From what I have said about the equalization of the several feet of a line, it must not be deduced that any necessity for equality in time exists between the rhythm of several lines. A poem, or even a stanza, may begin with iambuses in the first line, and proceed with anapaests in the second, or even with the less accordant dactyls, as in the opening of quite a pretty specimen of verse by Miss Mary A. S. Aldrich:
The wa / ter li / ly sleeps / in pride /
Down in the / depths of the / Azure / [lake.] /
Here azure is a spondee, equivalent to a dactyl; lake a caesura.
I shall now best proceed in quoting the initial lines of Byron's "Bride of Abydos":
Know ye the land where, the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime,
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle
Now melt into softness, now madden to crime?
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,
And the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume.
Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul in their bloom?
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,
And all save the spirit of man is divine?
'Tis the land of the East- 'tis the clime of the Sun Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done?
Oh, wild as the accents of lovers' farewell
Are the hearts that they bear and the tales that they tell. Now the flow of these lines (as times go) is very sweet and musical. They have been often admired, and justly- as times go- that is to say, it is a rare thing to find better versification of its kind. And where verse is pleasant to the ear, it is silly to find fault with it because it refuses to be scanned. Yet I have heard men, professing to be scholars, who made no scruple of abusing these lines of Byron's on the ground that they were musical in spite of all law. Other gentlemen, not scholars, abused "all law" for the same reasonand it occurred neither to the one party nor to the other that the law about which they were disputing might possibly be no law at all- an ass of a law in the skin of a lion.
The Grammars said nothing about dactylic lines, and it was easily seen that these lines were at least meant for dactylic. The first one was, therefore, thus divided:
Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle. /
The concluding foot was a mystery; but the Prosodies said something about the dactylic "measure" calling now and then for a double rhyme; and the court of inquiry were content to rest in the double rhyme, without exactly perceiving what a double rhyme had to do with the question of an irregular foot. Quitting the first line, the second was thus scanned: are emblems / of deeds that / are done in / their clime. / It was immediately seen, however, that this would not do- it was at war with the whole emphasis of the reading. It could not be supposed that Byron, or any one in his senses, intended to place stress upon such monosyllables as "are," "of," and "their," nor could "their clime," collated with "to crime," in the corresponding line below, be fairly twisted into anything like a "double rhyme," so as to bring everything within the category of the Grammars. But farther these Grammars spoke not. The inquirers, therefore, in spite of their sense of harmony in the lines, when considered without reference to scansion, fell upon the idea that the "Are" was a blunder- an excess for which the poet should be sent to Coventry- and, striking it out, they scanned the remainder of the line as follows:
- emblems of / deeds that are / done in their / clime. This answered pretty well; but the Grammars admitted no such foot as a foot of one syllable; and besides the rhythm was dactylic. In despair, the books are well searched, however, and at last the investigators are gratified by a full solution of the riddle in the profound "Observation" quoted in the beginning of this article:- "When a syllable is wanting, the verse is said to be catalectic, when the measure is exact, the line is acatalectic; when there is a redundant syllable it forms hypermeter" This is enough. The anomalous line is pronounced to be catalectic at the head and to form hypermeter at the tail- and so on, and so on; it being soon discovered that nearly all the remaining lines are in a similar predicament, and that what flows so smoothly to the ear, although so roughly to the eye, is, after all, a mere jumble of catalecticism, acatalecticism, and hypermeter- not to say worse.
Now, had this court of inquiry been in possession of even the shadow of the philosophy of Verse, they would have had no trouble in reconciling this oil and water of the eye and ear, by merely scanning the passage without reference to lines, and, continuously, thus:
Know ye the / land where the / cypress and myrtle Are / emblems of deeds that are / done in their / clime Where the rage of the / vulture the / love of the / turtle Now / melt into / softness now / madden to / Know ye the / land of the / cedar and / vine Where the flowers ever / blossom the / beams ever / shine And the / light wings of / Zephyr op / pressed by per / fume Wax / faint o'er the / gardens of / Gul in their / bloom where the / citron and / olive are / fairest of / fruit And the / voice of the / nightingale / never is / mute Where the / virgins are / soft as the / roses they / twine And / all save the / spirit of / man is di / vine. 'Tis the / land of the / East 'tis the / clime of the / sum Can he / smile on such / deeds as his / children have / done Oh / wild as the / accents of / lovers' fare / well Are the / hearts that they / bear and the / tales that they / tell. Here "crime" and "tell" are caesuras, each having the value of a dactyl, four short syllables, while "fume Wax," "twine And," and "done Oh," are spondees which, of course, being composed of two long syllables are also equal to four short, and are the dactyl's natural equivalent. The nicety of Byron's ear has led him into a succession of feet which, with two trivial exceptions as regards melody, are absolutely accurate, a very rare occurrence this in dactylic or anapaestic rhythms. The exceptions are found in the spondee "twine And," and the dactyl "smile on such." Both feet are false in point of melody. In "twine And" to make out the rhyme we must force "And" into a length which it will not naturally bear. We are called on to sacrifice either the proper length of the syllable as demanded by its position as a member of a spondee, or the customary accentuation of the word in conversation. There is no hesitation, and should be none. We at once give up the sound for the sense, and the rhythm is imperfect. In this instance it is very slightly so, not one person in ten thousand could by ear detect the inaccuracy. But the perfection of verse as regards melody, consists in its never demanding any such sacrifice as is here demanded. The rhythmical must agree thoroughly with the reading flow. This perfection has in no instance been attained, but is unquestionably attainable. "Smile on such," a dactyl, is incorrect, because "such," from the character of the two consonants ch cannot easily be enunciated in the ordinary time of a short syllable, which its position declares that it is. Almost every reader will be able to appreciate the slight difficulty here, and yet the error is by no means so important as that of the "And" in the spondee. By dexterity we may pronounce "such" in the true time, but the attempt to remedy the rhythmical deficiency of the And by drawing it out, merely aggrevates the offence against natural enunciation by directing attention to the offence.
