time....O how I long my careless limbs to layUnder the plantain's shade, and all the dayWith amorous airs my fancy entertain,Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein!

(Waller:The Battle of the Summer Islands, canto i. 1638.)

Edmund Waller is the chief representative of the early classical 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 ofenjambement, 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 hisCooper's Hill." (Epistle Dedicatory ofThe Rival Ladies.) In another place Dryden observed that only Waller, in English, had surpassed 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 lineWhere 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 cluster, 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 thehook't atomsthat compose a body in Des Cartes. There was nodistinction 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 classical 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 theAmerican 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'sMetamorphoses, 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 harmonioussification, go far towards satisfying the demands of the later 'classical' 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 routeto 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 Schelling 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 fromHero and Leander. And even Mr. Gosse, in partial divergence from the doctrines ofFrom Shakespeare to Pope, says of the satiric verse of the Elizabethan Rowlands: "There are lines in this passage 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 noble and audacious harmonies on which they chiefly prided themselves." (Introduction to theWorks 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 versesTo His Late Majesty, concerning the True Forme of English Poetry, Beaumont said:

"In every language now in Europe spokeBy 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 surpassing farre the fetter'd staves,Vaine care, and needlesse repetition saves."

(Chalmer'sEnglish Poets, vol. vi. p. 31.)[22]

Rough Boreas in Æolian prison laid,And those dry blasts which gathered clouds invade,Outflies the South with dropping wings; who shroudsHis 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.201below.

My eye, descending from the hill, surveysWhere Thames amongst the wanton valleys strays;Thames, the most loved of all the Ocean's sonsBy his old sire, to his embraces runs,Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,Like mortal life to meet eternity....No unexpected inundations spoilThe mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's toil,But godlike 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 streamMy 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'sEnglish Poets, vol. ii. p. 279.) On his praise by Dryden and Pope, see notes on p.188above. The last four lines of the specimen here given have been universally admired.

But say, what is't that binds your hands? does fearFrom such a glorious action you deter?Or is't religion? But you sure disclaimThat frivolous pretence, that empty name;Mere bugbear word, devis'd by us to scareThe 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 checksTo 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 disagreeableSatire 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.)

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