English Verse Part 56

[49] This discussion is in part a reproduction of an article with the same t.i.tle originally published in _Modern Language Notes_, December, 1899.

[50] _Science of English Verse_, p. 65.

[51] On the nature of our sense of rhythm, see Mr. T. L. Bolton's account of his experiments relating to the subject, given in the _American Journal of Psychology_, vol. vi, p. 145. He reaches the conclusion that, in order to awaken the sense of rhythm, it is necessary that "the accents in a line shall recur at regular intervals."

[52] Similarly, so distinguished a scholar as Professor Skeat has lately opposed the scansion of English verse by feet, in the _Transactions of the Philological Society_ for 1897-1898. For an ample examination of his views the reader must be referred to the new edition of Mr. Mayor's _Chapters on English Metre_, chap. vii.

[53] See Mr. Larminie's article on "The Development of English Metres"

in the _Contemporary Review_ for November, 1894. In this article there is one of the clearest statements of the place of quant.i.ty in our verse that one can easily find. Mr. Larminie seems disposed, however, to place too much stress on the element of fixed or natural quant.i.ty, and sometimes to use the terms "long" and "short" with merely traditional meanings. The most characteristic feature of his discussion is, that he establishes certain principles of quant.i.ty, and judges the poets by their conformity to these principles. The inductive method is less pretentious and perhaps safer: to inquire what the poets do, and how in the reading of their verse we may preserve the rhythm which they undoubtedly had in mind. Both methods are legitimate. One will lay down rules for the poet, another for the reader; and there is perhaps as much chance of one being followed as of the other.

[54] At least no difficulty has generally been found; but Mr. Liddell marks the word as one which _must_ be stressed from its grammatical importance. He even finds Coleridge untrue to the metre in putting _where_ in an unstressed place in the verse, on the ground that it means "through which." It would perhaps be safe to guess that no unsophisticated English reader has ever found difficulty in the accents of the line in question. The matter is worthy of remark as ill.u.s.trating the tendency of one cla.s.s of readers to emphasize _sense_-reading at the expense of rhythm. On the other hand, for an ill.u.s.tration of the opposite extreme see Professor Bright's article on "Grammatical Ictus in English Verse," in the Furnivall _Miscellany_ (1901), where we are told, in effect, that the metrical accent must always triumph over the sense-accent. As usual, the truth seems to lie somewhere between the extremes.

[55] This seems to be a part of the old effort to seek a grammatical rather than a musical origin for metre. On this subject the reader should see the brilliant discussion of Professor Gummere in _The Beginnings of Poetry_, from which a few paragraphs are quoted in Part Four.

PART FOUR

THE PLACE AND FUNCTION OF THE METRICAL ELEMENT IN POETRY

The following extracts from important critical discussions are selected with reference to their bearing on two questions: Is metre an essential or only an incidental element of poetry? and, What are its functions in the total content and effect of poetry? The student of the subject will do well to a.n.a.lyze the answers to the second question, determining under how many aspects of the metrical element they can be grouped.

Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood.... Next, there is the instinct for harmony and rhythm, metres being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special apt.i.tudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.

(ARISTOTLE: _Poetics_, iv. Butcher's translation, pp. 15, 17.)

Poetry, music, and dancing const.i.tute in Aristotle a group by themselves, their common element being imitation by means of rhythm--rhythm which admits of being applied to words, sounds, and the movements of the body. The history of these arts bears out the views we find expressed in Greek writers upon the theory of music; it is a witness to the primitive unity of music and poetry, and to the close alliance of the two with dancing.... The intimate fusion of the three arts afterward known as the "musical" arts--or rather we should perhaps say, the alliance of music and dancing under the supremacy of poetry--was exhibited even in the person of the artist. The office of the poet as teacher of the chorus demanded a practical knowledge of all that pa.s.sed under the term "dancing," including steps, gestures, att.i.tudes, and the varied resources of rhythmical movement.... The poet, lyric or dramatic, composed the accompaniment as well as wrote the verses; and it was made a reproach against Euripides, who was the first to deviate from the established usage, that he sought the aid of Iophon, son of Sophocles, in the musical setting of his dramas. The very word "poet" in cla.s.sical times often implies the twofold character of poet and musician, and in later writers is sometimes used, like our "composer," in a strictly limited reference to music.

