PART TWO (continued 2)

(Shelley: Epipsychidion, ll. 190-200. 1821.)

Shelley carries the free treatment of this measure to the utmost limit. The couplet is not felt to be of significance, and many lines are so irregular in stress as to make scansion difficult. Compare this passage:

(Browning: Sordello, ii. 1-12. 1840.)

(Swinburne: Tristram of Lyonesse; the Sailing of the Swallow.)

(Ibid.: The Last Pilgrimage.)

It will be noticed that in Swinburne's use of the couplet the single line is even less the unit of measure than in Keats and Shelley; the periods correspond closely to those in the blank verse of Milton and Tennyson. Compare the specimens of blank verse on pp. 230 and 245. The second specimen shows the occasional use of the triplet and alexandrine.

(William Morris: Life and Death of Jason, iv. 621-641. 1867.)

B.—BLANK VERSE

Unrimed five-stress verse early became the accepted form for English dramatic poetry, and in the modern English period has become the favorite form for long continuous poems, narrative and reflective as well. In general, as will appear from the specimens, it is marked not only by the absence of rime but by a prevalent freedom of structure rarely found in the couplet.

The impetus toward the writing of blank verse seems to have been given by the influence of classical humanism, the representatives of which grew sceptical as to the use of rime, on the ground that it was not found in classical poetry. In Italy Giovanni Trissino wrote his Sophonisbe and Italia Liberata (1515-1548) in rimeless verses, and was looked upon as the inventor of versi sciolti, i.e. verses "freed" from rime. (See Schipper, vol. ii. p. 4.) See also below, in the notes on Surrey, and later under Imitations of Classical Verse, for notes on the same movement.

On the nature of English blank verse, see J. A. Symonds's Blank Verse (1895), a reprint of essays in the Appendix to his Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. In his Chapters on English Metre (chap. iv.), Mr. J. B. Mayor criticises what he calls Mr. Symonds's "æsthetic intuitivism."

On the early history of English blank verse, see the article by Schröer, Anfänge des Blankverses in England, Anglia, vol. iv. p. 1, and Mr. G. C. Macaulay's Francis Beaumont, pp. 39-49.

Of Mr. Symonds's remarks on the general nature of blank verse the following are especially interesting: "English blank verse is perhaps more various and plastic than any other national metre. It is capable of being used for the most commonplace and the most sublime utterances.... Originally instituted for the drama, it received in Milton's hands an epical treatment, and has by authors of our own day been used for idyllic and even for lyrical compositions. Plato mentions a Greek musical instrument called panharmonion, which was adapted to express the different modes and systems of melodious utterance. This name might be applied to our blank verse; there is no harmony of sound, no dignity of movement, no swiftness, no subtlety of languid sweetness, no brevity, no force of emphasis, beyond its scope." (Blank Verse, pp. 16, 17.)

"It seems adapted specially for thought in evolution; it requires progression and sustained effort. As a consequence of this, its melody is determined by the sense which it contains, and depends more upon proportion and harmony of sounds than upon recurrences and regularities of structure.... Another point about blank verse is that it admits of no mediocrity; it must be either clay or gold.... Hence, we find that blank verse has been the metre of genius, that it is only used successfully by indubitable poets, and that it is no favorite in a mean, contracted, and unimaginative age. The freedom of the renaissance created it in England. The freedom of our century has reproduced it. Blank verse is a type and symbol of our national literary spirit—uncontrolled by precedent or rule, inclined to extravagance, yet reaching perfection at intervals by an inner force and vivida vis of native inspiration." (Ibid. pp. 70-72.)

The earliest use of the term "blank verse," noted in the New English Dictionary, is in Nash's Preface to Greene's Menaphon, 1589: "the swelling bumbast of bragging blanke verse." Some ten years later Shakspere used it in Much Ado about Nothing, V. ii., where Benedick speaks of those heroes "whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of blank verse," but will not rime easily. In Chapman's All Fools (1605) the young gallant, in describing his manifold accomplishments, says he could write

Sdruciolla is the Italian term for triple-rimed endings.

(Earl of Surrey: Æneid, book IV. 223-242. ab. 1540. pub. 1557.)

Surrey's translation of two books of the Æneid may have been suggested by the translation (1541) made by Francesco Maria Molza, attributed at the time to Cardinal Ippolito de Medici. This was in Italian unrimed verse. (See Henry Morley's First Sketch of English Literature, p. 294, and his English Writers, vol. viii. p. 61.) The verse of Surrey, like Wyatt's, shows a somewhat mechanical adherence to the syllable-counting principle, in contrast to regard for accents.[26] Thus we find such lines as:

There is a fairly free use of run-on lines; according to Schipper, 35 in the first 250 of the translation. Nevertheless, the general effect is monotonous and lacking in flexibility.

(Sackville and Norton: Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, V. ii. 1-14. 1565.)

This tragedy, although Dryden curiously instanced it in defence of the use of rime on the stage, was the earliest English drama in blank verse. The metre is decidedly more monotonous than Surrey's, and gives little hint of the possibilities of the measure for dramatic expression. In general, the early experiments in blank verse suggest—what they must often have seemed to their writers—the mere use of the decasyllabic couplet deprived of its rime. Nevertheless, as Mr. Symonds remarks of a passage in Gorboduc, "we yet may trace variety and emphasis in the pauses of these lines beyond what would at that epoch have been possible in sequences of rhymed couplets." (Blank Verse, p. 20.)