My main object, however, in quoting these lines is to show that in spite of the Prosodies, the length of a line is entirely an arbitrary matter. We might divide the commencement of Byron's poem thus: Know ye the / land where the / or thus:
Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / or thus:
Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle are / or thus:
Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle are / emblems of In short, we may give it any division we please, and the lines will be good, provided we have at least two feet in a line. As in mathematics two units are required to form number, so rhythm (from the Greek arithmos, number) demands for its formation at least two feet. Beyond doubt, we often see such lines as
My second object in quoting Byron's lines was that of showing how absurd it often is to cite a single line from amid the body of a poem for the purpose of instancing the perfection or imperfection of the lines rhythm. Were we to see by itself
Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle, we might justly condemn it as defective in the final foot, which is equal to only three, instead of being equal to four short syllables.
In the foot "flowers ever" we shall find a further exemplification of the principle of the bastard iambus, bastard trochee, and quick trochee, as I have been at some pains in describing these feet above. All the Prosodies on English verse would insist upon making elision in "flowers," thus (flow'rs), but this is nonsense. In the quick trochee (many Are the) occurring in Mr. Cranch's trochaic line, we had to equalize the time of the three syllables (ny, are, the) to that of the one short syllable whose position they usurp. Accordingly each of these syllables is equal to the third of a short syllable, that is to say, the sixth of a long. But in Byron's dactylic rhythm, we have to equalize the time of the three syllables (ers, ev, er) to that of the one long syllable whose position they usurp, or (which is the same thing) of the two short. Therefore the value of each of the syllables (ers, ev, and er) is the third of a long. We enunciate them with only half the rapidity we employ in enunciating the three final syllables of the quick trochee- which latter is a rare foot. The "flowers ever," on the contrary, is as common in the dactylic rhythm as is the bastard trochee in the trochaic, or the bastard iambus in the iambic. We may as well accent it with the curve of the crescent to the right and call it a bastard dactyl. A bastard anapaest, whose nature I now need be at no trouble in explaining, will of course occur now and then in an anapaestic rhythm.
[A brief discussion of diacritical marks has been eliminated. Ed.]
I began the "processes" by a suggestion of the spondee as the first step towards verse. But the innate monotony of the spondee has caused its disappearance as the basis of rhythm from all modern poetry. We may say, indeed, that the French heroic- the most wretchedly monotonous verse in existence- is to all intents and purposes spondaic. But it is not designedly spondaic, and if the French were ever to examine it at all, they would no doubt pronounce it iambic. It must be observed that the French language is strangely peculiar in this point- that it is without accentuation and consequently without verse. The genius of the people, rather than the structure of the tongue, declares that their words are for the most part enunciated with a uniform dwelling on each syllable. For example we say "syllabification." A Frenchman would say syl-la-bi-fi-ca-ti-on, dwelling on no one of the syllables with any noticeable particularity. Here again I put an extreme case in order to be well understood, but the general fact is as I give it- that, comparatively, the French have no accentuation; and there can be nothing worth the name of verse without. Therefore, the French have no verse worth the name- which is the fact put in sufficiently plain terms. Their iambic rhythm so superabounds in absolute spondees as to warrant me in calling its basis spondaic; but French is the only modern tongue which has any rhythm with such basis, and even in the French it is, as I have said, unintentional.
Admitting, however, the validity of my suggestion, that the spondee was the first approach to verse, we should expect to find, first, natural spondees (words each forming just a spondee) most abundant in the most ancient languages; and, secondly, we should expect to find spondees forming the basis of the most ancient rhythms. These expectations are in both cases confirmed.
