Historical Manual of English Prosody

(Here all the characteristics of the eighteenth-century couplet may be found—the central cæsura or split, the balance of the two halves, the completion of sense in the couplet and almost in the line.)

(c) Fairfax (end couplets):

(Observe here the tendency, not merely to balance, but to positive antithesis, in the halves.)

(d) Beaumont, Sir John:

(e) Sandys.

Compare the openings of Job I. and II.:

(f) Waller:

(g) Cowley (Davideis):

(It should be observed on these that in Beaumont, Sandys I., Waller, and Cowley the separation of the couplets is strictly maintained; in Sandys II. not. In fact, this passage, but for the rhymes, has almost the run of Miltonic blank verse. Waller once approaches an initial trochee or "inversion of accent" in "With the." Here Cowley is pretty regular. But not far off may be found such a line as—

where he must either have intended "they-ex-" to be elided or have meant an anapæstic ending of the kind so common in the dramatists his contemporaries. And he constantly uses (explicitly defending it) the Alexandrine, as in—

or—

while he often employs trochees or spondees. He does not use the triplet in the Davideis, but does elsewhere, and, after Virgil, he sometimes indulges in half-lines.)

XXVII. Various Forms of Octosyllable-Heptasyllable (late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century)

(a) Shakespeare (doubtfully?):

(These distichs from the Passionate Pilgrim will illustrate the two different forms which the heptasyllable—really an octosyllable acephalous or catalectic—can take. The catalectic form (1) becomes trochaic; the acephalous (2), iambic. They can be interchanged, and either can group with the full iambic dimeter; but, individually, it would spoil (1) to scan it as iambic, (2) to scan it as trochaic. Yet on "accentual" scansion there is no difference; and some advocates of recent fancy "stress"-systems maintain that the rhythms are identical!)

(b) Shakespeare (almost certainly):

(In this famous and eminently Shakespearian passage from Pericles, the last line, a heptasyllable, goes perfectly with the rest, or octosyllables, either as acephalous or as catalectic, either as an iambic fellow or a trochaic substitute.)

(c) Shakespeare (certainly):

(From A Midsummer Night's Dream. Same as last, except that the full octosyllable is only reached at the end, and perhaps in line 4. "Hecat[e]," as often, is dissyllabic.)

(d) Browne, W.:

(Pure octosyllables. There is a catalectic line now and then elsewhere, but it is an evident exception.)

(e) Wither:

(Pure heptasyllables, taking either cadence, and, when extended, owing the extension mainly, if not wholly, to the double rhyme. The first line gives the alternative scansion; but Wither's run is, on the whole, trochaic, as Browne's is iambic.)

XXVIII. "Common," "Long," and "In Memoriam" Measure (Seventeenth Century)

(a) See above, § XXIII., for "Drink to me only."

(b) Donne(?), Ayton(?), Anon.(?), (C.M.):

(A capital example of the possibility of rhetorical addition to the strict foot-system, as in line 2, "I took it || to be thine."[43] For "concayt" and "estate" cf. sup. § XXV. sub fin.)

(c) Herrick (C.M.):

(Strongly flavoured, and greatly improved, by trochaic substitution in first foot.)

(d) Marvell (L.M.):

(e) Lord Herbert of Cherbury (In Memoriam metre):

(Great regularity of feet; but already the "circular" motion which Tennyson was to perfect.)

XXIX. Improved Anapæstic Measures (Dryden, Anon., Prior)

(a) Dryden (1691?):

(These early anapæsts, as noted, are very apt to begin with dissyllabic feet. But it was no rule: in this same piece, "The Beautiful Lady of the May," occurs the line:

All the nymphs | were in white | and the shep|herd in green.

(b) Anon. in Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719, but contents often much older):

(c) Prior (1696):

(Observe here in "assid[u]ous" and "bus[i]ness" the liberty of combining adjacent vowels (-uous) and following familiar pronunciation (bizness) which this light verse especially authorises.

XXX. "Pindarics" (Seventeenth Century)

Dryden (complete stanza from "Anne Killigrew" ode):

VI

(88-91, heroics; 92, 93, octosyllables; 94-96, heroics; 97, octosyllable; 98, Alexandrine; 99, 100, heroic; 101, octosyllable; 102, heroic; 103, Alexandrine; 104, octosyllable; 105, 106, heroics; 107, fourteener; 108-118, continuous octosyllables; 119-125, continuous heroics capped and finished off by 126, Alexandrine. In 97, probably "th' offence.")

XXXI. The Heroic Couplet from Dryden to Crabbe

(a) Dryden (early non-dramatic):

(Note recurrent you and your employed like pauses to vary verse. Otherwise strictly "regular.")

(b) Dryden ("heroic"-dramatic type at best):

(Conquest of Granada II., III. iii.)

