VII. IMITATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL FRENCH LYRICAL FORMS

"Faded ev'ry violet, all the roses;Gone the glorious promise; and the victim,Broken in this anger of Aphrodite,Yields to the victor."

(Memoir, vol. ii. p. 231.)

God, on verdurous HeliconDweller, child of Urania,Thou that draw'st to the man the fairMaiden, O Hymenæus, OHymen, O Hymenæus!

(Robinson Ellis:Poems of Catullus, LXI. 1871.)

Mr. Ellis's translations from Catullus are all "in the metres of the original," and are among the most interesting specimens of modern classical versifying. "Tennyson's Alcaics and Hendecasyllabics," he said in his Preface, "suggested to me the new principle on which I was to go to work. It was not sufficient to reproduce the ancient metres, unless the ancient quantity was reproduced also." Of special interest is the imitation of the "almost unapproachable" galliambic verse of theAttis(pp. 49-53):

"When awoke the sun, the golden, that his eyes heaven-orientScann'd lustrous air, the rude seas, earth's massy solidity,When he smote the shadowy twilight with his healthy team sublime,Then arous'd was Attis; o'er him sleep hastily fled awayTo Pasithea's arms immortal with a tremulous hovering."

As Mr. Ellis observes, the metre of Tennyson'sBoadiceawas modelled on this of Catullus. Compare also Mr. George Meredith'sPhaëthon, "attempted in the galliambic measure":

"At the coming up of Phœbus, the all-luminous charioteer,Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes,And with shadows dappled, men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent;For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to black."—Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalledShine as fire of sunset on western waters;Saw the reluctantFeet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,Looking always, looking with necks reverted,Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunderShone Mitylene.

—Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalledShine as fire of sunset on western waters;Saw the reluctant

Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,Looking always, looking with necks reverted,Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunderShone Mitylene.

(Swinburne:Sapphics, inPoems and Ballads.)

Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought, with love?What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above?What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised to wave,Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?

Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought, with love?What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above?

What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised to wave,Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?

(Swinburne:Choriambics, inPoems and Ballads, Second Series, 1878.)

Swinburne's imitations of classical measures are frankly accentual, with no effort to introduce fixed quantities into English.

Lady, reserved by the heavens to do pastors' company honor,Joining your sweet voice to the rural Muse of a desert,Here you fully do find this strange operation of love,How to the woods Love runs, as well as rides to the palace,Neither he bears reverence to a prince nor pity to beggar,But (like a point in midst of a circle) is still of a nearness,All to a lesson he draws, neither hills nor caves can avoid him.

(Sir Philip Sidney:Dorus and Zelmane, in theArcadia. ab. 1580.)

Sidney was evidently trying to write genuinely quantitative hexameters. Thus "of love," in the third line, may be regarded as a quantitative spondee (theobeing followed by two consonants), although theofwould not naturally be stressed. In like manner it is very possible that "pallace" was spelled with twol's in order to make the first syllable seem long.

Sidney's hexameters are the first in literary verse which have come down to us; but there must have been earlier efforts at least by the time of Ascham'sSchoolmaster(1570), which vigorously attacked "our rude beggerly ryming, brought first into Italie by Gothes and Hunnes, ... and at last receyved into England by men of excellent wit in deede, but of small learning, and less judgement in that behalfe." (Arber Reprint, p. 145.) One hexameter distich by a contemporary and friend of Ascham's, Master Watson of Cambridge, is handed down to us by Webbe, as being "common in the mouthes of all men":

"All travellers doo gladlie report great praise to UlissesFor that he knewe manie mens maners, and saw many citties."

(Discourse of English Poetrie, p. 72.)

But the Queene in meane while with carks quandare deepe anguisht,Her wound fed by Venus, with firebayt smoldred is hooked.Thee wights doughtye manhood leagd with gentilytye nobil,His woords fitlye placed, with his hevnly phisnomye pleasing,March throgh her hert mustring, al in her brest deepelye she printeth.Theese carcking cratchets her sleeping natural hynder.Thee next day foloing Phœbus dyd clarifye brightlyeThee world with luster, watrye shaads Aurora remooved,When to her deere sister with woords haulf gyddye she raveth."Sister An, I merveyle, what dreams me terrefye napping,What newcom travayler, what guest in my harborye lighted?How brave he dooth court yt? what strength and coorrage he carryes?I beleve yt certeyn (ne yet hold I yt vaynelye reported)That fro the great linnadge of gods his pettegre shooteth."

