The Grammar of English Grammars Part 189

EXPLANATIONS AND DEFINITIONS.

Poetic feet being arbitrary combinations, contrived merely for the measuring of verses, and the ready ascertainment of the syllables that suit each rhythm, there is among prosodists a perplexing diversity of opinion, as to the _number_ which we ought to recognize in our language. Some will have only two or three; others, four; others, eight; others, twelve. The dozen are all that can be made of two syllables and of three. Latinists sometimes make feet of four syllables, and admit sixteen more of these, acknowledging and naming twenty-eight in all. The _princ.i.p.al_ English feet are the _Iambus_, the _Trochee_, the _Anapest_, and the _Dactyl_.

1. The _Iambus_, or _Iamb_, is a poetic foot consisting of a short syllable and a long one; as, _b~etr=ay, c~onf=ess, d~em=and, ~intent, d~egr=ee_.

2. The _Trochee_, or _Ch.o.r.ee_, is a poetic foot consisting of a long syllable and a short one; as, _h=atef~ul, p=ett~ish, l=eg~al, m=eas~ure, h=ol~y_.

3. The _Anapest_ is a poetic foot consisting of two short syllables and one long one; as, _c~ontr~av=ene, ~acqu~i=esce, ~imp~ort=une_.

4. The _Dactyl_ is a poetic foot consisting of one long syllable and two short ones; as, _l=ab~our~er, p=oss~ibl~e, w=ond~erf~ul_.

These are our princ.i.p.al feet, not only because they are oftenest used, but because each kind, with little or no mixture, forms a distinct order of numbers, having a peculiar rhythm. Of verse, or poetic measure, we have, accordingly, four princ.i.p.al kinds, or orders; namely, _Iambic, Trochaic, Anapestic_, and _Dactylic_; as in the four lines cited above.

The more pure these several kinds are preserved, the more exact and complete is the chime of the verse. But exactness being difficult, and its sameness sometimes irksome, the poets generally indulge some variety; not so much, however, as to confound the drift of the rhythmical pulsations: or, if ever these be not made obvious to the reader, there is a grave fault in the versification.

The _secondary_ feet, if admitted at all, are to be admitted only, or chiefly, as occasional diversifications. Of this cla.s.s of feet, many grammarians adopt four; but they lack agreement about the selection.

Brightland took the _Spondee_, the _Pyrrhic_, the _Moloss_, and the _Tribrach_. To these, some now add the other four; namely, the _Amphibrach_, the _Amphimac_, the _Bacchy_, and the _Antibacchy_.

Few, if any, of these feet are really _necessary_ to a sufficient explanation of English verse; and the adopting of so many is liable to the great objection, that we thereby produce different modes of measuring the same lines. But, by naming them all, we avoid the difficulty of selecting the most important; and it is proper that the student should know the import of all these prosodical terms.

5. A _Spondee_ is a poetic foot consisting of two long syllables; as, _c=old n=ight, p=o=or s=ouls, ~am~en, shr=ovet=ide._

6. A _Pyrrhic_ is a poetic foot consisting of two short syllables; as, presumpt-|_~uo~us_, perpet-|_~u~al_, unhap-|_p~il~y_, inglo-|_r~io~us_.

7. A _Moloss_ is a poetic foot consisting of three long syllables; as, _De~ath's p=ale h=orse,--gre=at wh=ite thr=one,--d=eep d=amp v=a=ult._

8. A _Tribrach_ is a poetic foot consisting of three short syllables; as, prohib-|_~it~or~y_, unnat-|_~ur~all~y_, author-|_~it~at~ive_, innum-|_~er~abl~e_.

9. An _Amphibrach_ is a poetic foot of three syllables, having both sides short, the middle long; as, _~impr=ud~ent, c~ons=id~er, tr~ansp=ort~ed._

10. An _Amphimac, Amphimacer_, or _Cretic_, is a poetic foot of three syllables, having both sides long, the middle short; as, _w~ind~ingsh=eet, l=ife-~est=ate, s=oul-d~is~eased._

11. A _Bacchy_ is a poetic foot consisting of one short syllable and two long ones; as, _th=e wh=ole w~orld,--~a gre=at v=ase,--=of p=ure g=old_.

12. An _Antibacchy_, or _Hypobacchy_, is a poetic foot consisting of two long syllables and a short one; as, _kn=ight-s=erv~ice, gl=obe-d=ais~y, gr=ape-flow~er, g=old-b=eat~er_.