For a specimen of the blank verse of Gascoigne's Steel Glass (1576, the earliest didactic poem in English blank verse), see p. 18, above.

Paris's oration to the Council of the Gods:

(George Peele: The Arraignment of Paris, IV. i. 61-75. 1584.)

This specimen shows the new measure introduced into the drama in connection with the earlier rimed septenary. Peele's verse in general is characterized by sweetness and fluency, but there is still no hint of the possibilities of the unrimed decasyllabics.

Schröer, in the article cited from Anglia, enumerates the following additional specimens of blank verse before the appearance of Marlowe's Tamburlaine; Grimald's Death of Zoroas and Death of Cicero, in Tottel's Songs and Sonnets, 1557; Jocasta, by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarshe, 1566; Turberville's translation of Ovid's Heroical Epistles, 1567; Spenser's unrimed sonnets, in Van der Noodt's Theatre for Worldlings, 1569; Barnaby Rich's Don Simonides, 1584; parts of Lyly's Woman in the Moon, 1584; Greene's "Description of Silvestro's Lady," in Morando, 1587; The Misfortunes of Arthur, 1587;—the last two appearing probably in the same year with Tamburlaine, whether earlier or later is uncertain. Most of these specimens are short, and all are comparatively unimportant.

(Marlowe: Tamburlaine, Part I, IV. ii. 30-46. pub. 1590.)

(Marlowe: Doctor Faustus, sc. xvi. ll. 65-81. Printed 1604; written before 1593.)

Marlowe is universally and rightly regarded as the first English poet who used blank verse with the hand of a master, and showed its possibilities. With him it became practically a new measure. Mr. Symonds says: "He found the ten-syllabled heroic line monotonous, monosyllabic, and divided into five feet of tolerably regular alternate short and long. He left it various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by a syllable, sometimes deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and changes in the beat. He found no sequence or attempt at periods; one line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were made after the same model. He grouped his verse according to the sense, obeying an internal law of melody, and allowing the thought contained in his words to dominate their form.... Used in this fashion, blank verse became a Proteus. It resembled music, which requires regular time and rhythm; but, by the employment of phrase, induces a higher kind of melody to rise above the common and despotic beat of time.... It is true that, like all great poets, he left his own peculiar imprint on it, and that his metre is marked by an almost extravagant exuberance, impetuosity, and height of coloring." (Blank Verse, pp. 22-27.) In the earlier verse of Tamburlaine, while showing these new qualities of a metrical master, Marlowe yet kept pretty closely to the individual, end-stopped line; in his later verse, as illustrated in the fragmentary text of Faustus, he seems to have attained much more freedom, resembling that of the later plays of Shakspere.[28]

(Shakspere: Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. iv. 196-208; 213, 214. ab. 1590.)

(Shakspere: Measure for Measure, III. i. 118-132. ab. 1603.)

This Mr. Symonds cites as "a single instance of the elasticity, self-restraint, and freshness of the Shaksperian blank verse; of its freedom from Marlowe's turgidity, or Fletcher's languor, or Milton's involution; of its ringing sound and lucid vigor.... It illustrates the freedom from adventitious ornament and the organic continuity of Shakspere's versification, while it also exhibits his power of varying his cadences and suiting them to the dramatic utterance of his characters." (Blank Verse, p. 31.)

(Shakspere: The Tempest, V. i. 33-50. ab. 1610.)

No attempt can be made to represent adequately the blank verse of Shakspere. The specimens, chosen respectively from his earlier, middle, and later periods, illustrate the trend of development of his verse. In the earlier period it was characterized by the slight use of feminine endings and enjambement; in the later by marked preference for both, and by general freedom and flexibility. In other words, Shakspere's own development represents, in a sort of miniature, that of the history of dramatic blank verse. According to Furnivall's tables, the proportion of run-on lines to end-stopped lines in The Two Gentlemen of Verona is one in ten, while in The Tempest it is one in three. The increased use of "light" and "weak" endings is closely analogous. Professor Wendell says of the verse of Cymbeline: "End-stopped lines are so deliberately avoided that one feels a sense of relief when a speech and a line end together. Such a phrase as

is deliberately made, not a single line, but two half-lines. Several times, in the broken dialogue, one has literally to count the syllables before the metrical regularity of the verse appears.... Clearly this puzzling style is decadent; the distinction between verse and prose is breaking down." (William Shakspere, p. 357.)[29]

(Ben Jonson: Sejanus, V. iv. 1603.)

Jonson's blank verse, says Mr. Symonds, is that "of a scholar—pointed, polished, and free from the lyricisms of his age. It lacks harmony and is often labored; but vigorous and solid it never fails to be." He also instances the opening lines of the Sad Shepherd as exceptional in their "delicate music." Beaumont's verse is in many ways similar in structure to Jonson's, yet commonly more melodious.

(Fletcher: Valentinian, IV. i. ab. 1615.)

(Fletcher: The Wild-Goose Chase, IV. i. 1621.)