(Richard Stanyhurst: Vergil'sÆneid, bk. iv. 1582.)

Stanyhurst'sVergilis one of the curiosities of Elizabethan literature, not only from its verse-form but from its spelling and diction. The translator declares himself a disciple of Ascham, in his antipathy to rimed verse; "What Tom Towly is so simple," he asks, "that wyl not attempt too bee arithmoure?" In an address to the Learned Reader he explains his system of English quantitative prosody. In 1593 Stanyhurst's hexameters were severely noticed in a passage by Thomas Nash directed primarily against the classical versifying of Gabriel Harvey. "The hexamiter verse," said Nash, "I graunt to be a gentleman of an auncient house (so is many an English begger), yet this clyme of ours he cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in; hee goes twitching and hopping in our language, like a man running upon quagmiers, up the hill in one syllable and down the dale in another, retaining no part of that stately smooth gate which he vaunts himselfe with among the Greeks and Latins.... Master Stannyhurst (though otherwise learned) trod a foule lumbring boystrous wallowing measure, in his translation of Virgil." (Works of Nash, Grosart edition, vol. ii. pp. 237, 238.)

Stanyhurst was also ridiculed by Joseph Hall, in the Satires of hisVirgidemiarum(1597):

"Another scorns the home-spun thread of rhymes,Match'd with the lofty feet of elder times:Give me the numbred verse that Virgil sung,And Virgil's self shall speak the English tongue:Manhood and garboiles shall he chaunt with chaunged feetAnd head-strong dactyls making music meet.The nimble dactyl striving to out-go,The drawling spondees pacing it below.The lingring spondees, labouring to delay,The breathless dactyls with a sudden stay.Whoever saw a colt wanton and wildYok'd with a slow-foot ox on fallow field,Can right areed how handsomely besetsDull spondees with the English dactylets."

(Chalmers'sEnglish Poets, vol. v. p. 266.)

Compare the lines of Chapman, in hisHymn to Cynthia, where he says that

"sweet poesyWill not be clad in her supremacyWith those strange garments (Rome's hexameters)As she is English; but in right prefersOur native robes."

See also, in Arber's edition of Stanyhurst in theEnglish Scholar's Library, an account of another work in hexameters, published anonymously in 1599: theFirst Booke of the Preservation of King Henry the VII. This writer admired Stanyhurst's effort, but desired "him to refile" his verses into more polished English:

"If the Poet Stanihurst yet live and feedeth on ay-er,I do request him (as one that wisheth a grace to the meter)With wordes significant to refile and finely to polisheThose fowerÆneis, that he late translated in English."

In the same connection the writer tells us definitely what is to be hoped from the "trew kind of Hexametred and Pentametred verse." "First it will enrich our speach with good and significant wordes: Secondly it will bring a delight and pleasure to the skilfull Reader, when he seeththem formally compyled: And thirdly it will incourage and learne the good and godly Students, that affect Poetry, and are naturally enclyned thereunto, to make the like: Fourthly it will direct a trew Idioma, and will teach trew Orthography."[44]

Tityrus, happilie thou lyste tumbling under a beech tree,All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs lustilie chaunting:We, poore soules goe to wracke, and from these coastes be remooved,And fro our pastures sweete: thou Tityr, at ease in a shade plottMakst thicke groves to resound with songes of brave Amarillis.

(William Webbe: Vergil's First Eclogue, inA Discourse of English Poetrie. 1586.)

Webbe prefaces his hexameters with a reference to those made by Gabriel Harvey, and says: "I for my part, so farre as those examples would leade me, and mine owne small skyll affoorde me, have blundered upon these fewe; whereinto I have translated the two first Æglogues of Virgill: because I thought no matter of my owne invention, nor any other of antiquitye more fitte for tryal of thys thyng, before there were some more speciall direction, which might leade to a lesse troublesome manner of wryting." (Arber Reprint, p. 72.)

