The English Language Part 99

There are varieties of this metre according to the interval of the rhymes.

8. _Terza rima._--Taken from the Italian, where it is the metre of Dante's Divina Commedia. Heroics with _three_ rhymes recurring at intervals.--Lord Byron's Prophecy of Dante.

9. _Poulterer's measure._--Alexandrines and service measures alternately.

Found in the poetry of Henry the Eighth's time.

10. _Ballad metre._--Stanzas of four lines; the first and third having four, the second and fourth having three measures each. Rhymes alternate.

Turn, gentle hermit of the dale, And guide thy lonely way, To where yon taper cheers the vale With hospitable ray.

_Edwin and Angelina._

{509}

-- 646. _Scansion._--Let the stanza just quoted be read as two lines, and it will be seen that a couplet of ballad metre is equivalent to a line of service metre. Such, indeed, was the origin of the ballad metre. Observe also the pause (marked |) both in the Alexandrine and the service metres.

This indicates a question as to where lines _end_; in other words, how can we distinguish one long line from two short ones.

It may, perhaps, partake of the nature of a metrical fiction to consider that (in all rhyming poetry) the length of the verse is determined by the occurrence of the rhyme. Nevertheless, as the matter cannot be left to the printer only, and as some definition is requisite, the one in point is attended by as few inconveniences as any other. It must not, however, be concealed that lines as short as

It screamed and growled, | and cracked and howled--

it treats as _two_; and that lines as long as

Where Virtue wants and Vice abounds, And Wealth is but a baited hook--

it reduces to a single verse.

-- 647. In metres of measure _a x_, the number of syllables is double the number of accents, unless the final rhyme be single; in which case the syllables are the fewest.

In metres of measure _x a_ the number of syllables is double the number of accents, unless the rhyme be double (or treble); in which case the syllables are the most numerous.

Now this view (which may be carried throughout the whole five measures) of the proportion between the accents and the syllables, taken with the fact that it is determined by the nature of the final syllable, indicates a division of our metres into symmetrical (where the number of the syllables is the multiple of the number of accents), and unsymmetrical (where it is not so).

For practical purposes, however, the length of the last measure may be considered as indifferent, and the terms indicated may be reserved for the forthcoming cla.s.s of metres. {510}

-- 648. Of the metres in question, Coleridge's Christabel and Byron's Siege of Corinth are the current specimens. In the latter we have the couplet:

He sat him down at a pillar's base, And drew his hand athwart his face.

In the second of these lines, the accents and the syllables are symmetrical; which is not the case with the first. Now to every, or any, accent in the second line an additional unaccented syllable may be added, and the movement be still preserved. It is the fact of the accents and syllables (irrespective of the lat.i.tude allowed to the final measure) being here unsymmetrical (or, if symmetrical, only so by accident) that gives to the metres in question their peculiar character. Added to this, the change from _x x a_, to _x a x_, and _a x x_, is more frequent than elsewhere. One point respecting them must be borne in mind; _viz._, that they are essentially trisyllabic metres from which unaccented syllables are withdrawn, rather than dissyllabic ones wherein unaccented syllables are inserted.

-- 649. Of measures of one, and of measures of four syllables the occurrence is rare, and perhaps equivocal.

-- 650. The majority of English _words_ are of the form _a x_; that is, words like _trant_ are commoner than words like _presume_.

The majority of English _metres_ are of the form _x a_; that is, lines like

_The way was long, the wind was cold_

are commoner than lines like

_Queen and huntress chaste and fair._

The mult.i.tude of unaccentuated words like _the_, _from_, &c., taken along with the fact that they _precede_ the words with which they agree, or which they govern, accounts for the apparent antagonism between the formulae of our _words_ and the formulae of our _metres_. The contrast between a Swedish line of the form _a x_, and its literal English version (_x a_), {511} shows this. In Swedish, the secondary part of the construction _follows_, in English it _precedes_, the main word:--

_Swedish._ Var_en_ komm_er_; fugl_en_ qvittr_ar_; skov_en_ lofv_as_; sol_en_ ler.

_English._ _The_ spring _is_ come; _the_ bird _is_ blthe; _the_ wood _is_ green; _the_ sun _is_ bright.

This is quoted for the sake of showing the bearing of the etymology and syntax of a language upon its prosody.

-- 651. _The cla.s.sical metres as read by Englishmen._--In p. 500 it is stated that "the metres of the cla.s.sical languages consist essentially in the recurrence of similar quant.i.ties; _accent playing a part_." Now there are reasons for investigating the facts involved in this statement more closely than has. .h.i.therto been done; since the following circ.u.mstances make some inquiry into the extent of the differences between the English and the cla.s.sical systems of metre, an appropriate element of a work upon the English language.

1. The cla.s.sical poets are authors preeminently familiarized to the educated English reader.

2. The notions imbibed from a study of the cla.s.sical prosodies have been unduly mixed up with those which should have been derived more especially from the poetry of the Gothic nations.

3. The attempt to introduce (so-called) Latin and Greek metres into the Gothic tongues, has been partially successful on the Continent, and not unattempted in Great Britain.

-- 652. The first of these statements requires no comment.

The second, viz., "that the notions imbibed, &c." will bear some ill.u.s.tration; an ill.u.s.tration which verifies the a.s.sertion made in p. 505, that the English grammarians "sometimes borrow the cla.s.sical terms _iambic_, _trochee_," &c., and apply them to their own metres.

How is this done? In two ways, one of which is wholly incorrect, the other partially correct, but inconvenient.

To imagine that we have in English, for the practical purposes of prosody, syllables _long in quant.i.ty_ or _short in quant.i.ty_, syllables capable of being arranged in groups {512} const.i.tuting feet, and feet adapted for the construction of hexametres, pentametres, sapphics, and alcaics, just as the Latins and Greeks had, is wholly incorrect. The English system of versification is founded, not upon the periodic recurrence of similar _quant.i.ties_, but upon the periodic recurrence of similar accents.

The less incorrect method consists in giving up all ideas of the existence of _quant.i.ty_, in the proper sense of the word, as an essential element in English metre; whilst we admit _accent_ as its equivalent; in which case the presence of an accent is supposed to have the same import as the lengthening and the absence of one, as the shortening of a syllable; so that, _mutatis mutandis_, _a_ is the equivalent to [-], and _x_ to [U].

In this case the metrical notation for--

The way was long, the wind was cold-- Merrily, merrily, shall I live now--

would be, not--

_x a, x a, x a, x a,_ _a x x, a x x, a x x, a_

respectively, but--

[U - U - U - U -]

[- U U - U U - U U -]

Again--

As they splash in the blood of the slippery street,

is not--

_x x a, x x a, x x a, x x a_,