The verse of Fletcher is highly individual among the Jacobean dramatists, though in a sense typical of the breaking down of blank verse, in the direction of prose, which was going on at this period. The distinguishing feature of Fletcher's verse is the constant use of feminine endings, and the extension of these to triple and even quadruple endings, by the addition of one or more syllables. Twelve-syllable lines (not alexandrines, but ordinary lines with triple endings) are not at all uncommon; and the additional syllable or syllables may even be emphatic. In general the tendency was in the direction of the freedom of conversational prose. Such a line as

would not be recognized, standing by itself, as a five-stress iambic verse; properly read, however, it takes its place without difficulty in the scheme of the metre.[30]

(Thomas Middleton: The Changeling, II. i. ab. 1623.)

Middleton carried on the work of fitting blank verse for plausibly conversational, as distinguished from poetic, effects. Often his lines are more difficult to scan than Fletcher's, and still less seek melodiousness for its own sake. Characteristic specimens are verses like these:

(John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi, IV. ii. 1623.)

"Webster," says Mr. Symonds, "used his metre as the most delicate and responsive instrument for all varieties of dramatic expression.... Scansion in the verse of Webster is subordinate to the purpose of the speaker." (Blank Verse, pp. 45-47.) He also calls attention to such remarkable lines as—

(Philip Massinger: A New Way to Pay Old Debts, IV. i. 1633.)

Massinger's verse is more regular than that of Fletcher and others, in the matter of extra final syllables and the like, but free and flexible in the use of run-on lines and generally progressive movement.[31] It is an error to assume that there was no good blank verse written in this period when the drama in general is said to have been in a state of "decadence." The verse of Ford, for example, is noticeably strong and restrained (compare the remark of Mr. Symonds, on its "glittering regularity"). On the other hand, one may see the dramas of Richard Brome for specimens of the decadent metre at its worst. Brome wrote comedies both in prose and verse, and there is little difference between the two forms in his hands. See also the crude and lax verse of some of the early plays of Dryden, illustrated on p. 234 below. It was verse of this kind which, as Mr. Gosse observes, justified the introduction of the heroic couplet in all its strictness.

(Milton: Paradise Lost, Book I. ll. 544-559; 571-587. 1667.)

(Milton: Samson Agonistes, ll. 1636-1652. 1671.)

The blank verse of Milton is characterized by greater freedom and flexibility than that of any earlier poet. The single line practically ceases to be the unit of the verse, which is divided rather into metrical paragraphs, or, as some would even call them, stanzas. Professor Corson quotes an interesting passage from a letter of Coleridge, giving an account of a conversation in which Wordsworth expressed his view of this sort of blank verse. "My friend gave his definition and notion of harmonious verse, that it consisted (the English iambic blank verse above all) in the apt arrangement of pauses and cadences, and the sweep of whole paragraphs,

and not in the even flow, much less in the prominence or antithetic vigor of single lines, which were indeed injurious to the total effect, except where they were introduced for some specific purpose." (Corson's Primer of English Verse, p. 218.) In like manner Mr. Symonds says: "The most sonorous passages begin and end with interrupted lines, including in one organic structure, periods, parentheses, and paragraphs of fluent melody.... In these structures there are many pauses which enable the ear and voice to rest themselves, but none are perfect, none satisfy the want created by the opening hemistich, until the final and deliberate close is reached." (Blank Verse pp. 56, 57.)

In Milton's own prefatory note to Paradise Lost, he called his blank verse "English heroic verse without rime." Rime he spoke of as "the invention of a barbarous age, ... graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets,"—not least among them, he might have said, being John Milton himself. He described also the special character of his verse in saying that "true musical delight ... consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another,"—that is, by enjambement. "This neglect then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, ... that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming."[32]

It appears from this note that Milton regarded his heroic blank verse as a different measure from the familiar dramatic blank verse. The latter he used in Samson Agonistes, the verse-structure of which will be seen to differ from that of Paradise Lost; the most salient distinction is the more frequent use of feminine endings. Mr. Symonds remarks interestingly on the "difference between Shaksperian and Miltonic, between dramatic and epical blank verse. The one is simple in construction and progressive, the other is complex and stationary.... The one exhibits a thought, in the process of formation, developing itself from the excited fancy of the speaker. The other presents to us an image crystallized and perfect in the poet's mind; the one is in time, the other in space—the one is a growing and the other a complete organism.... The one, if we may play upon a fancy, resembles Music, and the other Architecture." (Blank Verse, p. 58.)

(Dryden: Marriage à la Mode, III. i. 1672.)

(Dryden: All for Love, III. i. 1678.)

The first of these specimens of Dryden's blank verse illustrates the loose form of it found in many of the comedies, ill distinguished from prose and used interchangeably with prose, as in the case of the late Jacobean dramatists. It was with All for Love that Dryden dropped the use of the rimed couplet in tragedy, and turned his hand toward the construction of really noble blank verse. This play was professedly an imitation of Shakspere, and the passage here quoted is a paraphrase of one in Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. Shakspere's blank verse doubtless exerted a good influence on the quality of Dryden's. "From this time on," says Mr. Gosse, "Dryden's blank verse was more severe than any which had been used, except by Milton, since Ben Jonson." (Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 14.)

(Thomas Otway: Venice Preserved, V. ii. 1682.)

