The Rationale of Verse — 1902 historical reading — reading text

accents” were anything more than a phrase. Whenever “Christabel” is really not rough, it can be as readily scanned by the true laws (not the supposititious rules) of verse, as can the simplest pentameter of Pope; and where it is rough (passim) these same laws will enable any one of common sense to show why it is rough and to point out, instantaneously, the remedy for the roughness. A reads and re-reads a certain line, and pronounces it false in rhythm — unmusical. B, however, reads it to A, and A is at once struck with the perfection of the rhythm, and wonders at his dulness in not “catching” it before. Henceforward he admits the line to be musical. B, triumphant, asserts, that, to be sure, the line is musical — for it is the work of Coleridge — and that it is A who is not; the fault being in A's false reading. Now here A is right and B wrong. That rhythm is erroneous, (at some point or other more or less obvious,) which any ordinary reader can, without design, read improperly. It is the business of the poet so to construct his line that the intention must be caught at once. Even when these men have precisely the same understanding of a sentence, they differ and often widely, in their modes of enunciating it. Any one who has taken the trouble to examine the topic of emphasis, (by which I here mean not accent of particular syllables, but the dwelling on entire words,) must have seen that men emphasize in the most singularly arbitrary manner. There are certain large classes of people, for example, who persist in emphasizing their monosyllables. Little uniformity of emphasis prevails; because the thing itself — the idea, emphasis, — is referable to no natural — at least, to no well comprehended and therefore uniform law. Beyond a very narrow and vague limit, the whole matter is conventionality. And if we differ in emphasis even when we agree in comprehension, how much more so in the former when in the latter too! Apart, however, from the consideration of natural disagreement, is it not clear that, by tripping here and mouthing there, any sequence of words may be twisted into any species of rhythm? But are we thence to deduce that all sequences of words are rhythmical in a rational understanding of the term? — for this is the deduction, precisely to which the reductio ad absurdum will, in the end, bring all the propositions of Coleridge. Out of a hundred readers of “Christabel,” fifty will be able to make nothing of its rhythm, while forty-nine of the remaining fifty will, with some ado, fancy they comprehend it, after the fourth or fifth perusal. The one out of the whole hundred who shall both comprehend and admire it at first sight — must be an unaccountably clever person — and I am by far too modest to assume, for a moment, that that very clever person is myself. In illustration of what is here advanced I cannot do better than quote a poem: Pease porridge hot — pease porridge cold — Pease porridge in the pot — nine days old. Now those of my readers who have never heard this poem pronounced according to the nursery conventionality, will find its rhythm as obscure as an explanatory note; while those who have heard it, will divide it thus, declare it musical, and wonder how there can be any doubt about it. Pease | porridge | hot | pease | porridge | cold | Pease | porridge | in the | pot | nine | days | old. | The chief thing in the way of this species of rhythm, is the necessity which it imposes upon the poet of travelling in constant company with his compositions, so as to be ready at a moment's notice, to avail himself of a well understood poetical license — that of reading aloud one's own doggerel. In Mr. Cranch's line, Many are the | thoughts that | come to | me, | the general error of which I speak is, of course, very partially exemplified, and the purpose for which, chiefly, I cite it, lies yet further on in our topic. The two divisions (thoughts that) and (come to) are ordinary trochees. Of the last division (me) we will talk hereafter. The first division (many are the) would be thus accented by the Greek Prosodies (māny aăre thĕ) and would be called by them αστρολογος. The Latin books would style the foot Pæon Primus, and both Greek and Latin would swear that it was composed of a trochee and what they term a pyrrhic — that is to say, a foot of two short syllables — a thing that cannot be, as I shall presently show. But now, there is an obvious difficulty. The astrologos, according to the Prosodies’ own showing, is equal to five short syllables, and the trochee to three — yet, in the line quoted, these two feet are equal. They occupy precisely the same time. In fact, the whole music of the line depends upon their being made to occupy the same time. The Prosodies then, have demonstrated what all mathematicians have stupidly failed in demonstrating — that three and five are one and the same thing. After what I have already said, however, about the bastard trochee and the bastard iambus, no one can have any trouble in understanding that many are the is of similar character. It is merely a bolder variation than usual from the routine of trochees, and introduces to the bastard trochee one additional syllable. But this syllable is not short. That is, it is not short in the sense of “short” as applied to the final syllable of the ordinary trochee, where the word means merely the half of long. In this case (that of the additional syllable) “short,” if used at all, must be used in the sense of the sixth of long. And all the three final syllables can be called short only with the same understanding of the term. The three together are equal only to the one short syllable (whose place they supply) of the ordinary trochee. It follows that there is no sense in thus (˘) accenting these syllables. We must devise for them some new character which shall denote the sixth of long. Let it be (‹) — the crescent placed with the curve to the left. The whole foot (māny are the) might be called a quick trochee. We come now to the final division (me) of Mr. Cranch's line. It is clear that this foot, short as it appears, is fully equal in time to each of the preceding. It is in fact the cæsura — the foot which, in the beginning of this paper, I called the most important in all verse. Its chief office is that of pause or termination; and here — at the end of a line — its use is easy, because there is no danger of misapprehending its value. We pause on it, by a seeming necessity, just so long as it has taken us to pronounce the preceding feet, whether iambuses, trochees, dactyls, or anapæsts. It is thus a variable foot, and, with some care, may be well introduced into the body of a line, as in a little poem of great beauty by Mrs. Welby: I have | a lit | tle step | son | of on | ly three | years old. | Here we dwell on the cæsura, son, just as long as it requires us to pronounce either of the preceding or succeeding iambuses. Its value, therefore, in this line, is that of three short syllables. In the following dactylic line its value is that of four short syllables. Pale as a | lily was | Emily | Gray. I have accented the cæsura with a (~~~) by way of expressing this variability of value. I observed, just now, that there could be no such foot as one of two short syllables. What we start from in the very beginning of all idea on the topic of verse, is quantity, length. Thus when we enunciate an independent syllable it is long, as a matter of course. If we enunciate two, dwelling on both equally, we express equality in the enumeration, or length, and have a right to call them two long syllables. If we dwell on one more than the other, we have also a right to call one short, because it is short in relation to the other. But if we dwell on both equally and with a tripping voice, saying to ourselves here are two short syllables, the query might well be asked of us — “in relation to what are they short?” Shortness is but the negation of length. To say, then, that two syllables, placed independently of any other syllable, are short, is merely to say that they have no positive length, or enunciation — in other words that they are no syllables — that they do not exist at all. And if, persisting, we add anything about their equality, we are merely floundering in the idea of an identical equation, where, x being equal to x, nothing is shown to be equal to zero. In a word, we can form no conception of a pyrrhic as of an independent foot. It is a mere chimera bred in the mad fancy of a pedant. 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 anapæsts 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 | Dōwn ĭn thĕ | dēpths ŏf thĕ | āzūre | lake. | Here azure is a spondee, equivalent to a dactyl; lake a cæsura. 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 land of the Sun —(1) 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 reason: — and 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 something about dactylic lines, and it was easily seen that these lines were at least meant for dactylic. The first one was, therefore, thus divided: Knōw yĕ thĕ | lānd whĕre thĕ | cyprĕss ănd | myrtlĕ. | 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: Arē ĕmblĕms | ōf deĕds thăt | āre dŏne ĭn | thēir clĭme. | 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