Among the variegations of verse, one emphatic syllable is sometimes counted for a foot. "When a single syllable is [thus] taken by itself, it is called a _Caesura_, which is commonly a long syllable." [499]

FOR EXAMPLE:--

"Keeping | _time, | time, | time_, In a | sort of | Runic | _rhyme_, To the | tintin| -nabu| -lation that so | musi| -cally | _wells_ From the | _bells, | bells, | bells, | bells, Bells, | bells, | bells._"

--EDGAR A. POE: _Union Magazine, for Nov. 1849; Literary World_, No. 143.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.--In defining our poetic feet, many late grammarians subst.i.tute the terms _accented_ and _unaccented_ for _long_ and _short_, as did Murray, after some of the earlier editions of his grammar; the only feet recognized in his _second_ edition being the _Iambus_, the _Trochee_, the _Dactyl_, and the _Anapest_, and all these being formed by _quant.i.ties_ only. This change has been made on the supposition, that accent and long quant.i.ty, as well as their opposites, nonaccent and short quant.i.ty, may oppose each other; and that the basis of English verse is not, like that of Latin or Greek poetry, a distinction in the _time_ of syllables, not a difference in _quant.i.ty_, but such a course of accenting and nonaccenting as overrides all relations of this sort, and makes both length and shortness compatible alike with stress or no stress. Such a theory, I am persuaded, is untenable. Great authority, however, may be quoted for it, or for its princ.i.p.al features. Besides the several later grammarians who give it countenance, even "the judicious Walker," who, in his p.r.o.nouncing Dictionary, as before cited, very properly suggests a difference between "_that quant.i.ty which const.i.tutes poetry_," and the mere "_length or shortness of vowels_," when he comes to explain our English accent and quant.i.ty, in his "_Observations on the Greek and Latin Accent and Quant.i.ty_," finds "accent perfectly compatible with either long or short quant.i.ty;" (_Key_, p. 312;) repudiates that vulgar accent of Sheridan and others, which "is only a greater force upon one syllable than another;"

(_Key_, p. 313;) prefers the doctrine which "makes the elevation or depression of the voice inseparable from accent;" (_Key_, p. 314;) holds that, "unaccented vowels are frequently p.r.o.nounced long when the accented vowels are short;" (_Key_, p. 312;) takes long or short _vowels_ and long or short _syllables_ to be things everywhere tantamount; saying, "We have _no conception_ of quant.i.ty arising from any thing but the nature of the vowels, as they are p.r.o.nounced long or short;" (_ibid._;) and again: "Such long quant.i.ty" as consonants may produce with a close or short vowel, "an English ear _has not the least idea of_. Unless the sound of the vowel be altered, we have _not any conception_ of a long or short syllable."--_Walker's Key_, p. 322; and _Worcester's Octavo Dict._, p. 935.

OBS. 2.--In the opinion of Murray, Walker's authority should be thought sufficient to settle any question of prosodial quant.i.ties. "But," it is added, "there are some critical writers, who dispute the propriety of his arrangement."--_Murray's Octavo Gram._, p. 241. And well there may be; not only by reason of the obvious incorrectness of the foregoing positions, but because the great orthoepist is not entirely consistent with himself. In his "_Preparatory Observations_," which introduce the very essay above cited, he avers that, "the different states of the voice," which are indicated by the comparative terms _high_ and _low, loud_ and _soft, quick_ and _slow, forcible_ and _feeble_, "may not improperly be called _quant.i.ties_ of sound."--_Walker's Key_, p. 305. Whoever thinks this, certainly conceives of quant.i.ty as arising from _several other things_ than "the nature of the vowels." Even Humphrey, with whom, "Quant.i.ty differs materially from time," and who defines it, "the weight, or aggregate quantum of sounds," may find his questionable and unusual "conception" of it included among these.