Thou, who roll'st in the firmament, round as the shield of my fathers,Whence is thy girdle of glory, O Sun! and thy light everlasting?Forth thou comest in thy awful beauty; the stars at thy risingHaste to their azure pavilions; the moon sinks pale in the waters;But thou movest alone; who dareth to wander beside thee?Oaks of the mountains decay, and the hard oak crumbles asunder;Ocean shrinks and again grows; lost is the moon from the heavens;Whilst thou ever remainest the same to rejoice in thy brightness.

(William Taylor: Paraphrase ofOssian's Hymn to the Sun. 1796.)

When English hexameters were revived at the end of the eighteenth century, it was in good part under German influence. Bodmer, Klopstock, and Voss, followed later by Goethe, made the German hexameter popular; and William Taylor of Norwich, who in many ways helped to familiarize his countrymen with German literature, became interested in the form. In 1796, the year of Goethe'sHermann und Dorothea, he contributed to theMonthly Magazinean article called "English Hexameters Exemplified," in which occurred the paraphrase from Ossian here quoted. Taylor pointed out that the hexameter of the Germans was purely accentual. They were "obliged, by the scarceness of long vowels and the rifeness of short syllables in their language, to tolerate the frequent substitution of trochees for spondees in their hexameter verse; and they scan, like other modern nations, by emphasis, not by position." (Quoted in J. W. Robberds'sMemoir of William Taylor of Norwich, vol. i. pp. 157 ff.) Most later writers of English hexameters have followed the line here indicated, and have frankly abandoned the effort to represent the quantities of classical prosody.

Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother,Sister thou of the stars, and beloved by the Sun, the rejoicer!Guardian and friend of the moon, O Earth, whom the comets forget not,Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round and again they behold thee!Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of creation?)Bride and consort of Heaven, that looks down upon thee enamoured!

(Coleridge:Hymn to the Earth.1799.)

Coleridge made several experiments in hexameters at this time, and planned, together with Southey, a long hexameter poem on Mohammed. To Wordsworth he sent an experiment of the same kind in a lighter vein:

"Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on table;Place it on table or desk; and your right hands loosely half-closing,Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic,Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forked left hand,Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each finger,Read with a nod of the head in a humoring recitativo;And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you.This is a galloping measure, a hop, and a trot, and a gallop!"

(Wordsworth'sMemoirs, quoted in Coleridge's Poems, Aldine edition, vol. ii. p. 307.)

Coleridge also translated from Schiller the well-known distich describing and exemplifying the elegiac verse of Ovid:

"In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;In the pentameter aye falling in melody back."

This distich, it is interesting to find, was revised by Tennyson so as to represent the measure quantitatively rather than accentually:

"Up springs hexameter, with might, as a fountain arising,Lightly the fountain falls, lightly the pentameter."

Lift up your heads, ye gates; and ye everlasting portals,Be ye lift up! Behold, the Worthies are there to receive him,—They who, in later days or in elder ages, ennobledBritain's dear name. Bede I beheld, who, humble and holy,Shone like a single star, serene in a night of darkness.Bacon also was there, the marvellous Friar; and he whoStruck the spark from which the Bohemian kindled his taper;Thence the flame, long and hardly preserved, was to Luther transmitted,—Mighty soul; and he lifted his torch, and enlightened the nations.

(Southey:A Vision of Judgment, ix. 1821.)

Southey followed the example of William Taylor in attempting to construct hexameters "which would be perfectly consistent with the character of our language, and capable of great richness, variety and strength," yet which should not profess to follow "rules which are inapplicable to our tongue." (Preface toVision of Judgment, Southey's Works, ed. 1838, vol. x. p. 195.)[45]In the same Preface he briefly reviewed the history of earlier efforts to introduce the classical measures into English. It is to be feared that Southey's hexameters are to be counted among the worst of modern times.

Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure,Sat the lovers and whispered together, beholding the moon riseOver the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows.Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.Thus was the evening passed. Anon the bell from the belfryRang out the hour of nine, the village curfew, and straightwayRose the guests and departed; and silence reigned in the household.

(Longfellow:Evangeline, Part. I. 1847.)

