CHAPTER I.VERSE GENERALLY.

There is no better text for this chapter than some lines from Pope's "Essay on Criticism":—

"But most by numbers judge a poet's song,And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:These equal syllables alone require,Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;While expletives their feeble aid do join;And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,With sure returns of still recurring rhymes;Where'er you find 'the cooling western breeze,'In the next line it 'whispers through the trees:'If crystal streams 'with pleasing murmurs creep,'The reader's threaten'd—not in vain—with 'sleep.'Then at the last and only couplet, fraughtWith some unmeaning thing they call a thought,A needless Alexandrine ends the song,That like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, to knowWhat's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;And praise the easy vigour of a lineWhere Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,As those move easiest who have learnt to dance.'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,The sound must seem an echo to the sense.Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar:When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,The line, too, labours, and the words move slow.Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main."

"But most by numbers judge a poet's song,

And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:

These equal syllables alone require,

Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;

While expletives their feeble aid do join;

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:

While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,

With sure returns of still recurring rhymes;

Where'er you find 'the cooling western breeze,'

In the next line it 'whispers through the trees:'

If crystal streams 'with pleasing murmurs creep,'

The reader's threaten'd—not in vain—with 'sleep.'

Then at the last and only couplet, fraught

With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,

A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

That like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, to know

What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;

And praise the easy vigour of a line

Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learnt to dance.

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;

But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar:

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,

The line, too, labours, and the words move slow.

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main."

Johnson sneers somewhat at the attempt at what he styles "representative metre." He quotes "one of the most successful attempts,"—

"With many a weary step, and many a groan,Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone;The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,Thunders impetuous down and smokes along the ground."

"With many a weary step, and many a groan,

Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone;

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,

Thunders impetuous down and smokes along the ground."

After admitting that he sees the stone move slowly upward, and roll violently back, he says, "try the same numbers to another sense—

"While many a merry tale and many a songCheer'd the rough road, we wish'd the rough road long.The rough road then returning in a roundMock'd our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground."

"While many a merry tale and many a song

Cheer'd the rough road, we wish'd the rough road long.

The rough road then returning in a round

Mock'd our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground."

"We have now," says the Doctor, "lost much of the delay and much of the rapidity." Truly so!—but why? The choice of words has really altered the measure, though not the number of syllables. If we look at the second line of the first extract, we see how the frequent use of the aspirate, with a long sound after it, gives the labour of the ascent. There is nothing of this in the corresponding line, where the "r" gives a run rather than a halt to the measure.But Johnson more decidedly shows how he was mistaken when he finds fault with Pope's—

"The varying verse, the full resounding line,The long majestic march, and energy divine."

"The varying verse, the full resounding line,

The long majestic march, and energy divine."

His objection to this is, that the same sequence of syllables gives "the rapid race" and "the march of slow-paced majesty;" and he adds, "the exact prosodist will find the line ofswiftnessby one time longer than that oftardiness." By this it is to be presumed he alludes to the trisyllabic nature of the first foot of the first line—"varying." But it is just that which gives the rapidity. The other half of the line is not meant to give rapidity, but "resounding." The second line, by the repetition of the "a" in "march" and "majesty," gives the tramp of the march to admiration.

So much for Johnson's objections. We will now see how far the lines of Pope can guide us in the construction of verse.

Line Thirdindicates the necessity—which Pope himself, even, did not adequately recognise—the necessity of varying the fall of the verse on the ear. Pope did this by graduating his accents. The line should scan with an accented syllable following an unaccented one—

"And smo´oth or ro´ugh, with the´m, is ri´ght or wro´ng."

Pope varied this by a sort of compromise—

"And the´ smooth strea´m in smo´other nu´mbers flo´ws,"

would be the right scansion. But the accent passes in a subdued form from "the" to "smooth," whichpleasantly modulates the line, and gives the flow required for the figure treated of.[3]

But there was another means of varying the verse which was not in those days adopted. It was not then recognised that there were some cases in which the unaccented syllable might have two "beats." Pope wrote,

"The gen'rous pleasure to be charm'd with wit."