OBS. 3.--Walker must have seen, as have the generality of prosodists since, that such a distinction as he makes between long syllables and short, could not possibly be the basis of English versification, or determine the elements of English feet; yet, without the a.n.a.logy of any known usage, and contrary to our customary mode of reading the languages, he proposes it as applicable--and as the only doctrine conceived to be applicable--to Greek or Latin verse. Ignoring all long or short quant.i.ty not formed by what are called long or short vowels,[500] he suggests, "_as a last refuge_," (--25,) the very doubtful scheme of reading Latin and Greek poetry with the vowels conformed, agreeably to this English sense of _long_ and _short_ vowel sounds, to the ancient rules of quant.i.ty. Of such words as _fallo_ and _ambo_, p.r.o.nounced as we usually utter them, he says, "_nothing can be more evident_ than the long quant.i.ty of the final vowel though without the accent, and the short quant.i.ty of the initial and accented syllable."--_Obs. on Greek and Lat. Accent_, --23; Key, p. 331. Now the very reverse of this appears to me to be "evident." The _a_, indeed, may be close or short, while the _o_, having its primal or _name_ sound, is _called_ long; but the first _syllable_, if fully accented, will have _twice the time_ of the second; nor can this proportion be reversed but by changing the accent, and misplacing it on the latter syllable. Were the principle _true_, which the learned author p.r.o.nounces so "evident," these, and all similar words, would const.i.tute _iambic feet_; whereas it is plain, that in English they are _trochees_; and in Latin,--where "_o_ final is _common_,"--either _trochees_ or _spondees_. The word _ambo_, as every accurate scholar knows, is always a _trochee_, whether it be the Latin adjective for "_both_," or the English noun for "_a reading desk_, or _pulpit_."

OBS. 4.--The names of our poetic feet are all of them derived, by change of endings, from similar names used in Greek, and thence also in Latin; and, of course, English words and Greek or Latin, so related, are presumed to stand for things somewhat similar. This reasonable presumption is an argument, too often disregarded by late grammarians, for considering our poetic feet to be quant.i.tative, as were the ancient,--not accentual only, as some will have them,--nor separately both, as some others absurdly teach. But, whatever may be the difference or the coincidence between English verse and Greek or Latin, it is certain, that, in _our_ poetic division of syllables, strength and length must always concur, and any scheme which so contrasts accent with long quant.i.ty, as to confound the different species of feet, or give contradictory names to the same foot, must be radically and grossly defective. In the preceding section it has been shown, that the principles of quant.i.ty adopted by Sheridan, Murray, and others, being so erroneous as to be wholly nugatory, were as unfit to be the basis of English verse, as are Walker's, which have just been spoken of. But, the puzzled authors, instead of reforming these their elementary principles, so as to adapt them to the quant.i.ties and rhythms actually found in our English verse, have all chosen to a.s.sume, that our poetical feet in general _differ radically_ from those which the ancients called by the same names; and yet the _coincidence_ found--the "_exact sameness of nature_" acknowledged--is sagely said by some of them _to duplicate each foot into two distinct sorts for our especial advantage_; while the _difference_, which they presume to exist, or which their false principles of accent and quant.i.ty would create, between feet quant.i.tative and feet accentual, (both of which are allowed to us,) would _implicate different names_, and convert foot into foot--iambs, trochees, spondees, pyrrhics, each species into some other--till all were confusion!

OBS. 5.--In Lindley Murray's revised scheme of feet, we have first a paragraph from Sheridan's Rhetorical Grammar, suggesting that the ancient poetic measures were formed of syllables divided "into _long_ and _short_,"

and affirming, what is not very true, that, for the forming of ours, "In English, syllables are divided into _accented_ and _unaccented_."--_Rhet.

Gram._, p. 64; _Murray's Gram._, 8vo, 253; _Hart's Gram._, 182; and others.

Now _some_ syllables are accented, and others are unaccented; but syllables singly significant, i.e., monosyllables, which are very numerous, belong to neither of these cla.s.ses. The contrast is also comparatively new; our language had much good poetry, long before _accented_ and _unaccented_ were ever thus misapplied in it. Murray proceeds thus: "When the feet are formed by _accent on vowels_, they are _exactly of the same nature as ancient feet_, and have the same just quant.i.ty in their syllables. So that, in this respect, _we have all that the ancients had_, and something which they had not. We have in fact _duplicates of each foot_, yet with such a _difference_, as to fit them for _different purposes_, to be applied at our pleasure."--_Ib._, p. 253. Again: "_We_ have observed, that _English verse is composed of feet formed by accent_; and that when the accent falls on _vowels_, the feet are equivalent to those formed by quant.i.ty."--_Ib._, p.

258. And again: "From the preceding view of English versification, we may see _what a copious stock of materials_ it possesses. For _we are not only allowed the use of all the ancient poetic feet_, in our _heroic measure_, but we have, as before observed, _duplicates of each_, agreeing in movement, though differing in measure,[501] _and which_ make different impressions on the ear; _an opulence peculiar_ to our language, _and which_ may be the source of a boundless variety."--_Ib._, p. 259.