Evangelineis undoubtedly the most popular and widely read poem in English hexameters, and may be said to have revived the vogue of the measure in the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet its metrical qualities have not pleased most careful critics. Matthew Arnold said that the reception which the poem met with indicated that the dislike for the metre "is rather among professional critics than among the general public. Yet," he went on to say, "a version of Homer in hexameters of theEvangelinetype would not satisfy the judicious, nor is the definite establishment of this type to be desired." (On Translating Homer, Macmillan ed., p. 284.) Mr. Arnold had previously suggested that the "lumbering effect" of such hexameters as Longfellow's is "caused by their being much too dactylic"; more spondees should be introduced.

The editor of the Riverside edition ofEvangelineremarks interestingly: "The measure lends itself easily to the lingering melancholy which marks the greater part of the poem. The fall of the verse at the end of the line and the sharp recovery at the beginning of the next will be snares to the reader, who must beware of a jerking style of delivery.... A little practice will enable one to acquire that habit of reading the hexameter which we may liken, roughly, to the climbing of a hill, resting a moment on the summit, and then descending the other side."

Longfellow's hexameters were criticised most severely by his countryman, Edgar Poe. Poe denied the possibility of any adequate representation of the classical hexameter in English, largely because of the impossibility of using English spondees. The only genuine hexameters he knew, he declared, were some he had himself made, running:

"Do tell! when may we hope to make men of sense out of the Pundits,Born and brought up with their snouts deep down in the mud of the Frog-pond?"

(See Poe's Works, ed. Stedman and Woodberry, vol. vi. p. 104.)

Another interesting American experiment in hexameters is found in theHome Pastoralsof Bayard Taylor (1869-1874). Taylor modeled his verses after those of the Germans, particularly Goethe's inHermann und Dorothea. See, for example, the opening lines ofNovember:

"Wrapped in his sad-colored cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standethStern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,—Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,—Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top,Breathing the reek of withered reeds, or the drifted and soddenSplendors of woodland, as whoso piously groaneth in spirit:'Vanity, verily; yea, it is vanity, let me forsake it!'"But as the light of day enters some populous city,Shaming away, ere it come, by the chilly day-streak signal,High and low, the misusers of night, shaming out the gas-lamps—All the great empty streets are flooded with broadening clearnessWhich, withal, by inscrutable simultaneous accessPermeates far and pierces to the very cellars lying inNarrow high back-lane, and court, and alley of alleys:—He that goes forth to his walks, while speeding to the suburb,Sees sights only peaceful and pure; as laborers settlingSlowly to work, in their limbs the lingering sweetness of slumber;Humble market-carts, coming in, bringing in, not onlyFlower, fruit, farm-store, but sounds and sights of the countryDwelling yet on the sense of the dreamy drivers; soon afterHalf-awake servant-maids unfastening drowsy shuttersUp at the windows, or down, letting in the air by the doorway,School-boys, school-girls soon, with slate, portfolio, satchel,Hampered as they haste, those running, these others maidenly tripping;...Meantime above purer air untarnished of new-lit fires;So that the whole great wicked artificial civilised fabric—All its unfinished houses, lots for sale, and railway out-works—Seems reaccepted, resumed to Primal Nature and Beauty.

(Arthur Hugh Clough:The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich. 1848.)

Clough's hexameters are quite unlike any others in English poetry, both in their metrical quality and in their use for serio-comic verse. As Matthew Arnold observed, they are "excessively, needlessly rough," but their free, garrulous effect has a charm of its own. Clough also wrote some hexameters intended to be strictly quantitative. (For a detailed criticism of the verse of theBothie, see Robert Bridges'sMilton's Prosody, 1901 ed., Appendix J.)

It was Clough's hexameters, together with some "English Hexameter Translations" by Dr. Hawtrey and Mr. Lockhart (1847), that chiefly encouraged Matthew Arnold to believe that the measure might be well adapted to a translation of Homer. "The hexameter, whether alone or with the pentameter, possesses a movement, an expression, which no metre hitherto in common use amongst us possesses, and which I am convinced English poetry, as our mental wants multiply, will not always be content to forego." (Ib., p. 210.) Mr. James Spedding replied to Mr. Arnold's suggestion, from the point of view of the classical scholar, urging that only hexameters purely quantitative could properly represent those of Vergil. He illustrated his views by an amusing "hexametrical dialogue," conducted alternately in Vergilian measure and "in that of Longfellow." Of the former are the lines:

"Verses so modulate, so tuned, so varied in accent,Rich with unexpected changes, smooth, stately, sonorous,Rolling ever forward, tidelike, with thunder, in endlessProcession, complex melodies—pause, quantity, accent,After Virgilian precedent and practice, in orderDistributed—could these gratify th' Etonian ear-drum?"

