The Grammar of English Grammars, Goold Brown [ebook reader for manga txt] 📗

is in many of his remarks, flippantly denies that our English Prosody has either authorities or principles which one ought to respect; and accordingly cares so little whom he contradicts, that he is often inconsistent with himself. Here is a sample: "As there are no established authorities in this art, and, indeed, no acknowledged principles—every rhymester being permitted to invent his own method, and write by instinct or imitation—the critic feels quite at liberty to say just what he pleases, and offer his private observations as though these were really of some moment."—Am. Rev., Vol. i, p. 484. In respect to writing, "to invent," and to "imitate," are repugnant ideas; and so are, after a "method," and "by instinct." Again, what sense is there in making the "liberty" of publishing one's "private observations" to depend on the presumed absence of rivals? That the author did not lack confidence in the general applicability of his speculations, subversive though they are of the best and most popular teaching on this subject, is evident from the following sentence: "We intend, also, that if these principles, with the others previously expressed, are true in the given instances, they are equally true for all languages and all varieties of metre, even to the denial that any poetic metres, founded on other principles, can properly exist."—Ib., p. 491

OBS. 21.—J. D. W. is not one of those who discard quantity and supply accent in expounding the nature of metre; and yet he does not coincide very nearly with any of those who have heretofore made quantity the basis of poetic numbers. His views of the rhythmical elements being in several respects peculiar, I purpose briefly to notice them here, though some of the peculiarities of this new "Art of Measuring Verses," should rather be quoted under the head of Scanning, to which they more properly belong. "Of every species of beauty," says this author, "and more especially of the beauty of sounds, continuousness is the first element; a succession of pulses of sound becomes agreeable, only when the breaks or intervals cease to be heard." Again: "Quantity, or the division into measures of time, is a second element of verse; each line must be stuffed out with sounds, to a certain fullness and plumpness, that will sustain the voice, and force it to dwell upon the sounds."—Rev., p. 485. The first of these positions is subsequently contradicted, or very largely qualified, by the following: "So, the line of significant sounds, in a verse, is also marked by accents, or pulses, and divided into portions called feet. These are necessary and natural for the very simple reason that continuity by itself is tedious; and the greatest pleasure arises from the union of continuity with variety. [That is, with "interruption," as he elsewhere calls it!] In the line,

'Full màny a tàle theír mùsic tèlls,'

there are at least four accents or stresses of the voice, with faint pauses after them, just enough to separate the continuous stream of sound into these four parts, to be read thus:

Fullman—yataleth—eirmus—ictells,[503]

by which, new combinations of sound are produced, of a singularly musical character. It is evident from the inspection of the above line, that the division of the feet by the accents is quite independent of the division of words by the sense. The sounds are melted into continuity, and re-divided again in a manner agreeable to the musical ear."—Ib., p. 486. Undoubtedly, the due formation of our poetic feet occasions both a blending of some words and a dividing of others, in a manner unknown to prose; but still we have the authority of this writer, as well as of earlier ones, for saying, "Good verse requires to be read with the natural quantites [sic—KTH] of the syllables," (p. 487,) a doctrine with which that of the redivision appears to clash. If the example given be read with any regard to the cæsural pause, as undoubtedly it should be, the th of their cannot be joined, as above, to the word tale; nor do I see any propriety in joining the s of music to the third foot rather than to the fourth. Can a theory which turns topsyturvy the whole plan of syllabication, fail to affect "the natural quantities of syllables?"

OBS. 22—Different modes of reading verse, may, without doubt, change the quantities of very many syllables. Hence a correct mode of reading, as well as a just theory of measure, is essential to correct scansion, or a just discrimination of the poetic feet. It is a very common opinion, that English verse has but few spondees; and the doctrine of Brightland has been rarely disputed, that, "Heroic Verses consist of five short, and five long Syllables intermixt, but not so very strictly as never to alter that order."—Gram., 7th Ed., p. 160.[504] J. D. W., being a heavy reader, will have each line so "stuffed out with sounds," and the consonants so syllabled after the vowels, as to give to our heroics three spondees for every two iambuses; and lines like the following, which, with the elisions, I should resolve into four iambuses, and without them, into three iambuses and one anapest, he supposes to consist severally of four spondees:—

   "'When coldness wraps this suffering clay,
    Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?'

[These are] to be read," according to this prosodian,

   "Whencoldn—esswrapsth—issuff'r—ingclay,
    Ah! whith—erstraysth'—immort—almind?"

"The verse," he contends, "is perceived to consist of six [probably he meant to say eight] heavy syllables, each composed of a vowel followed by a group of consonantal sounds, the whole measured into four equal feet. The movement is what is called spondaic, a spondee being a foot of two heavy sounds. The absence of short syllables gives the line a peculiar weight and solemnity suited to the sentiment, and doubtless prompted by it."—American Review, Vol. i, p. 487. Of his theory, he subsequently says: "It maintains that good English verse is as thoroughly quantitative as the Greek, though it be much more heavy and spondaic."—Ib., p. 491.[505]