OBS. 6.--If it were not dullness to overlook the many errors and inconsistencies of this scheme, there should be thought a rare ingenuity in thus turning them all to the great advantage and peculiar riches of the English tongue! Besides several grammatical faults, elsewhere noticed, these extracts exhibit, first, the inconsistent notion--of "_duplicates with a difference_;" or, as Churchill expresses it, of "_two distinct species of each foot_;" (_New Gram._, p. 189;) and here we are gravely a.s.sured withal, that these _different sorts_, which have no separate names, are sometimes forsooth, "_exactly of the same nature_"! Secondly, it is incompatibly urged, that, "English verse is _composed of feet formed by accent_," and at the same time shown, that it partakes largely of _feet "formed by quant.i.ty_." Thirdly, if "_we have all that the ancients had_,"

of poetic feet, and "_duplicates of each_," "_which they had not_" we are enc.u.mbered with an enormous surplus; for, of the twenty-eight Latin feet,[502] mentioned by Dr. Adam and others, Murray never gave the names of more than eight, and his early editions acknowledged _but four_, and these _single_, not "_duplicates_"--_unigenous_, not severally of "_two species_." Fourthly, to suppose a multiplicity of feet to be "_a copious stock of materials_" for versification, is as absurd as to imagine, in any other case, a variety of _measures_ to be materials for producing the thing measured. Fifthly, "_our heroic measure_" is _iambic pentameter_, as Murray himself shows; and, to give to this, "_all the ancient poetic feet_," is to bestow most of them where they are least needed. Sixthly, "feet _differing in measure_," so as to "_make different impressions on the ear_," cannot well be said to "_agree in movement_," or to be "_exactly of the same nature!_"

OBS. 7.--Of the foundation of metre, _Wells_ has the following account: "The _quant.i.ty_ of a syllable is the relative time occupied in its p.r.o.nunciation. A syllable may be _long_ in quant.i.ty, as _fate_; or _short_, as _let_. The Greeks and Romans based their poetry on the quant.i.ty of syllables; but modern versification depends chiefly upon accent, the quant.i.ty of syllables being almost wholly disregarded."--_School Gram._, 1st Ed., p. 185. Again: "_Versification_ is a measured arrangement of words[,] in which the _accent_ is made to recur at certain regular intervals. This definition applies only to modern verse. In Greek and Latin poetry, it is the regular recurrence of _long syllables_, according to settled laws, which const.i.tutes verse."--_Ib._, p. 186. The contrasting of ancient and modern versification, since Sheridan and Murray each contrived an example of it, has become very common in our grammars, though not in principle very uniform; and, however needless where a correct theory prevails, it is, to such views of accent and quant.i.ty as were adopted by these authors, and by Walker, or their followers, but a necessary counterpart. The notion, however, that English verse has less regard to quant.i.ty than had that of the old Greeks or Romans, is a mere a.s.sumption, originating in a false idea of what quant.i.ty is; and, that Greek or Latin verse was less accentual than is ours, is another a.s.sumption, left proofless too, of what many authors disbelieve and contradict. Wells's definition of quant.i.ty is similar to mine, and perhaps unexceptionable; and yet his idea of the thing, as he gives us reason to think, was very different, and very erroneous. His examples imply, that, like Walker, he had "no conception of quant.i.ty arising from any thing but the nature of the vowels,"--no conception of a long or a short _syllable_ without what is called a long or a short _vowel sound_. That "the Greeks and Romans based their poetry on quant.i.ty" of that restricted sort,--on _such "quant.i.ty"_ as "_fate_" and "_let_" may serve to discriminate,--is by no means probable; nor would it be more so, were a hundred great modern masters to declare themselves ignorant of any other. The words do not distinguish at all the long and short quant.i.ties even of our own language; much less can we rely on them for an idea of what is long or short in other tongues. Being monosyllables, both are long with emphasis, both short without it; and, could they be accented, accent too would lengthen, as its absence would shorten both. In the words _phosphate_ and _streamlet_, we have the same sounds, both short; in _lettuce_ and _fateful_, the same, both long. This cannot be disproved. And, in the scansion of the following stanza from Byron, the word "_Let_" twice used, is to be reckoned a _long_ syllable, and not (as Wells would have it) a short one:

"Cavalier! and man of worth!