Had he written "generous," it might have stood, and would have given a variety. And this would have saved the eyesore of such lines as—

"T' admire superior sense and doubt our own."

Line Fourthdoes not exactly describe the fault it commits. "The open vowel" is no offence, but rather a beauty, though like all beauty it must not be too lavishly displayed. The fault of the line really lies in the repetition of the same broad sound—"o." The same vowel-sounds should not be repeated in a line.[4]This especially holds good where they are so associated with consonants as to form a rhyme, or anything approaching to it.

Line Fifthpoints out an inelegance which no one with any ear could be guilty of—the use of "do" and "did," to eke out a line or help a rhyme.

Line Sixthindicates a practice which those who have studied Latin versification would avoid without such a hint, since the nature of the cæsura compels the avoidance of monosyllables.

Line Ninth, with the following three lines, warns against an error which naturally becomes the more frequent the longer English verse is written, since rhymes become more and more hackneyed every day.

Line Sixteenth.The Alexandrine will come under discussion in its place among metres.

Line Twenty-firstmight well serve for a motto for this little treatise. If a poet said this of poetry, how much more does it apply to versification!

Line Twenty-fifth.Here, and in the following line, by delicate manipulation of the accent, Pope gets the desired effect. Instead of "So so´ft the stra´in," he attracts the ear with "So´ft is," and the unexpected word gives the key-note of the line.

Line Twenty-seventh.It is almost needless to point out how in this, and the next line, the poet, by artful management of accent and careful selection of onomatopoetic words, gives the required assonance to the lines.

Line Twenty-ninth.The broad vowels here give the requisite pause and "deliberation" to the verse. In the following line, the introduction of "too"—(under some circumstances it might well come under the condemnationof Line Fifth)—makes the line labour, and the open "o" at the end of the line "tires the ear."

Line Thirty-first.Here the poet gets the slide of the "s" to give the idea of motion. In the following line by the elision and the apt introduction of short syllables he repeats the notion. In my opinion the artistic skill of Pope is peculiarly observable in the last few couplets. In the first line in each instance the effect is produced by the use of a different artifice from that employed in the second.

These rules were of course intended by Pope to apply only to the measure called "heroic,"i.e., decasyllabic verse. But,mutatis mutandis, they will be equally applicable to general verse.

Coleridge in his "Christabel" struck out what he considered a new metre, which he describes as "not, properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle: namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four." This was a decided step in the right direction, being in truth a recognition of the principle that measure in English was not exhausted—was, indeed, hardly satisfied—by the old rule of thumb; that, in short, it needed a compromise betweenaccentandquantity.

Southey in his "Thalaba" essayed a new style of versification, of which he writes as follows:—

"It were easy to make a parade of learning by enumerating the various feet which it admits; it is onlyneedful to observe that no two lines are employed in sequence, which can be read into one. Two six-syllable lines (it will perhaps be answered) compose an Alexandrine; the truth is, that the Alexandrine, when harmonious, is composed of two six-syllable lines. One advantage this metre assuredly possesses; the dullest reader cannot distort it into discord.... I do not wish theimprovisatoretime, but something that denotes the sense of harmony; something like the accent of feeling; like the tone which every poet necessarily gives to poetry."

Of course, by "six syllables" Southey means "six feet." He was evidently struggling for emancipation from the old rule of thumb.

Of late many eccentricities of versification have been attempted after the manner of Mr Whitman, but for these, like the Biblical echo of Mr Tupper's muse, there seem to be no perceptible rules, even should it be desirable to imitate them.

I would here add a few words of advice to those who, by the study of our greatest writers, would endeavour to improve their own style. For smoothness I should say Waller, in preference even to Pope, because the former wrote in far more various measures, and may challenge comparison with Pope, on Pope's own ground, with "The Ode to the Lord Protector," in decasyllabic verse. For music—"lilt" is an expressive word that exactly conveys what I mean—they cannot do better than choose Herrick. Add to these two George Herbert, and I think the student will have a valuable guide in small space.

Back to Index Next