OBS. 23—For the determining of quantities and feet, this author borrows from some old Latin grammar three or four rules, commonly thought inapplicable to our tongue, and, mixing them up with other speculations, satisfies himself with stating that the "Art of Measuring Verses" requires yet the production of many more such! But, these things being the essence of his principles, it is proper to state them in his own words: "A short vowel sound followed by a double consonantal sound, usually makes a long quantity;[506] so also does a long vowel like y in beauty, before a consonant. The metrical accents, which often differ from the prosaic, mostly fall upon the heavy sounds; which must also be prolonged in reading, and never slurred or lightened, unless to help out a bad verse. In our language the groupings of the consonants furnish a great number of spondaic feet, and give the language, especially its more ancient forms, as in the verse of Milton and the prose of Lord Bacon, a grand and solemn character. One vowel followed by another, unless the first be naturally made long in the reading, makes a short quantity, as in th[=e] old. So, also, a short vowel followed by a single short consonant, gives a short time or quantity, as in tö give. [Fist] A great variety of rules for the detection of long and short quantities have yet to be invented, or applied from the Greek and Latin prosody. In all languages they are of course the same, making due allowance for difference of organization; but it is as absurd to suppose that the Greeks should have a system of prosody differing in principle from our own, as that their rules of musical harmony should be different from the modern. Both result from the nature of the ear and of the organ of speech, and are consequently the same in all ages and nations."—Am. Rev., Vol. i, p. 488.

OBS. 24.—QUANTITY is here represented as "time" only. In this author's first mention of it, it is called, rather less accurately, "the division into measures of time." With too little regard for either of these conceptions, he next speaks of it as including both "time and accent." But I have already shown that "accents or stresses" cannot pertain to short syllables, and therefore cannot be ingredients of quantity. The whole article lacks that clearness which is a prime requisite of a sound theory. Take all of the writer's next paragraph as an example of this defect: "The two elements of musical metre, time and accent, both together constituting quantity, are equally elements of the metre of verse. Each iambic foot or metre, is marked by a swell of the voice, concluding abruptly in an accent, or interruption, on the last sound of the foot; or, [omit this 'or:' it is improper,] in metres of the trochaic order, in such words as dandy, handy, bottle, favor, labor, it [the foot] begins with a heavy accented sound, and declines to a faint or light one at the close. The line is thus composed of a series of swells or waves of sound, concluding and beginning alike. The accents, or points at which the voice is most forcibly exerted in the feet, being the divisions of time, by which a part of its musical character is given to the verse, are usually made to coincide, in our language, with the accents of the words as they are spoken; which [coincidence] diminishes the musical character of our verse. In Greek hexameters and Latin hexameters, on the contrary, this coincidence is avoided, as tending to monotony and a prosaic character."—Ibid.

OBS. 25.—The passage just cited represents "accent" or "accents" not only as partly constituting quantity, but as being, in its or their turn, "the divisions of time;"—as being also stops, pauses, or "interruptions" of sound else continuous;—as being of two sorts, "metrical" and "prosaic," which "usually coincide," though it is said, they "often differ," and their "interference" is "very frequent;"—as being "the points" of stress "in the feet," but not always such in "the words," of verse;—as striking different feet differently, "each iambic foot" on the latter syllable and every trochee on the former, yet causing, in each line, only such waves of sound as conclude and begin "alike;"—as coinciding with the long quantities and "the prosaic accents," in iambics and trochaics, yet not coinciding with these always;—as giving to verse "a part of its musical character," yet diminishing that character, by their usual coincidence with "the prose accents;"—as being kept distinct in Latin and Greek, "the metrical" from "the prosaic" and their "coincidence avoided," to make poetry more poetical,—though the old prosodists, in all they say of accents, acute, grave, and circumflex, give no hint of this primary distinction! In all this elementary teaching, there seems to be a want of a clear, steady, and consistent notion of the things spoken of. The author's theory led him to several strange combinations of words, some of which it is not easy, even with his whole explanation before us, to regard as other than absurd. With a few examples of his new phraseology, Italicized by myself, I dismiss the subject: "It frequently happens that word and verse accent fall differently."—P. 489. "The verse syllables, like the verse feet, differ in the prosaic and [the] metrical reading of the line."—Ib. "If we read it by the prosaic syllabication, there will be no possibility of measuring the quantities."—Ib. "The metrical are perfectly distinct from the prosaic properties of verse."—Ib. "It may be called an iambic dactyl, formed by the substitution of two short for one long time in the last portion of the foot. Iambic spondees and dactyls are to be distinguished by the metrical accent falling on the last syllable."—P. 491.

SECTION IV.—THE KINDS OF VERSE.

The principal kinds of verse, or orders of poetic numbers, as has already been stated, are four; namely, Iambic, Trochaic, Anapestic, and Dactylic. Besides these, which are sometimes called "the simple orders" being unmixed, or nearly so, some recognize several "Composite orders" or (with a better view of the matter) several kinds of mixed verse, which are said to constitute "the Composite order." In these, one of the four principal kinds of feet must still be used as the basis, some other species being inserted therewith, in each line or stanza, with more or less regularity.

PRINCIPLES AND NAMES.

The diversification of any species of metre, by the occasional change of a foot, or, in certain cases, by the addition or omission of a short syllable, is not usually regarded as sufficient to change the denomination, or stated order, of the verse; and many critics suppose some variety of feet, as well as a studied diversity in the position of the cæsural pause, essential to the highest excellence of poetic composition.

The dividing of verses into the feet which compose them, is