_Let_ these words of mine go forth; _Let_ the Moorish Monarch know, That to him I nothing owe: Wo is me, Alhama!"

OBS. 8.--In the English grammars of Allen H. Weld, works remarkable for their egregious inaccuracy and worthlessness, yet honoured by the Boston school committee of 1848 and '9, the author is careful to say, "Accent should not be confounded with emphasis. _Emphasis_ is a stress of voice on a word in a sentence, to mark its importance. _Accent_ is a stress of voice on a syllable in a word." Yet, within seven lines of this, we are told, that, "A _verse_ consists of a certain number of _accented and unaccented syllables_, arranged according to certain rules."--_Weld's English Grammar_, 2d Edition, p. 207; "Abridged Edition," p. 137. A doctrine cannot be contrived, which will more evidently or more extensively confound accent with emphasis, than does this! In English verse, on an average, about three quarters of the words are monosyllables, which, according to Walker, "have no accent," certainly none distinguishable from emphasis; hence, in fact, our syllables are no more "divided into _accented_ and _unaccented_" as Sheridan and Murray would have them, than into _emphasized_ and _unemphasized_, as some others have thought to cla.s.s them. Nor is this confounding of accent with emphasis at all lessened or palliated by teaching with Wells, in its justification, that, "The term _accent_ is also applied, in poetry, to _the_ stress laid on monosyllabic words."--_Wells's School Gram._, p. 185; 113th Ed., --273. What better is this, than to apply the term _emphasis_ to the accenting of syllables in poetry, or to all the stress in question, as is virtually done in the following citation? "In English, verse is regulated by the _emphasis_, as there should be one _emphatic_ syllable in every foot; for it is by the interchange of _emphatick_ and _non-emphatick_ syllables, that verse grateful to the ear is formed."--_Thomas Coar's E. Gram._, p. 196. In Latin poetry, the longer words predominate, so that, in Virgil's verse, not one word in five is a monosyllable; hence accent, if our use of it were adjusted to the Latin quant.i.ties, might have much more to do with Latin verse than with English.

With the following lines of Shakspeare, for example, accent has, properly speaking, no connexion;

"Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet; But thou shalt have; and creep time ne'er so slow, Yet it shall come, for me to do thee good.

I had a thing to say,--But let it go."--_King John_, Act iii, Sc. 3.

OBS. 9.--T. O. Churchill, after stating that the Greek and Latin rhythms are composed of syllables long and short, sets ours in contrast with them thus: "These terms are commonly employed also in speaking of English verse, though it is marked, _not by long and short_, but by accented and unaccented syllables; the accented syllables being _accounted_ long; the unaccented, short."--_Churchill's New Gram._, p. 183. This, though far from being right, is very different from the doctrine of Murray or Sheridan; because, in practice, or the scansion of verses, it comes to the _same results_ as to suppose all our feet to be "formed by quant.i.ty." To _account_ syllables long or short and not _believe_ them to _be_ so, is a ridiculous inconsistency: it is a shuffle in the name of science.

OBS. 10.--Churchill, though not apt to be misled by others' errors, and though his own scanning has no regard to the principle, could not rid himself of the notion, that the quant.i.ty of a syllable must depend on the "vowel sound." Accordingly he says, "Mr. Murray _justly observes_, that our accented syllables, or those reckoned long:, may have either _a long or [a]

short vowel sound_, so that we have _two distinct species_ of each foot."--_New Gram._, p. 189. The obvious impossibility of "two distinct species" in one,--or, as Murray has it, of "duplicates fitted for different purposes,"--should have prevented the teaching and repeating of this nonsense, propound it who might. The commender himself had not such faith in it as is here implied. In a note, too plainly incompatible with this praise, he comments thus: "Mr. Murray adds, that this is 'an opulence _peculiar_ to our language, and which may be the source of a boundless variety:' a point, on which, I confess, _I have long entertained doubts_. I am inclined to suspect that the English mode of reading verse _is a.n.a.logous_ to that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Dion. Hal., _de Comp., Verb_. --xi, speaks of the _rhythm of verse differing_ from the proper measure of the syllables, and often reversing it: does not this imply, that the ancients, contrary to the opinion of the learned author of Metronariston, read verse as we do?"--_Churchill's New Gram._, p. 393, note 329.