Aristotle does full justice to the force of rhythmic form and movement in the arts of music and dancing. The instinctive love of melody and rhythm is, again, one of the two causes to which he traces the origin of poetry, but he lays little stress on this element in estimating the finished products of the poetic art. In the _Rhetoric_ he observes that if a sentence has metre it will be poetry; but this is said in a popular way. It was doubtless the received opinion, but it is one which he twice combats in the _Poetics_, insisting that it is not metrical form that makes a poem....

The general question whether metre is necessary for poetical expression has been raised by many modern critics and poets, and has sometimes been answered in the negative, as by Sidney, Sh.e.l.ley, Wordsworth. It is, however, worth observing that from Aristotle's point of view, which was mainly one of observation, the question to be determined was rather as to the vehicle or medium of literary _mimesis_; and so far as the _mimesis_ doctrine is concerned, it is undeniable that some kinds of imaginative subject-matter are better expressed in prose, some in verse, and that Aristotle, who had before him experimental examples of writings poetic in spirit, but not metrical in form, had sufficient grounds for advocating an extension of meaning for the term _poietes_. But as regards the _Art_ of Poetry, his reasoning does not lead us to conclude that he would have reckoned the authors of prose dialogues or romances among poets strictly so called. As Mr. Courthope truly says, "he does not attempt to prove that metre is not a necessary accompaniment of the higher conceptions of poetry," and he, "therefore, cannot be ranged with those who support that extreme opinion." Still there would appear to be some want of firmness in the position he takes up as to the place and importance of metre. In his definition of tragedy (chap. vi. 2) "embellished language" is included among the const.i.tuent elements of tragedy; and the phrase is then explained to mean language that has the twofold charm of metre (which is a branch of rhythm) and of melody. But these elements are placed in a subordinate rank and are hardly treated as essentials. They are in this respect not unlike scenery or spectacular effect, which, though deduced by Aristotle from the definition, is not explicitly mentioned in it. The essence of the poetry is the "imitation"; the melody and the verse are the "seasoning" of the language.... Aristotle, highly as he rates the aesthetic capacity of the sense of hearing in his treatment of music, says nothing to show that he values at its proper worth the power of rhythmical sound as factor in poetry; and this is the more striking in a Greek, whose enjoyment of poetry came through the ear rather than the eye, and for whom poetry was so largely a.s.sociated with music. After all, there can hardly be a greater difference between two ways of saying the same thing than that one is said in verse, the other in prose. There are some lyrics which have lived and will always live by their musical charm, and by a strange magic that lies in the setting of the words. We need not agree with a certain modern school who would empty all poetry of poetical thought and etherealize it till it melts into a strain of music; who sing to us we hardly know of what, but in such a way that the echoes of the real world, its men and women, its actual stir and conflict, are faint and hardly to be discerned. The poetry, we are told, resides not in the ideas conveyed, not in the blending of soul and sense, but in the sound itself, in the cadence of the verse. Yet, false as this view may be, it is not perhaps more false than that other which wholly ignores the effect of musical sound and looks only to the thought that is conveyed.

Aristotle comes perilously near this doctrine.

(S. H. BUTCHER: _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_. pp.

138-147.)

It is not riming and versing that maketh a poet, no more than a long gown maketh an advocate; who, though he pleaded in armor, should be an advocate and no soldier. But it is that feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful teaching which must be the right describing note to know a poet by; although, indeed, the senate of poets hath chosen verse as their fittest raiment, meaning, as in matter they pa.s.sed all in all, so in manner to go beyond them: not speaking (table-talk fas.h.i.+on, or like men in a dream) words as they chanceably fell from the mouth, but poyzing each syllable of each word by just proportion according to the dignity of the subject....