This play was one of those marking the return of the serious drama to blank verse, after the brief domination of the couplet on the stage. While Otway's verse is not as good as Dryden's best, it is of fairly even merit, and shows that something had been learned from the practice of the couplet.

(Addison: Cato, V. i. ll. 10-18; 25-31. 1713.)

(Robert Blair: The Grave. 1743.)

This poem was one of those connected with the revival of blank verse, for didactic poetry, near the middle of the eighteenth century. Of Blair's verse Mr. Saintsbury says that it "is by no means to be despised. Technically its only fault is the use and abuse of the redundant syllable. The quality ... is in every respect rather moulded upon dramatic than upon purely poetical models, and he shows little trace of imitation either of Milton, or of his contemporary, Thomson." (Ward's English Poets, vol. iii. p. 217.)

(Thomson: The Seasons; Winter. 1726.)

Thomson's Seasons was undoubtedly the most influential of the poems of the blank-verse revival of this period. Saintsbury says: "His blank verse in especial cannot receive too much commendation. With that of Milton, and that of the present Poet Laureate [Tennyson], it must rank as one of the chief original models of the metre to be found in English poetry." (Ward's English Poets, vol. iii. p. 169.)

Other influential poems of the same period, written in blank verse, were Glover's Leonidas (1737), Young's Night Thoughts (1742-1744), and Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination (1744). Much earlier than these had come the curious poem of John Philips on Cider (1708). Philips is praised by Thomson as the successor of Milton in some lines of Autumn:

In general, the blank verse of all these poets shows the influence of the couplet and lacks flexibility. Thus Mr. Symonds says: "The use of the couplet had unfitted poets for its composition. Their acquired canons of regularity, when applied to loose and flowing metre, led them astray.... Hence it followed, that when blank verse began again to be written, it found itself very much at the point where it had stood before the appearance of Marlowe. Even Thomson ... wrote stiff and languid blank verse with monosyllabic terminations and monotonous cadences—a pedestrian style." (Blank Verse, pp. 61, 62.)[33]

(Cowper: The Task, book VI. ll. 295-320. 1785.)

"The blank verse of Cowper's Task is admirably adapted to the theme," says Professor Corson. "Cowper saw farther than any one before him had seen, into the secrets of the elaborate music of Milton's blank verse, and availed himself of those secrets to some extent—to as far an extent as the simplicity of his themes demanded." (Primer of English Verse, p. 221.) Professor Ward speaks, however, of the "lumbering movement" of Cowper's blank verse as being in contrast to "the neatness and ease of his rhymed couplets." (English Poets, vol. iii. p. 432.) Cowper prided himself, not without reason, on the individuality of his blank verse. In a letter to the Rev. John Newton (Dec. 11, 1784) he said: "Milton's manner was peculiar. So is Thomson's. He that should write like either of them, would, in my judgment, deserve the name of a copyist, but not of a poet.... Blank verse is susceptible of a much greater diversification of manner than verse in rhyme: and why the modern writers of it have all thought proper to cast their numbers alike, I know not." In another letter (to Lady Hesketh, March 20, 1786) Cowper reveals his careful study of Milton's verse: "When the sense requires it, or when for the sake of avoiding a monotonous cadence of the lines, of which there is always danger in so long a work, it shall appear to be prudent, I still leave a verse behind me that has some uneasiness in its formation. It is not possible to read Paradise Lost, with an ear for harmony, without being sensible of the great advantage which Milton drew from such a management.... Uncritical readers find that they perform a long journey through several hundred pages perhaps without weariness; they find the numbers harmonious, but are not aware of the art by which that harmony is brought to pass, much less suspect that a violation of all harmony on some occasions is the very thing to which they are not a little indebted for their gratification."

(Coleridge: Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni, ll. 70-85. 1802.)

(Keats: Hyperion, book II. 1820.)

"In Keats at last," says Mr. Symonds, "we find again that inner music which is the soul of true blank verse.... His Hyperion is sung, not written.... Its music is fluid, bound by no external measurement of feet, but determined by the sense and intonation of the poet's thought, while like the crotalos of the Athenian flute-player, the decasyllabic beat maintains an uninterrupted undercurrent of regular pulsations." (Blank Verse, p. 64.)

(Wordsworth: Lines Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey. 1798.)

(Shelley: Alastor, ll. 707-720. 1815.)

(Tennyson: Idylls of the King; The Passing of Arthur. 1869.)

(Tennyson: The Princess, v. 1847.)

(Tennyson: Queen Mary, V. v. 1875.)

(Tennyson: The Princess, iv.; "Tears, Idle Tears." 1847.)

The blank verse of Tennyson is probably to be regarded as the most masterly found among modern poets.[34] Its flexibility is almost infinite, yet never unmelodious. The last of the specimens just quoted illustrates his use of blank verse for short lyrical poems,—an unusual and notable achievement. Perhaps only Collins's Ode to Evening can be compared with his success in this direction, and Collins used a more elaborate strophe to fill, in part, the place of rime. Of the unrimed lyrics in The Princess, Mr. Symonds says that they "are perfect specimens of most melodious and complete minstrelsy in words." In the "Tears, Idle Tears," he goes on to say, the verse "is divided into periods of five lines, each of which terminates with the words 'days that are no more.' This recurrence of sound and meaning is a substitute for rhyme, and suggests rhyme so persuasively that it is impossible to call the poem mere blank verse." See also the specimens on p. 144 above.