(James Spedding:Reviews and Discussions, 1879. p. 327.)

Arnold, however, wisely declined to be led into a discussion of the relations of accent and quantity in English. "All we are here concerned with," he said, "is the imitation, by the English hexameter, of the ancient hexameterin its effect uponus moderns.... The received English type, in its general outlines, is, for England, the necessary given type of this metre; it is by rendering the metrical beat of its pattern, not by rendering the accentual beat of it, that the English language has adapted the Greek hexameter.... I look with hope towards continued attempts at perfecting and employing this rhythm; but my belief in the immediate success of such attempts is far less confident than has been supposed." (See the whole passage,On Translating Homer, pp. 275-284.)

The hexameters of Dr. Hawtrey, quoted by Arnold, are these:

Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia;Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember;Two, two only remain, whom I see not among the commanders,Kastor fleet in the car,—Polydeukes brave with the cestus,—Own dear brethren of mine,—one parent loved us as infants.Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lakedaimon,Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through the waters,Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of heroes,All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?—So said she. They long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing,There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lakedaimon.

(FromEnglish Hexameter Translations, p. 242.)

Arnold also illustrated his doctrine in some hexameters of his own, which have not usually been regarded as a happy experiment. They run in part as follows:

"Truly, yet this time will we save thee, mighty Achilles!But thy day of death is at hand; nor shall we be the reason—No, but the will of heaven, and Fate's invincible power.For by no slow pace nor want of swiftness of oursDid the Trojans obtain to strip the arms from Patroclus;But that prince among gods, the son of the lovely-haired Leto,Slew him fighting in front of the fray, and glorified Hector.But, for us, we vie in speed with the breath of the West-Wind,Which, men say, is the fleetest of winds; 'tis thou who art fatedTo lie low in death, by the hand of a god and a mortal."

(Ib., p. 234.)

Tennyson evidently viewed with small respect these various efforts to render Homer in English hexameters. See his lines beginning:

"These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer!No—but a most burlesque barbarous experiment."

(In Quantity: Hexameters and Pentameters.)

Compare the amusing lines of Walter Savage Landor:

"Askest thou if in my youth I have mounted, as others have mounted,Galloping Hexameter, Pentameter cantering after,English by dam and by sire; bit, bridle, and saddlery, English;English the girths and the shoes; all English from snaffle to crupper;Everything English about, excepting the tune of the jockey?....Seldom my goosequill, of goose from Germany, fatted in England,(Frolicsome though I have been) have I tried on Hexameter, knowingLatin and Greek are alone its languages. We have a measureFashioned by Milton's own hand, a fuller, a deeper, a louder..... Peace be with all! but afar be ambition to follow the Roman,Led by the German uncombed and jigging in dactyl and spondee,Lumbering shapeless jackboots which nothing can polish or supple.Much as old metres delight me, 'tis only where first they were nurtured,In their own clime, their own speech: than pamper them here, I would ratherTie up my Pegasus tight to the scanty-fed rack of a sonnet."

(English Hexameters, inThe Last Fruit off an Old Tree.)

In like manner Mr. Swinburne says: "I must say how inexplicable it seems to me that Mr. Arnold, of all men, should be a patron of English hexameters. His own I have tried in vain to reduce by scansion into any metrical feet at all; they look like nothing on earth, and sound like anapests broken up and driven wrong.... And atbest what ugly bastards of verse are these self-styled hexameters! how human tongues or hands could utter or could write them except by way of burlesque improvisation I could never imagine, and never shall." (Essays and Studies, p. 163.) From this condemnation Mr. Swinburne excepts only the hexameters of Dr. Hawtrey, "but that is simply a graceful interlude of pastime."

See also the essay called "Remarks on English Hexameters," in theHoræ Hellenicæof Professor John Stuart Blackie.