It is already said (and as I think, truly said) it is not riming and versing that maketh poesy.... But yet, presuppose it were inseparable (as, indeed, it seemeth Scaliger judgeth) truly it were an inseparable commendation. For if _oratio_ next to _ratio_, speech next to reason, be the greatest gift bestowed upon mortality, that cannot be praiseless, which doth most polish that blessing of speech, which considers each word, not only (as a man may say) by his forcible quality, but by his measured quant.i.ty, carrying even in themselves a harmony, without (perchance) number, measure, order, proportion, be in our time grown odious. But lay aside the just praise it hath, by being the only fit speech for music (music, I say, the most divine striker of the senses); thus much is undoubtedly true, that if reading be foolish, without remembering, memory being the only treasurer of knowledge, those words which are fittest for memory are likewise most convenient for knowledge.

Now, that verse far exceedeth prose in the knitting up of the memory, the reason is manifest. The words (besides their delight, which hath a great affinity to memory), being so set, as one word cannot be lost, but the whole work fails, which accuseth itself, calleth the remembrance back to itself, and so most strongly confirmeth it. Besides, one word so as it were begetting another, as be it in rime or measured verse, by the former a man shall have a near guess to the follower.... So that, verse being in itself sweet and orderly, and being best for memory, the only handle of knowledge, it must be in jest that any man can speak against it.

(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _An Apologie for Poetrie_.)

Versification, or the art of modulating his numbers, is indispensably necessary to a poet. Every other power by which the understanding is enlightened, or the imagination enchanted, may be exercised in prose.

But the poet has this peculiar superiority, that to all the powers which the perfection of every other composition can require, he adds the faculty of joining music with reason, and of acting at once upon the senses and the pa.s.sions. I suppose there are few who do not feel themselves touched by poetical melody, and who will not confess that they are more or less moved by the same thoughts, as they are conveyed by different sounds, and more affected by the same words in one order than another. The perception of harmony is, indeed, conferred upon men in degrees very unequal; but there are none who do not perceive it, or to whom a regular series of proportionate sounds cannot give delight.

(SAMUEL JOHNSON: _The Rambler_, No. 86.)

Various causes might be pointed out why, when the style is manly, and the subject of some importance, words metrically arranged will long continue to impart such a pleasure to mankind as he who proves the extent of that pleasure will be desirous to impart. The end of poetry is to produce excitement in coexistence with an overbalance of pleasure; but, by the supposition, excitement is an unusual and irregular state of the mind; ideas and feelings do not, in that state, succeed each other in accustomed order.... Now the co-presence of something regular, something to which the mind has been accustomed in various moods and in a less excited state, cannot but have great efficacy in tempering and restraining the pa.s.sion by an intertexture of ordinary feeling, and of feeling not strictly and necessarily connected with the pa.s.sion. This is unquestionably true; and hence, though the opinion will at first appear paradoxical, from the tendency of metre to divest language, in a certain degree, of its reality, and thus to throw a sort of half-consciousness of unsubstantial existence over the whole composition, there can be little doubt but that more pathetic situations and sentiments--that is, those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them--may be endured in metrical composition, especially in rime, than in prose.... This opinion may be further ill.u.s.trated by appealing to the reader's own experience of the reluctance with which he comes to the reperusal of the distressful parts of _Clarissa Harlowe_, or the _Gamester_; while Shakspere's writings, in the most pathetic scenes, never act upon us as pathetic beyond the bounds of pleasure--an effect which, in a much greater degree than might at first be imagined, is to be ascribed to small, but continual and regular impulses of pleasurable surprise from the metrical arrangement.[56] On the other hand (what it must be allowed will much more frequently happen), if the poet's words should be incommensurate with the pa.s.sion, and inadequate to raise the reader to a height of desirable excitement, then (unless the poet's choice of his metre has been grossly injudicious), in the feelings of pleasure which the reader has been accustomed to connect with metre in general, and in the feeling, whether cheerful or melancholy, which he has been accustomed to connect with that particular movement of metre, there will be found something which will greatly contribute to impart pa.s.sion to the words, and to effect the complex end which the poet proposes to himself.