In the case of both Tennyson and Browning the student should compare the form of the narrative blank verse on the one hand with that of the dramatic on the other. Yet in a sense all Browning's blank verse is dramatic. It is no less flexible than Tennyson's, but (as in most of Browning's poetry) sacrifices more of melody in adapting itself to the thought.

(Browning: The Ring and the Book; Caponsacchi. 1868.)

The Ring and the Book Professor Corson calls "the greatest achievement of the century ... in the effective use of blank verse in the treatment of a great subject.... Its blank verse, while having a most complex variety of character, is the most dramatic blank verse since the Elizabethan era.... One reads it without a sense almost of there being anything artificial in the construction of the language; ... one gets the impression that the poet thought and felt spontaneously in blank verse." (Primer of English Verse, pp. 224, 225.)

(Browning: In a Balcony. 1855.)

(Browning: Epistle of Karshish. 1855.)

(Browning: Fra Lippo Lippi. 1855.)

Of some of Browning's blank verse Mr. Mayor observes: "The extreme harshness of many of these lines is almost a match for anything in Surrey, only what in Surrey is helplessness seems the perversity of strength in Browning.... The Aristophanic vein in Browning is continually leading him to trample under foot the dignity of verse and to shock the uninitiated reader by colloquial familiarities, 'thumps upon the back,' such as the poet Cowper resented; yet no one can be more impressive than he is when he surrenders himself to the pure spirit of poetry, and flows onward in a stream of glorious music, such as that in which Balaustion pictures Athens overwhelmed by an advance of the sea (Aristophanes' Apology, p. 2)." (Chapters on English Metre, 2d ed., pp. 216, 217.)

(Matthew Arnold: Sohrab and Rustum. 1853.)

(Stephen Phillips: Paolo and Francesca, III. iii. 1901.)

The blank verse of Stephen Phillips is the most important—one may say perhaps the only important—that has been written since Tennyson's; and it is of especial interest as forming an actual revival of the form on the English stage. Aside from the dramas, it is seen at its best in Marpessa. Imitating Milton, and at the same time handling the measure with original force, Mr. Phillips introduces unusual cadences, for which he has been severely reproached by the critics. Such lines as the following are typical of these variations from the normal rhythm:

For a criticism of Mr. Phillips's verse, see Mr. William Archer's Poets of the Younger Generation, pp. 313-327.

FOOTNOTES:

III. SIX-STRESS AND SEVEN-STRESS VERSE

A.—THE ALEXANDRINE (IAMBIC HEXAMETER)

The alexandrine was introduced into English from French verse, as early (according to Schipper) as the early part of the thirteenth century. Early poems in this metre alone, however, are almost wholly wanting, if they ever existed. The early alexandrines usually appear in conjunction with the septenary (seven-stress verse). The French alexandrine has almost always been characterized by a regular and strongly marked medial cesura, and this very commonly appears in the English form, but by no means universally.

The French alexandrine is of uncertain origin. Kawczynski would trace it to the classical Asclepiadean verse, as in

which at least has the requisite number of syllables. It appeared in France as early as the first part of the twelfth century, and in four-line stanzas was the favorite for didactic poetry as late as the beginning of the fifteenth century; otherwise, in the close of the fourteenth century, it was supplanted by the decasyllabic. In the middle of the sixteenth century it again won precedence over the decasyllabic—in part through the influence of Ronsard—and is of course the standard measure of modern French poetry. The name "alexandrine" seems to have been applied in the fifteenth century, from the familiar use of the measure in the Alexander romance. The earliest known mention of the term is in Herenc's Doctrinal de la secunde Retorique. (See Stengel's article in Gröber's Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie, from which these statements are taken.)

The French alexandrine is in a sense a quite different measure from the English form. Accent is an element of so comparatively slight importance in the French language and French rhythm, that its place seems partly to be filled by regularity of cesural pause and regularity in the counting of syllables. The French alexandrine, therefore, may often be described as a verse of twelve syllables, divided into two equal parts by a pause, with marked accents on the sixth and twelfth syllables, but with the other accents irregularly disposed. Often it seems to an English reader to have an anapestic effect, and to be best described as anapestic tetrameter. In English, however, while the regularity in the number of syllables is followed, and very commonly the medial pause, there is also observed the regularity of alternate accents which gives the verse the characteristic form indicated by the term "six-stress."

(De Muliere Samaritana, ll. 51-58. In Morris's Old English Miscellany, p. 84; and Zupitza's Alt- und Mittelenglisches Übungsbuch, p. 83. ab. 1250.)

This early poem illustrates the irregular use of alexandrines near the time of their introduction into English. The poem opens with a septenary—

and septenaries and alexandrines are used interchangeably. Dr. Triggs says, in his notes on the poem in McLean's edition of Zupitza's Übungsbuch, that lines 5, 6, 9-18, 25-28, 39, 40, 43, 44, 49-54, 57, 58, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70-72, 74, 75 are alexandrines. (Introduction, p. lxii.) The English tendency toward indifference to regularity in the counting of syllables is also noticeable. In the same way the early poem called "The Passion of our Lord" (ed. Morris, E.E.T.S. xlix. 37), which is thought from the heading—"Ici cumence la passyun ihesu crist en engleys"—to be a translation from the French, shows a preponderance of alexandrines, although it opens in septenary. See also such poems as the "Death," "Doomsday," etc., in the Old English Miscellany. The alexandrine was easily confused by the Middle English writers, not only with the septenary, but with the native "long line," and it is often difficult to say just what rhythm was in the writer's mind. Thus a line like

from the Judas, may be regarded either as an alexandrine or a long four-stress line.