Hovering over the water he came, upon glittering pinions,Living, a wonder, outgrown from the tight-laced fold of his sandals;Bounding from billow to billow, and sweeping the crests like a sea-gull;Leaping the gulfs of the surge, as he laughed in the joy of his leaping.Fair and majestic he sprang to the rock; and the maiden in wonderGazed for a while, and then hid in the dark-rolling wave of her tresses,Fearful, the light of her eyes; while the boy (for her sorrow had awed him)Blushed at her blushes, and vanished, like mist on the cliffs at the sunrise.Fearful at length she looked forth: he was gone: she, wild with amazement,Wailed for her mother aloud: but the wail of the wind only answered.

(Charles Kingsley:Andromeda. 1858.)

Kingsley believed in the possibility of representing the quantitative verse of classical poetry in English, and at the same time holding to genuinely English rhythm.[46]Thus he tried to introduce more real spondees into his hexameters than Longfellow and others had done. Compare such a line as Longfellow's—

"Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice"—

with Kingsley's—

"Then as a pine upon Ida when south-west winds blow landward."

In the former the dissyllabic feet are in no sense spondees; in the latter there is an effort to fill them with genuinely long syllables.

Lover whose vehement kisses on lips irresponsive are squandered,Lover that wooest in vain Earth's imperturbable heart;Athlete mightily frustrate, who pittest thy thews against legions,Locked with fantastical hosts, bodiless arms of the sky;Sea that breakest for ever, that breakest and never art broken,Like unto thine, from of old, springeth the spirit of man,—Nature's wooer and fighter, whose years are a suit and a wrestling,All their hours, from his birth, hot with desire and with fray.

(William Watson:Hymn to the Sea, ii.)

Here the alternate lines represent the "pentameter" of the Latin elegiac verse, where the light syllables were omitted at the cesura and the end of the line.

When they came to the fair-flowing river and to the placesWhere stood pools in plenty prepared, and water abundantGushed up, a cure for things manifold uncleanly, the mules wereUnyoked from the waggons, driven off to the bindweed pasturesBy the rushing swirling river, and the women set about itUnloading the waggons, carrying clothes down to the water,One with other striving, stepping hastily into the wash-troughs.When washing and rinsing were done, they brought the linen downOn to the sea-shore, and set it all out thereupon in rowsWhere the pebbles thrown up by the waves most thickly abounded.

(William Johnson Stone: Translation ofOdyssey, vi. 85 ff., inThe Use of Classical Measures in English. 1899.)

Mr. Stone, like the Elizabethan classical versifiers, seeks to write purely quantitative verse in English, and, so far from aiming at the same time to preserve the rhythm of the usual English hexameter, he regards the clash between accent and quantity as a beauty rather than a defect. The verses he intends to be read "with the natural accent unimpaired," the reader listening for the regular quantities at the same time.

The views of Mr. Stone on the nature of English accent and quantity are perhaps unique among modern writers on the subject. "The ordinary unemphatic English accent is exactly a raising of pitch, and nothing more," as in Greek. "The accent of emphasis is something quite different in character from the ordinary accent." To those whoinsist that to them the second syllable ofcarpenteris distinctly short, Mr. Stone replies: "You are associating yourselves by such an admission with the vulgar actors of Plautus rather than the educated readers of Virgil;"—a truly terrible charge! Mr. Stone gives an interesting critical history of earlier efforts to introduce classical measures into English. His monograph is reprinted, but without the specimen translation, as the second part of the 1901 edition of Robert Bridges'sMilton's Prosody.For further discussion of the relations of classical and English prosody, and of accent and quantity in English, see Schipper, vol. i. pp. 21-27; A. J. Ellis: article in theTransactions of the Philological Society, 1875-1876; T. D. Goodell: article on "Quantity in English Verse," in theProceedings of the American Philological Society, 1885; Edmund Gurney:The Power of Sound, pp. 429-439; J. M. Robertson: Appendix toNew Essays towards a Critical Method, 1897; and the discussion in Part Three of the present volume.