OBS. 11.--The nature, chief sources, and true distinction of _quant.i.ty_, at least as it pertains to our language, I have set forth with clearness, first in the short chapter on Utterance, and again, more fully in this, which treats of Versification; but that the syllables, long and short, of the old Greek and Latin poets, or the feet they made of them, are to be expounded on precisely the same principles that apply to ours. I have not deemed it necessary to affirm or to deny. So far as the same laws are applicable, let them be applied. This important property of syllables,--their _quant.i.ty_, or relative time,--which is the basis of all rhythm, is, as my readers have seen, very variously treated, and in general but ill appreciated, by our English prosodists, who ought, at least in this their own province, to understand it all alike, and as it is; and so common among the erudite is the confession of Walker, that "the accent and quant.i.ty of the ancients" are, to modern readers, "obscure and mysterious,"

that it will be taken as a sign of arrogance and superficiality, to pretend to a very certain knowledge of them. Nor is the difficulty confined to Latin and Greek verse: the poetry of our own ancestors, from any remote period, is not easy of scansion. Dr. Johnson, in his History of the English Language, gave examples, with this remark: "Of the _Saxon_ poetry some specimen is necessary, though our ignorance of the laws of their metre and the quant.i.ties of their syllables, _which it would be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to recover_, excludes us from that pleasure which the old bards undoubtedly gave to their contemporaries."

OBS. 12.--The imperfect measures of "the father of English poetry," are said by Dryden to have been _adapted to the ears_ of the rude age which produced them. "The verse of Chaucer," says he, "I confess, is not harmonious to us; but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was _auribus istius temporis accommodata_:' they who lived with him, and sometime after him, thought it musical; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lidgate and Gower, his contemporaries: there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect. It is true, I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him; for he would make us believe that the fault is in _our ears_, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine: but this opinion is not worth confuting; it is so gross and obvious an error, that common sense (which is a rule in every thing but matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader that equality of numbers in every verse, which we call Heroic, was either not known, or not always practised in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no p.r.o.nunciation can make otherwise. We can only say, that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first."--_British Poets_, Vol. iii, p. 171.

OBS. 13.--Dryden appears to have had more faith in the ears of his own age than in those of an earlier one; but Poe, of our time, himself an ingenious versifier, in his Notes upon English Verse, conveys the idea that all ears are alike competent to appreciate the elements of metre. "Quant.i.ty,"

according to his dogmatism, "is a point in the investigation of which the lumber of mere learning may be dispensed with, if ever in any. _Its appreciation_" says he, "_is universal_. It appertains to no region, nor race, nor era in especial. To melody and to harmony the Greeks hearkened with ears precisely similar to those which we employ, for similar purposes, at present; and a pendulum at Athens would have vibrated much after the same fas.h.i.+on as does a pendulum in the city of Penn."--_The Pioneer_, Vol.

i. p. 103. Supposing here not even the oscillations of the same pendulum to be more uniform than are the nature and just estimation of quant.i.ty the world over, this author soon after expounds his idea of the thing as follows: "I have already said that all syllables, in metre, are either long or short. Our usual prosodies maintain that a long syllable is equal, in its time, to two short ones; this, however, is but an approach to the truth. It should be here observed that the quant.i.ty of an English syllable _has no dependence upon_ the sound of its vowel or dipthong [diphthong], but [depends] chiefly upon _accentuation_. Monosyllables are exceedingly variable, and, for the most part, may be either long or short, to suit the demand of the rhythm. In polysyllables, the accented _ones_ [say, _syllables_] are always long, while those which immediately precede or succeed them, are always short. _Emphasis_ will render any short syllable long."--_Ibid._, p. 105. In penning the last four sentences, the writer must have had Brown's Inst.i.tutes of English Grammar before him, and open at page 235.

OBS. 14.--Sheridan, in his Rhetorical Grammar, written about 1780, after a.s.serting that a distinction of accent, and not of quant.i.ty, marks the movement of English verse, proceeds as follows: "From not having examined the peculiar genius of our tongue, our Prosodians have fallen into a variety of errors; some having adopted the rules of our neighbours, the French; and others having had recourse to those of the ancients; though neither of them, in reality, would square with our tongue, on account of an essential difference _between them_. [He means, "_between each language and ours_," and should have said so.] With regard to the French, they measured verses by the number of syllables whereof they were composed, on account of a const.i.tutional defect in their tongue, which rendered it incapable of numbers formed by poetic feet. For it has neither accent nor quant.i.ty suited to the purpose; the syllables of their words being for the most part equally accented; and the number of long syllables being out of all proportion greater than that of the short. Hence for a long time it was supposed, _as it is by most people at present_, that our verses were composed, not of feet, but syllables; and accordingly they _are denominated_ verses often, eight, six, or four syllables, _even to this day_. Thus have we lost sight of the great advantage which our language has given us over the French, in point of poetic numbers, by its being capable of a geometrical proportion, on which the harmony of versification depends; and blindly reduced ourselves to that of the arithmetical kind which contains no natural power of pleasing the ear. And hence like the French, our chief pleasure in verse arises from the poor ornament of rhyme."--_Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram._, p. 64.