(Robert Manning of Brunne: Chronicle of Peter de Langtoft. Hearne ed., vol. i. p. 2. ab. 1325.)

This poem is one of the very few representatives of distinctly alexandrine verse in Middle English. The original poem being in alexandrines, Manning followed it closely. In the first part, however, he put rimes only at the ends of the verses, whereas later he introduced internal rime, thus resolving the verse into short lines of three stresses. Schipper observes that the four following lines are each representative of a familiar type of the French alexandrine:

(Englische Metrik, vol. i. p. 252.)

The so-called Legend-Cycle is also marked by a sort of alexandrine couplet. (See ten Brink's English Literature, Kennedy trans., vol. i. p. 274.)

(Earl of Surrey: Psalm. LV. ab. 1540.)

This is a not very successful experiment in unrimed alexandrines. Others of Surrey's Psalms are in rimed "Poulter's Measure" (alexandrines alternating with septenary).

(The Marriage of Wit and Science, V. ii., in Dodsley's Old English Plays, ed. Hazlitt, vol. ii. p. 386. ab. 1570.)

In this play the alexandrine is the dominant measure, though mingled with occasional septenaries still. (See Schipper, vol. i. p. 256.)

(Sidney: Astrophel and Stella, Fifth Song. [In stanzas aabccb.] ab. 1580.)

See also Sidney's sonnet in alexandrines, p. 272, below.

(Drayton: Polyolbion, ll. 1-12. 1613.)

This is by all odds the longest Modern English poem in alexandrines, and while the verse is often agreeable, it illustrates the unfitness of the measure—to English ears—for long, continuous poems.

(Wordsworth: The Pet Lamb. 1800.)

(Browning: Fifine at the Fair, ix. 1872.)

Browning has made of the alexandrine in this poem an almost new measure, hardly more like the alexandrine couplet of earlier days than the measure of Sordello is like the "heroic couplet" proper. In general, the modern use of the alexandrine is characterized by increased freedom in the placing of the cesura. It is also distinguished from the early French and Middle English forms by the fact that the cesura and the ending are commonly masculine.

By far the most frequent use of the alexandrine in English poetry is as a variant from the five-stress line. For instances of this, see the section on the Spenserian stanza, pp. 102-108, above, and Corson's chapters on the Spenserian stanza and its influence, in his Primer of English Verse. In connection with Dryden's use of the alexandrine as a variant from the heroic couplet, Mr. Saintsbury makes some interesting observations on the measure: "The metre, though a well-known English critic has maltreated it of late, is a very fine one; and some of Dryden's own lines are unmatched examples of that 'energy divine' which has been attributed to him. In an essay on the alexandrine in English poetry, which yet remains to be written, and which would be not the least valuable of contributions to poetical criticism, this use of the verse would have to be considered, as well as its regular recurrent employment at the close of the Spenserian stanza, and its continuous use.... An examination of the Polyolbion and of Fifine at the Fair, side by side, would, I think, reveal capacities, somewhat unexpected even in this form of arrangement. But so far as the occasional alexandrine is concerned, it is not a hyperbole to say that a number, out of all proportion, of the best lines in English poetry may be found in the closing verses of the Spenserian stave as used by Spenser himself, by Shelley, and by the present Laureate, and in the occasional alexandrines of Dryden. The only thing to be said against this latter use is, that it demands a very skilful ear and hand to adjust the cadence." (Life of Dryden, in Men of Letters Series, pp. 172, 173.)

B.—THE SEPTENARY

The septenary, or seven-stress verse (sometimes called the septenarius, from the Latin form of the word) was a familiar measure of mediæval Latin poetry. There it was more commonly trochaic than iambic, as in the famous drinking song of the Goliards:

(See the "Confessio Goliae," in Latin Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, ed. Wright, p. 71.)

Another form of the measure is illustrated by some verses quoted by Schipper:

In English, naturally enough, the measure always tended to be iambic. In both Latin and English there was considerable freedom as to the number of light syllables. It will be noticed that in the specimens just quoted from the Latin there is rime not only between the ends of the verses but between the syllables just preceding the cesura. Where this was the case there was a tendency toward the breaking up of the verse into a quatrain of verses in four and three stresses, riming abab; such septenaries, indeed, were written at pleasure either in couplets or quatrains. We shall see the same phenomena in the English forms of the measure. But the seven-stress rhythm is not easily lost or mistaken, in whatever form it appears, and has a certain charm which at one time appealed very widely to metrical taste.

The earliest appearance of the septenary in English is in the Poema Morale, dated about 1170 by Zupitza, by others somewhat later. For a specimen of this, see p. 127, above. Here there is only end-rime, and the individuality of the long line is well preserved. There is some freedom, however, as to the number of light syllables, and some variation between the iambic and trochaic rhythm.