For further discussion of the relations of classical and English prosody, and of accent and quantity in English, see Schipper, vol. i. pp. 21-27; A. J. Ellis: article in theTransactions of the Philological Society, 1875-1876; T. D. Goodell: article on "Quantity in English Verse," in theProceedings of the American Philological Society, 1885; Edmund Gurney:The Power of Sound, pp. 429-439; J. M. Robertson: Appendix toNew Essays towards a Critical Method, 1897; and the discussion in Part Three of the present volume.

FOOTNOTES:[42]Puttenham's treatise on English poetry, which followed Webbe's (1589), and was the most thorough treatment of the subject written in the Elizabethan period, also discussed the "reformed versifying," but with less respect. The chapter is entitled: "How if all maner of sodaine innovations were not very scandalous, specially in the lawes of any langage or arte, the use of the Greeke and Latine feete might be brought into our vulgar Poesie, and with good grace inough." (Arber Reprint ofThe Arte of English Poesie, p. 126.) Puttenham seems to see the relations of quantity and accent somewhat more clearly than most of his contemporaries, and while he gives rules for adapting English words to quantitative prosody, he is disposed to think that "peradventure with us Englishmen it be somewhat too late to admit a new invention of feete and times that our forefathers never used nor never observed till this day" (p. 132).[43]Campion'sObservationsare reprinted in Mr. Bullen's edition of his poems, and also in Rhys'sLiterary Pamphlets, vol. i. His attack on the customary English rimed verse was answered by the poet laureate, Samuel Daniel, who published in the same year (1602) hisDefence of Ryme against a Pamphlet entituled Observations in the Art of English Poesie. "Wherein is demonstratively prooved that Ryme is the fittest harmonie of words that comports with our Language." Daniel struck at the root of all the principles of the classical versifiers,—the supreme authority of the classics. "We are the children of nature as well as they," he exclaims with reference to the ancients. "It is not the observing of Trochaiques nor their Iambiques, that will make our writings ought the wiser." And he expounds the English accentual verse-system with clearness and vigor. This essay of Daniel's may be said to mark the end, if it did not bring about the end, of the Elizabethan experiments in classical metres. For other contemporary criticism of the effort, see under the following section, on the Hexameter.[44]On the history of the English hexameter, see the admirable account in Mayor'sChapters on English Metre, 2d ed., chap. xv.[45]Southey's effort was attacked by the Rev. S. Tillbrook, Fellow of Peterhouse, in a pamphlet entitled "Historical and Critical Remarks upon the Modern Hexameters, and upon Mr. Southey'sVision of Judgment." To this Southey replied in the second edition of his poem, saying to Mr. Tillbrook: "You try the measure by Greek and Latin prosody: you might as well try me by the Laws of Solon, or the Twelve Tables. I have distinctly stated that the English hexameter is not constructed upon those canons." He further appealed to the success of the hexameter in Germany, and concluded: "I am glad that I have made the experiment, and quite satisfied with the result. The critics who write and talk are with you: so I dare say are the whole posse of schoolmasters. The women, the young poets, and thedocile bairnsare with me." (Op. cit., Preface to the Present Edition, pp. xix, xxi.)[46]For Kingsley's exposition of his theories, see theLetters and Memories, edited by his wife, vol. i. pp. 338-344. He declined to yield to "trocheism one atom. My ear always demands the equivalent of the 'lost short syllable.'" And again: "Every argument you bring convinces me more and more that the theory of our prosody depending on accent is false, and that it really is very nearly identical with the Greek.... I am glad to hear (being a lazy man) that I have more license than I wish for; but I do think that, with proper care, you may have as many spondees, without hurting the rhythm, in English as you have in Greek, and my ear is tortured by a trochee instead.... I must try for Homer's average of a spondee a line."

[42]Puttenham's treatise on English poetry, which followed Webbe's (1589), and was the most thorough treatment of the subject written in the Elizabethan period, also discussed the "reformed versifying," but with less respect. The chapter is entitled: "How if all maner of sodaine innovations were not very scandalous, specially in the lawes of any langage or arte, the use of the Greeke and Latine feete might be brought into our vulgar Poesie, and with good grace inough." (Arber Reprint ofThe Arte of English Poesie, p. 126.) Puttenham seems to see the relations of quantity and accent somewhat more clearly than most of his contemporaries, and while he gives rules for adapting English words to quantitative prosody, he is disposed to think that "peradventure with us Englishmen it be somewhat too late to admit a new invention of feete and times that our forefathers never used nor never observed till this day" (p. 132).