(Observe how the alternation of central pause, strongly (|) and weakly (¦) or hardly at all (no mark) emphasised, knits and shades the verse; and how, in the first line, there is positive enjambment. Yet there is still no trisyllabic substitution. This type is continued and perfected in the great satires and didactic pieces for argument and attack, and in the Fables for narrative. It admits, to relieve monotony, the Alexandrine (Hind and Panther, i. 23, 24))—

the triplet (ibid. a little further)—

both combined (Palamon and Arcite, ii. 560-562)—

and sometimes the fourteener (Medal, 94)—

(c) Passages from Garth, (1), and Pope, (2) and (3), to illustrate the mechanical character of the eighteenth-century couplet, the ease with which it can be shifted from decasyllabic to octosyllabic, and its peculiar construction of ridge-backed antithetic pause:

(The Dispensary.)

(Read, omitting the interlined epithets, and you get perfectly fluent octosyllables.)

(Windsor Forest.)

Now this, in the same way, by the omission of some of the italicised gradus epithets, becomes—

[Transcriber's Note: In the following example, first part of each line is angled up the page, and second part of each line is angled down.]

(3)        Not with more glories  in th' ethereal plain
The sun first rises  o'er the purpled main,
Than issuing forth  the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of  the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs and well-drest youths  around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd  on her alone.
On her white breast  a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss  and Infidels adore.
Her livelylooks  a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes  and as unfixed as those.
Favours to none  to all she smiles extends,
Oft she rejects  but never once offends.
Bright as the sun  her eyes the gazers strike,
And like the sun  they shine on all alike.
Yet graceful ease  and sweetness void of pride
Might hide her faults  if Belles had faults to hide.
If to her share  some female errors fall,
Look in her face  and you'll forget them all.

(The Rape of the Lock.)

Of course Pope,[44] in the close of the Dunciad and elsewhere, has passages of the utmost dignity; and the antithetic arrangement is good for satire. But perhaps the finest passages of this class of couplet—certainly the finest with the Dunciad close—are the following, from

(d) Johnson (Vanity of Human Wishes—end):

and

(e) Crabbe ("Delay brings Danger"—end):

(Observe, besides the other points mentioned, that trisyllabic feet practically never occur in Garth, Pope, and Johnson—"wat'ry for watery," and words like "ether(ea)l," "celest(ia)l," "happ(ie)r," being intended to take the benefit of elision, though, as a matter of fact, they give that of extension. Only Crabbe, in "gathering," may perhaps not have meant "gath'ring.")

XXXII. Eighteenth-Century Blank Verse

(a) Thomson:

(This, from the poem on Newton, is Thomson at his very best in blank verse, or nearly so. He was, however, too apt to emphasise his phrases into full stops, producing what Johnson justly called "broken style," as thus:

The trick was pushed to a pitch of absurdity by

(b) Glover:

and is somewhat noteworthy in Young and others. The reason probably was a sort of nervous fear lest, in the absence of rhyme, the versification should not be sufficiently marked. But at length the proper flow was recovered by

(c) Cowper:

(Yardley Oak.)

(The spondee "Tīme māde" and trochee "kīng ŏf" are certainly intentional, whether consciously as such or not. The anapæst "-mĕrŏus flōcks" may not have been meant, for Cowper had not cleared his mind up about "elision," but is one in fact.)

XXXIII. The Regularised Pindaric Ode

Analysis of Gray's Bard (the second and third divisions coincide to the minutest degree):

I. i.

I. i. (Strophe)

•  1. Troch. dim. cat. ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄.
•  2. Iamb. dim. acat. ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄.
•  3. ditto
•  4. ditto
•  5 as 1.
•  6 and 7. Heroics nearly pure, ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄.
•  8 as 2 to 4.
•  9 to 13. Heroics
• 14. Alexandrine ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄. "Quiv'ring," probably.

I. ii.

I. ii. (Antistrophe)

Identical.

I. iii.

I. iii. (Epode)

•  1. Iamb. dim. brachycat. ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄.
•  2. ditto
•  3. Heroic.
•  4, 5, as 1, 2, with trochee substituted in first place.
•  6 as 3.
•  7. Iamb. dim. acat.
•  8. Troch. dim. cat.
•  9 to 14. Heroics: the last 4 in quatrain.
• 15 to 18. Iamb. dims. arranged in stanza quatrain; internal rhymes only in lines 15 and 17.
• 19. Heroic.
• 20. Alexandrine.

XXXIV. Lighter Eighteenth-Century Lyric

(a) Gay:

(Remarkable for the improvement, by the redundant syllable in the odd lines, on the plain anapæstic three-foot quatrain used later by Shenstone and Cowper, as well as for its leading up to the more obvious successes of Praed and Mr. Swinburne; v. inf. § XLIV.)

(b) Gray:

(Eleventh-century poets employed the old romance-six, or rime couée, almost more largely than any other metre for general lyrical purposes.)

(c) (D. Lewis?):

(Another instance of the refreshing and alterative effect of
redundance—in this case on the old "long measure." But even in its
stricter form the century managed "L.M." better than "C.M.," which,
till Blake, was almost always sing-song.)

XXXV. The Revival of Equivalence (Chatterton and Blake)

Percy's Reliques, however, taught it something better; though Percy's own imitations and those of others were often as described above. Yet soon we find in

(a) Chatterton, such adaptations of ballad metre as—