(Hymn to the Virgin, in Mätzner's Altenglische Sprachproben, vol. i. p. 54.)

Mätzner prints this poem in short lines of four and three stresses, the cesura making such a division natural enough. The next specimen is also frequently printed with the same division.

(The Ormulum, ll. 1-9. ab. 1200.)

In this specimen we have the septenary without rime, a rare form. Orm's septenaries are also the most regular of the Middle English period, preserving an almost painful accuracy throughout the 20,000 extant lines of the poem. In general the measure appears in this period in combination with alexandrines and other measures, and with much irregularity. Like the alexandrine, it was sometimes confused with the long four-stress line. In the well-known poem called "A Little Soth Sermun" the first line is an unquestionable septenary ("Herkneth alle gode men and stylle sitteth a-dun"), but presently we find verse of six stresses, and even short four-stress couplets.

(Sir Fyrumbras, ll. 1104-1107. In Zupitza'S Alt- und Mittelenglisches Übungsbuch, p. 107. ab. 1380.)

In this specimen—from a popular romance—we have the use of cesural rime as well as end-rime, just as in the Latin specimens cited above.

(William Warner: Albion's England, ll. 1-8. 1586.)

Here we have the measure in its "resolved" or divided form, printed as short four-stress and three-stress lines, although with rime only at the seventh stress. Compare the "common metre" of modern hymns:

(Chapman: Iliad, book VIII. 1610.)

Chapman's translation of Iliad is the longest modern English poem in septenaries. Professor Newman, however (whose translation gave rise to Matthew Arnold's lectures On Translating Homer), used the same measure unrimed and with feminine endings; thus,—

Arnold objected to Chapman's measure that "it has a jogging rapidity rather than a flowing rapidity, and a movement familiar rather than nobly easy."

(Beaumont: The Knight of the Burning Pestle, IV. v. ab. 1610.)

Here the septenary is introduced in the May-day song of Ralph, the London apprentice, doubtless because of its popularity for such unliterary verse.

(Ballad of Robin Hood and the Monk, in Gummere's English Ballads, p. 77.)

(Coleridge: The Ancient Mariner, ll. 1-4, 614-617. 1798.)

These specimens show the ballad stanza, which is made of a sort of septenary resolved into short lines of four and three accents. It is often assumed that the measure was derived from the Latin septenary; but owing to the difficulty of supposing that a foreign metre should have been adopted for the most popular of all forms of poetry, some scholars prefer to think that the ballad stanza of this form is the same as that in which all lines have four accents (see specimen on p. 157, above), the last accent of the second and fourth lines having dropped off by natural processes. On the ballad stanzas in general, see Gummere's English Ballads, Appendix II. p. 303. Compare with the present specimens the metre of Cowper's John Gilpin.

(Wordsworth: The Norman Boy. 1842.)

This is a rare instance of the use of the long septenary in nineteenth-century poetry. Certainly in Wordsworth's verses the metrical effect cannot be called happy; the measure is made especially clumsy by the introduction of hypermetrical light syllables. In the succeeding specimen the same measure is used with feminine ending.

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Cowper's Grave. 1833.)

C.—THE "POULTER'S MEASURE."

In the Elizabethan age the alexandrine and the septenary were each used chiefly in conjunction with the other, in alternation of six-stress and seven-stress verses. The name commonly applied to the combination is taken from Gascoigne's Notes of Instruction (1575), where he says: "The commonest sort of verse which we use now adayes (viz. the long verse of twelve and fourtene sillables) I know not certainly howe to name it, unlesse I should say that it doth consist of Poulters measure, which giveth xii. for one dozen and xiiii. for another." (Arber's Reprint, p. 39.) It strikes the reader with surprise to find the measure thus spoken of as "the commonest sort of verse," but a glance at any of the early Elizabethan anthologies will show the justness of Gascoigne's words. Yet the measure, while exceedingly popular, seems to have been instinctively avoided by the best poets (after the days of Surrey and Sidney); hence it is unfamiliar to modern readers.

The use of alexandrines and septenaries together, we have seen, was common even in the Middle English period, but not in regular alternation. The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (about 1300) mingles both measures, but with alexandrines predominating. In some of the early Mystery Plays they are found in alternation; for example, where Jacob, in one of the Towneley plays, is relating his hunger to Esau:

See also the specimen from The Marriage of Wit and Science, p. 256, above.

Schipper says that he does not know who first brought the two measures together in alternate use for lyrical poetry. Guest says that the Poulter's Measure came into fashion soon after 1500 (History of English Rhythms), but gives no examples so early. The history of the measure should be further investigated.

After the Elizabethan period the Poulter's Measure practically disappears from English poetry. A curious suggestion of it may be found in a little poem of Leigh Hunt's (Wealth and Womanhood), cited by Schipper, who calls the verse "Poulter's Measure in trochaics":

(Earl of Surrey: How no Age is Content with his Own Estate, in Tottel's Songs and Sonnets. Arber's Reprint, p. 30. Pub. 1557.)

(Sir Philip Sidney: Mopsa, in the Arcadia. ab. 1580.)