Of the Greek hexameter the intentional basis is spondaic. The dactyls are the variation of the theme. It will be observed that there is no absolute certainty about their points of interposition. The penultimate foot, it is true, is usually a dactyl but not uniformly so, while the ultimate, on which the ear lingers, is always a spondee. Even that the penultimate is usually a dactyl may be clearly referred to the necessity of winding up with the distinctive spondee. In corroboration of this idea, again, we should look to find the penultimate spondee most usual in the most ancient verse, and, accordingly, we find it more frequent in the Greek than in the Latin hexameter.
But besides all this, spondees are not only more prevalent in the heroic hexameter than dactyls, but occur to such an extent as is even unpleasant to modern ears, on account of monotony. What the modern chiefly appreciates and admires in the Greek hexameter is the melody of the abundant vowel sounds. The Latin hexameters really please very few moderns- although so many pretend to fall into ecstasies about them. In the hexameters quoted several pages ago, from Silius Italicus, the preponderance of the spondee is strikingly manifest. Besides the natural spondees of the Greek and Latin, numerous artificial ones arise in the verse of these tongues, on account of the tendency which inflection has to throw full accentuation on terminal syllables, and the preponderance of the spondee is further ensured by the comparative infrequency of the small prepositions which we have to serve us instead of case, and also the absence of the diminutive auxiliary verbs with which we have to eke out the expression of our primary ones. These are the monosyllables whose abundance serves to stamp the poetic genius of a language as tripping or dactylic.
Now paying no attention to these facts, Sir Philip Sidney, Professor Longfellow, and innumerable other persons, more or less modern, have busied themselves in constructing what they supposed to be "English hexameters on the model of the Greek." The only difficulty was that (even leaving out of question the melodious masses of vowel) these gentlemen never could get their English hexameters to sound Greek. Did they look Greek?- that should have been the query, and the reply might have led to a solution of the riddle. In placing a copy of ancient hexameters side by side with a copy (in similar type) of such hexameters as Professor Longfellow, or Professor Felton or the Frogpondian Professors collectively, are in the shameful practice of composing "on the model of the Greek," it will be seen that the latter (hexameters, not professors) are about one-third longer to the eye, on an average, than the former. The more abundant dactyls make the difference. And it is the greater number of spondees in the Greek than in the English, in the ancient than in the modern tongue, which has caused it to fall out that while these eminent scholars were groping about in the dark for a Greek hexameter, which is a spondaic rhythm varied now and then by dactyls, they merely stumbled, to the lasting scandal of scholarship, over something which, on account of its long-leggedness, we may as well term a Feltonian hexameter, and which is a dactylic rhythm interrupted rarely by artificial spondees which are no spondees at all, and which are curiously thrown in by the heels at all kinds of improper and impertinent points.
Here is a specimen of the Longfellow hexameter:
Also the / church with / in was a / dorned for / this was the / season /
In which the / young their / parent's / hope and the / loved ones of
/ Heaven /
Should at the / foot of the / altar re / new the / vows of their / baptism /
Therefore each / nook and / corner was / swept and / cleaned and the
/ dust was /
Blown from the / walls and / ceiling and / from the / oil-painted / benches. / Mr. Longfellow is a man of imagination, but can he imagine that any individual, with a proper understanding of the danger of lockjaw, would make the attempt of twi
sting his mouth into the shape necessary for the emission of such spondees as "parents," and "from the," or such dactyls as "cleaned and the," and "loved ones of"? "Baptism" is by no means a bad spondee- perhaps because it happens to be a dactyl- of all the rest, however, I am dreadfully ashamed.
But these feet, dactyls and spondees, all together, should thus be put at once into their proper position:
"Also the church within was adorned; for this was the season in which the young, their parents' hope, and the loved ones of Heaven, should, at the foot of the altar, renew the vows of their baptism. Therefore, each nook and corner was swept and cleaned; and the dust was blown from the walls and ceiling, and from the oil-painted benches?
There!- That is respectable prose, and it will incur no danger of ever getting its character ruined by anybody's mistaking it for verse.
But even when we let these modern hexameters go as Greek, and merely hold them fast in their proper character of Longfellowine, or Feltonian, or Frogpondian, we must still condemn them as having been committed in a radical misconception of the philosophy of verse. The spondee, as I observed, is the theme of the Greek line. Most of the ancient hexameters begin with spondees, for the reason that the spondee is the theme, and the ear is filled with it as with a burden. Now the Feltonian dactylics have, in the same way, dactyl for the theme, and most of them begin with dactyls- which is all very proper if not very Greek- but unhappily, the one point at which they are very Greek is that point, precisely, at which they should be nothing but Feltonian. They always close with what is meant for a spondee. To be consistently silly they should die off in a dactyl.
CRITICISM Page 22