[43]Campion'sObservationsare reprinted in Mr. Bullen's edition of his poems, and also in Rhys'sLiterary Pamphlets, vol. i. His attack on the customary English rimed verse was answered by the poet laureate, Samuel Daniel, who published in the same year (1602) hisDefence of Ryme against a Pamphlet entituled Observations in the Art of English Poesie. "Wherein is demonstratively prooved that Ryme is the fittest harmonie of words that comports with our Language." Daniel struck at the root of all the principles of the classical versifiers,—the supreme authority of the classics. "We are the children of nature as well as they," he exclaims with reference to the ancients. "It is not the observing of Trochaiques nor their Iambiques, that will make our writings ought the wiser." And he expounds the English accentual verse-system with clearness and vigor. This essay of Daniel's may be said to mark the end, if it did not bring about the end, of the Elizabethan experiments in classical metres. For other contemporary criticism of the effort, see under the following section, on the Hexameter.

[44]On the history of the English hexameter, see the admirable account in Mayor'sChapters on English Metre, 2d ed., chap. xv.

[45]Southey's effort was attacked by the Rev. S. Tillbrook, Fellow of Peterhouse, in a pamphlet entitled "Historical and Critical Remarks upon the Modern Hexameters, and upon Mr. Southey'sVision of Judgment." To this Southey replied in the second edition of his poem, saying to Mr. Tillbrook: "You try the measure by Greek and Latin prosody: you might as well try me by the Laws of Solon, or the Twelve Tables. I have distinctly stated that the English hexameter is not constructed upon those canons." He further appealed to the success of the hexameter in Germany, and concluded: "I am glad that I have made the experiment, and quite satisfied with the result. The critics who write and talk are with you: so I dare say are the whole posse of schoolmasters. The women, the young poets, and thedocile bairnsare with me." (Op. cit., Preface to the Present Edition, pp. xix, xxi.)

[46]For Kingsley's exposition of his theories, see theLetters and Memories, edited by his wife, vol. i. pp. 338-344. He declined to yield to "trocheism one atom. My ear always demands the equivalent of the 'lost short syllable.'" And again: "Every argument you bring convinces me more and more that the theory of our prosody depending on accent is false, and that it really is very nearly identical with the Greek.... I am glad to hear (being a lazy man) that I have more license than I wish for; but I do think that, with proper care, you may have as many spondees, without hurting the rhythm, in English as you have in Greek, and my ear is tortured by a trochee instead.... I must try for Homer's average of a spondee a line."

A number of artificial lyrical forms, originating in the ingenuity of the mediæval Provençal poets, were adopted by the Middle English imitators of the Romance lyrists, and were revived with no little vigor in the Victorian period. Chief among the influential models for these forms, in early times, were the poems of Machault (1284-1377), Deschamps (1328-1415), Froissart (1337-1410), and Villon (1431-1485). Again in the seventeenth century such forms as the rondeau were revived in France by Voiture (1598-1648), but with little effect in England. Finally, in the nineteenth century, the forms were reintroduced by M. Théodore de Banville, and later into England by Mr. Lang, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Gosse, and others. For the history of these fashions in outline, see the admirable introduction to Mr. Gleeson White'sBallades and Rondeaus(1893); also Mr. Andrew Lang'sLays and Lyrics of Old France(1872); Mr. Austin Dobson's "Note on some Foreign Forms of Verse," in the collection ofLatter Day Lyrics(1878); and an article by Mr. Edmund Gosse in theCornhill Magazine, July, 1877.

Says Mr. Dobson: "It may be conceded that the majority of the forms now in question are not at present suited for ... the treatment of grave or elevated themes. What is modestly advanced for some of them ... is that they may add a new charm of buoyancy,—a lyric freshness,—to amatory and familiar verse, already too much condemned to faded measures and out-worn cadences. Further, ... that they are admirable vehicles for the expression of trifles orjeux d'esprit. They have also ahumbler and obscurer use. If, to quote the once-hackneyed, but now too-much-forgotten maxim of Pope—

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