If I had undertaken a systematic defence of the theory here maintained, it would have been my duty to develop the various causes upon which the pleasure received from metrical language depends. Among the chief of these causes is to be reckoned a principle which must be well known to those who have made any of the Arts the object of accurate reflection; namely, the pleasure which the mind derives from the perception of similitude in dissimilitude. This principle is the great spring of the activity of our minds, and their chief feeder.... It would not be a useless employment to apply this principle to the consideration of metre, and to show that metre is hence enabled to afford much pleasure, and to point out in what manner that pleasure is produced. But my limits will not permit me to enter upon this subject, and I must content myself with a general summary.

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity; the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from various causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any pa.s.sions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will, upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment. If Nature be thus cautious to preserve in a state of enjoyment a being so employed, the Poet ought to profit by the lesson held forth to him, and ought especially to take care that, whatever pa.s.sions he communicates to his reader, those pa.s.sions, if his reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should always be accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure. Now the music of harmonious metrical language, the sense of difficulty overcome, and the blind a.s.sociation of pleasure which has been previously received from works of rime or metre of the same or similar construction, an indistinct perception perpetually renewed of language closely resembling that of real life, and yet, in the circ.u.mstance of metre, differing from it so widely--all these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of delight, which is of the most important use in tempering the painful feeling always found intermingled with powerful descriptions of the deeper pa.s.sions. This effect is always produced in pathetic and impa.s.sioned poetry; while, in lighter compositions, the ease and gracefulness with which the Poet manages his numbers are themselves confessedly a princ.i.p.al source of the gratification of the reader. All that it is necessary to say, however, upon this subject, may be effected by affirming, what few persons will deny, that of two descriptions, either of pa.s.sions, manners, or characters, each of them equally well executed, the one in prose and the other in verse, the verse will be read a hundred times where the prose is read once.

(WORDSWORTH: Preface to the _Lyrical Ballads_, 2d ed.)

The true question must be,[57] whether there are not modes of expression, a construction, and an order of sentences, which are in their fit and natural place in a serious prose composition, but would be disproportionate and heterogeneous in metrical poetry; and, _vice versa_, whether in the language of a serious poem there may not be an arrangement both of words and sentences, and a use and selection of (what are called) figures of speech, both as to their kind, their frequency, and their occasions, which on a subject of equal weight would be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend that in both cases this unfitness of each for the place of the other frequently will and ought to exist. And, first, from the origin of metre. This I would trace to the balance in the mind effected by the spontaneous effort which strives to hold in check the workings of pa.s.sion. It might be easily explained likewise in what manner this salutary antagonism is a.s.sisted by the very state which it counteracts; and how this balance of antagonists became organized into metre (in the usual acceptation of that term) by a supervening act of the will and judgment, consciously and for the foreseen purpose of pleasure. a.s.suming these principles as the data of our argument, we deduce from them two legitimate conditions, which the critic is ent.i.tled to expect in every metrical work. First, that as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of increased excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural language of excitement. Secondly, that as these elements are formed into metre artificially, by a voluntary act, with the design and for the purpose of blending delight with emotion, so the traces of present volition should throughout the metrical language be proportionally discernible....

Secondly, I argue from the effects of metre. As far as metre acts in and for itself, it tends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility both of the general feelings and of the attention. This effect it produces by the continued excitement of surprise, and by the quick reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited, which are too slight indeed to be at any moment objects of distinct consciousness, yet become considerable in their aggregate influence. As a medicated atmosphere, or as wine during animated conversation, they act powerfully, though themselves unnoticed. Where, therefore, correspondent food and appropriate matter are not provided for the attention and feelings thus roused, there must needs be disappointment felt;--like that of leaping in the dark from the last step of a staircase, when we had prepared our muscles for a leap of three or four.