OBS. 15.--In a recent work on this subject, Sheridan is particularly excepted, and he alone, where Hallam, Johnson, Lord Kames, and other "Prosodians" in general, are charged with "astonis.h.i.+ng ignorance of the first principles of our verse;" and, at the same time, he is as particularly commended of having "especially insisted on the subject of Quant.i.ty."--_Everett's English Versification, Preface_, p. 6. That the rhetorician was but slenderly ent.i.tled to these compliments, may plainly appear from the next paragraph of his Grammar just cited; for therein he mistakingly represents it as a central error, to regard our poetic feet as being "formed by quant.i.ty" at all. "Some few of our Prosodians," says he, "finding this to be an error, and that our verses were really composed of feet, not syllables, without farther examination, boldly applied all the rules of the Latin prosody to our versification; though scarce any of them answered exactly, and some of them were utterly incompatible with the genius of our tongue. _Thus because the Roman feet were formed by quant.i.ty, they a.s.serted the same of ours, denominating all the accented syllables long; whereas I have formerly shewn, that the accent, in some cases, as certainly makes the syllable on which it is laid, short, as in others it makes it long_. And their whole theory of quant.i.ty, borrowed from the Roman, in which they endeavour to establish the proportion of long and short, as immutably fixed to the syllables of words constructed in a certain way, at once falls to the ground; when it is shewn, that the quant.i.ty of our syllables is _perpetually varying with the sense_, and is _for the most part regulated by_ EMPHASIS: which has been fully proved in the course of Lectures on the Art of reading Verse; where it has been also shewn, that _this very circ.u.mstance_ has given us an _amazing advantage over the ancients_ in the point of poetic numbers."--_Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram._, p. 64.

OBS. 16.--The lexicographer here claims to have "_shewn_" or "_proved_,"

what he had only _affirmed_, or _a.s.serted_. Erroneously taking the quality of the vowel for the quant.i.ty of the syllable, he had suggested, in his confident way, that short quant.i.ty springs from the accenting of _consonants_, and long quant.i.ty, from the accenting of _vowels_--a doctrine which has been amply noticed and refuted in a preceding section of the present chapter. Nor is he, in what is here cited, consistent with himself.

For, in the first place, nothing comes nearer than this doctrine of his, to an "endeavour to establish the proportion of long and short, as immutably fixed to the syllables of words constructed in a certain way"! Next, although he elsewhere contrasts accent and emphasis, and supposes them different, he either confounds them in reference to verse, or contradicts himself by ascribing to each the chief control over quant.i.ty. And, lastly, if our poetic feet are not quant.i.tative, not formed of syllables long and short, as were the Roman, what "advantage over the ancients," can we derive from the fact, that quant.i.ty is regulated by stress, whether accent or emphasis?

OBS. 17.--We have, I think, no prosodial treatise of higher pretensions than Erastus Everett's "System of English Versification," first published in 1848. This gentleman professes to have borrowed no idea but what he has regularly quoted. "He mentions this, that it may not be supposed that this work is a compilation. It will be seen," says he, "how great a share of it is original; and the author, having deduced his rules from the usage of the great poets, has the best reason for being confident of their correctness."--_Preface_, p. 5. Of the place to be filled by this System, he has the following conception: "It is thought to supply an important desideratum. It is a matter of surprise to the foreign student, who attempts the study of English poetry and the structure of its verse, to find that _we have no work on which he can rely as authority on this subject_. In the other modern languages, the most learned philologers have treated of the subject of versification, in all its parts. In English alone, in a language which possesses a body of poetical literature more extensive, as well as more valuable than any other modern language, not excepting the Italian, _the student has no rules to guide him_, but a few meagre and incorrect outlines appended to elementary text-books." Then follows this singularly inconsistent exception: "We must except from this remark two works, published in the latter part of the sixteenth century.