IV. THE SONNET

The sonnet is an Italian verse-form, in fourteen five-stress lines, introduced into England at the time of the Italian literary influences of the sixteenth century. Almost from the first, the English sonnet has been divided into two classes: one based on more or less strict imitation of the structure of the Italian form, and variously called the Italian, the regular, or the legitimate sonnet; the other taking the Italian sonnet as the point of departure, but constructed according to more familiar English rime-schemes, and commonly called the Shaksperian or the English sonnet.

The origin of the sonnet in southern Europe is a matter of some disagreement. Some scholars trace it to the canzone strophe (e.g. Gaspary, in his Geschichte der Italienischen Literatur), others to the combination of the ottava rima with a six-line stanza (Welti, in his Geschichte des Sonettes in der deutschen Dichtung), others to Provençal and even German influence. (See Schipper, vol. ii. pp. 835 ff., and Lentzner's Das Sonett und seine Gestaltung in der englischen Dichtung, p. 1.) It seems first to have been a recognized form in Italy in the latter part of the thirteenth century (see Tomlinson's The Sonnet: its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry); and was made glorious by Dante, Michael Angelo, Tasso, Ariosto, and—above all—Petrarch. On the different forms of the Italian sonnet, see Tomlinson's essay, just cited.

"The object of the regular or legitimate Italian sonnet," says Mr. Tomlinson, "is to express one, and only one, idea, mood, sentiment, or proposition, and this must be introduced ... in the first quatrain, and so far explained in the second, that this may end in a full point; while the office of the first tercet is to prepare the leading idea of the quatrains for the conclusion, which conclusion is to be perfectly carried out in the second tercet, so that it may contain the fundamental idea of the poem." (pp. 27, 28.)

The Italian form is always marked by the division into octave and sestet, although English usage has been very irregular in marking this division by a full pause. The octave is based on only two rimes (abbaabba); the sestet on either two or three, the most common arrangements being cdecde, cdcdcd, cdedce, and cddcee.

With regard to the pause at the point of division Lentzner says: "It should not be a full pause, because this would produce the effect of a gap or breaking-off, ...—not like the speaker who has reached the end of what he has to say, but like one who reflects on what has already been said, and then takes fresh breath to complete his theme."[35]

Most critics prefer those forms of sestet which avoid a final riming couplet. This Mr. Courthope explains as follows: "The reason for the avoidance of the couplet in the second portion of the sonnet is, I think, plain. In the first eight lines the thought ascends to a climax; this part of the sonnet may be said to contain the premises of the poetical syllogism. In the last six lines the idea descends to a conclusion, and as the two divisions are of unequal length it is necessary that the lesser should be the more individualised. Hence while, in the first part, the expression of the thought is massed and condensed by reduplications of sound, and the general movement is limited by quatrains; in the second part the clauses are separated by the alternation of the rhymes, the movement is measured by tercets, and the whole weight of the rhetorical emphasis is thrown into the last line." (History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 91.)

The sonnet has remained, since its introduction into English poetry, a favorite form among poets and critics, but has never become genuinely popular. It is suited, of course, only for the expression of dignified and careful thinking; and the difficulty of giving it unity and confining the content to the precise limit of fourteen lines has made perfect success in the form a rare attainment. Furthermore, the complexity of the rime-scheme—the distance at which one rime responds to another—makes the appreciation of the form a matter of some delicacy, less suited to the prevailingly simple taste of the English ear than to the more complex taste of the Italian.

The following specimens are classified only in the two principal groups of the Italian and the English form. The common test of the Italian form is that the rime-scheme shall separate the first eight lines from the rest, these eight lines ordinarily showing "inclusive rime" of the abba type; the test of the English form is that the rime-scheme shall separate the first twelve lines from the last two, the twelve lines ordinarily showing alternate rime.

Schipper groups English sonnets in five classes: (1) the strict Italian form, with pause between octave and sestet; (2) the Surrey-Shakspere or English form; (3) the Spenserian form; (4) the Miltonic form, with correct rime-arrangement but general neglect of the bipartite structure; (5) the modern Italian or Wordsworthian form, following the regular rime-scheme in general, but often with a third or even a fourth rime in the octave, and treated as a single strophe. (Englische Metrik, vol. ii. p. 878.)[36]

A.—THE REGULAR (ITALIAN) SONNET

In this group the student of the subject should note the detailed variations of the rime-scheme of the sestet, and the varying practice of the poets as to the division between octave and sestet.

In view of the connection of Petrarch's sonnets with Wyatt's introduction of the form into England, the first of them is reproduced as a typical specimen of the strict Italian form.

(Petrarca: Sonetto i.)

(Sir Thomas Wyatt: The lover hideth his desire, etc., in Tottel's Songs and Sonnets, p. 33. pub. 1557.)

It was Wyatt who introduced the sonnet into England. Thirty-one of his sonnets were published in Tottel's Miscellany, of which about a third are said to be translations or paraphrases of Petrarch's. Wyatt followed, of course, the regular Italian structure, but used unhesitatingly the form of sestet with the concluding couplet (cddcee). On this point Mr. Courthope says: "Wyatt was evidently unaware of the secret principle underlying the extremely complex structure of the Italian sonnet; ... and being unfortunately misled by his admiration for the Strambotti of Serafino, which sum up the conclusion in a couplet, he endeavored to construct his sonnets on the same principle, thereby leading all sonnet writers before Milton on a wrong path." (History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 91.)