The discussion on the powers of metre, in the Preface, is highly ingenious, and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any statement of its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the contrary, Mr. Wordsworth seems always to estimate metre by the powers which it exerts during (and, as I think, in consequence of) its combination with other elements of poetry. Thus the previous difficulty is left unanswered, what the elements are with which it must be combined in order to produce its own effects to any pleasurable purpose.... For any poetic purposes, metre resembles (if the aptness of the simile may excuse its meanness) yeast, worthless or disagreeable by itself, but giving vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is proportionally combined....

Metre in itself is simply a stimulant of the attention, and therefore excites the question, Why is the attention to be thus stimulated? Now the question cannot be answered by the pleasure of the metre itself; for this we have shown to be conditional, and dependent on the appropriateness of the thoughts and expressions to which the metrical form is superadded. Neither can I conceive any other answer that can be rationally given, short of this: I write in metre, because I am about to use a language different from that of prose....

Thirdly, I deduce the position from all the causes elsewhere a.s.signed which render metre the proper form of poetry, and poetry imperfect and defective without metre. Metre, therefore, having been connected with poetry most often, and by a peculiar fitness, whatever else is combined with metre must, though it be not itself essentially poetic, have nevertheless some property in common with poetry, as an intermedium of affinity.

(COLERIDGE: _Biographia Literaria_, chap. xviii.)

In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these cla.s.ses of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called taste by modern writers....

Language, color, form, and religious and civil habits of action are all the instruments and materials of poetry; and they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created by that imperial faculty whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and pa.s.sions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and delicate combinations than color, form, or motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation.... Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relations has always been found connected with a perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its influence than the words themselves, without reference to that peculiar order.... An observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of harmony in the language of poetical minds, together with its relation to music, produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony and language. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be observed.

(Sh.e.l.lEY: _A Defence of Poetry_.)

Poetry, in its matter and form, is natural imagery or feeling, combined with pa.s.sion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the ordinary use of language with musical expression. There is a question of long standing in what the essence of poetry consists, or what it is that determines why one set of ideas should be expressed in prose, another in verse. Milton has told us his idea of poetry in a single line:

"Thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers."

As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and the song and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts that lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound, and change "the words of Mercury into the songs of Apollo." ... The jerks, the breaks, the inequalities and harshnesses of prose are fatal to the flow of a poetical imagination, as a jolting road or a stumbling horse disturbs the reverie of an absent man. But poetry "makes these odds all even." It is the music of language, answering to the music of the mind, untying, as it were, "the secret soul of harmony." Wherever any object takes such a hold of the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a sentiment of enthusiasm; wherever a movement of imagination or pa.s.sion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, or gradually varied, according to the occasion, to the sounds that express it--this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a near connection between music and deep-rooted pa.s.sion. Mad people sing. As often as articulation pa.s.ses naturally into intonation, there poetry begins.... It is to supply the inherent defect of harmony in the customary mechanism of language, to make the sound an echo to the sense, when the sense becomes a sort of echo to itself--to mingle the tide of verse, "the golden cadences of poetry," with the tide of feeling, flowing and murmuring as it flows--in short, to take the language of the imagination from off the ground; and enable it to spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses:

"Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air,"

without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abruptnesses and petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of prose, that poetry was invented. It is to common language what springs are to a carriage, or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony by the modulations of the voice; in poetry the same thing is done systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has been well observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose.... An excuse might be made for rime in the same manner. It is but fair that the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail itself of the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence of syllables, that have been displayed in the invention and collocation of images. It is allowed that rime a.s.sists the memory.... But if the jingle of names a.s.sists the memory, may it not also quicken the fancy?

(WILLIAM HAZLITT: _On Poetry in General_.)