The four-accent theory is that of Lachmann, represented chiefly in more recent scholarship by ten Brink and Kaluza. Lachmann took, as the typical Germanic line, such a verse as this from the Hildebrandlied,—
but admitted that the Anglo-Saxon line was a departure from the type in the direction of fewer accents. Ten Brink, however, found the full number of accents in the typical Anglo-Saxon line. "It is based upon a measure which belonged to the antiquity of all Germanic races, namely, the line with eight emphatic syllables, divided into equal parts by the cesura." (English Literature, trans. Kennedy, vol. i. pp. 21, 22.) The principal representative of the two-accent theory is Sievers, whose conclusions have been pretty generally accepted by English and American scholars. He admits that very many, perhaps most, Anglo-Saxon lines can be read with eight accents, but shows that there is still a large proportion (some eleven hundred in Beowulf) which cannot be so read without wrenching the natural reading. On this subject, see Westphal's Allgemeine Metrik, Sievers's Altgermanische Metrik, Kaluza's Der Altenglische Vers, and the articles by Sievers, Luick, and ten Brink in Paul's Grundriss der Germanische Philologie.
Aside from the two-part structure of the long line, the number of accents, and the alliteration, Anglo-Saxon verse is marked by the usual coincidence of the principal accents with long syllables. The unaccented parts of the line vary in both the number and length of the syllables. In general, each half-line is divided into two feet, or measures; and, according to the structure of these feet, the ordinary half-lines of Anglo-Saxon verse have been reduced by Sievers to five fundamental types.
Type A is represented by such a half-line as "stiðum wordum."
Type B inverts the rhythm of A, as in the half-line "nē winterscūr."
Type C is characterized by the juxtaposition of the two accents, as in the half-line "and forð gangan."
Type D commonly has only the accented syllable in the first foot, while the second foot is characterized by a sort of dactylic rhythm, as in the half-lines "sǣlīðende" and "flet innanweard."
Type E inverts the rhythm of D, as in the half-line "gylp-wordum spræc."[16]
In all the types many variations are found. The beginning of the line may show anacrusis, and two short syllables may take the place of a long syllable; while an indeterminate number of light syllables may often be introduced before or after the principal accents.
(From the Anglo-Saxon Phœnix. ab. 700 A.D.)
These closing lines of the poem furnish an important opportunity to compare the Latin half-lines with those in Anglo-Saxon. Each half seems to be influenced by the metrical nature of the other; the Anglo-Saxon being a little more regular in the number of syllables than usual, the Latin less regular. Since, to the ear of the writer, the two halves of each verse were doubtless fairly equivalent, metrically, and since each of the Latin half-lines appears to have two accents, these combination verses have been thought to be an argument for the "two-accent" theory of Anglo-Saxon verse. On the other hand, the advocates of the four-accent theory would read the Latin half-lines with four stresses each, on the ground that nearly every syllable was stressed in the chanting of such religious verse (lú-cís aúc-tór, etc.).
See also the specimens on pp. 13 and 14, above.
(King Horn, ll. 1-12. ab. 1200-1250.)
The metre of King Horn is very irregular, and has proved somewhat puzzling to scholars. It seems to be the direct result of the primitive "long line" broken into two halves by internal rime. The number of accents varies greatly: we may have verses which are easily read with two, such as—
Yet these it is evident might also be read with three accents, as in the following couplet also:
According as one reads the Anglo-Saxon verse with two or four accents to the half-line, he will regard the typical half-line of King Horn as made up of two or four accents. If the fundamental number was two, the additional accented syllables were doubtless introduced under the influence of the French eight-syllable couplet. It is not difficult to see how the more regular (Latin or French) and the less regular (native) measures might have been confused, and soon have coalesced in popular use. Ten Brink, reading the King Horn lines with four accents, speaks of them as "formed entirely on the Teutonic principle, with two accents upon the sonorous close of the verse, so that it appears to be an organic continuation of the chief form in Layamon and in Ælfred's Proverbs. This circumstance makes the poem exceptional among the early English romances." He also speaks of "an unmistakably strophic construction in the text as we have it." (English Literature, Kennedy translation, vol. i. p. 227.)
(Patience, ll. 137-147. ab. 1375.)
(Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, strophe xviii. ab. 1375.)
These two specimens, both doubtless the work of the same author (to whom are also attributed the Pearl and Cleanness), represent the patriotic revival of the alliterative long line by contemporaries of Chaucer in the latter half of the fourteenth century. In Sir Gawayne the rimeless long line is gathered into strophes, each of which concludes with four riming lines. (See above, p. 109.)
For analysis of this revived alliterative verse, see a valuable article by Dr. Luick, Die Englische Stabreimzeile im 14n, 15n, und 16n Jahrhundert, in Anglia, vol. xi. pp. 392 and 553. Luick analyzes not only the poems of the "Pearl poet," but also the Troy Book, the Alexander Fragments, William of Palerne, Joseph of Arimathea, Morte Arthure, and minor poems. He finds the Troy Book the most regular alliterative poem of Middle English, but in all of the group a general tendency to preserve not only the early laws of alliteration but also the "five types" of Sievers's Anglo-Saxon metrics. Dr. Luick attributes the final decline of the old measure in large degree to the falling away of the final syllables in -e, etc.; without these numerous feminine endings the primitive "long line" was impossible. This he regards as regrettable, since the old alliterative verse, "growing up on native soil with the language itself," represented the natural accent-relations of the Germanic languages, especially the recognition of two principal degrees of accent; whereas the modern rimed verse requires the reduction of this to a uniform "tick-tack" of alternating stress and non-stress.
(Ballad of Bewick and Grahame. In Gummere's English Ballads, p. 176.)
The regular stanza of the old ballads was of this four-stress type, with extra light syllables admitted anywhere yet not in great numbers. More commonly, however, the fourth stress was lost from the second and fourth lines. (See p. 264, below.)
(York Mystery Plays: The Trial before Pilate. Ed. L. T. Smith, p. 322.)
(Gammer Gurton's Needle, Prologue. 1566.)
In these specimens we have the later descendant of the long line as used in the early drama of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,—the "tumbling verse," regular in rhythm and rime, but indifferent to the number of syllables.[17] Sometimes, where most regular, as in lines 2-4 of the second specimen, the measure approximates closely to regular four-stress anapestic.
(Spenser: The Shepherd's Calendar, May. 1579.)
Spenser's use of the tumbling verse in the Shepherd's Calendar was a part of his imitation of older forms for the sake of an uncultivated, bucolic effect. In his hands the irregular measure showed a tendency to reduce itself to regular ten-syllable lines, like the first two of the present specimen, which, by themselves, might easily be read as decasyllabic iambics. On this, see further under Five-Stress Verse. Spenser was perhaps the last cultivated poet to use the irregular measure, until we come to modern imitators of the early popular poetry. The following specimen is of this class.
(William Morris: The Folk-Mote by the River. In Poems by the Way. 1896.)
The more regular four-stress verse, in rimed couplets showing a tendency to be octosyllabic, we have seen to be generally attributed to the influence of the French octosyllabics, which were in common use in late mediæval French poetry, such as that of Wace and Chrestien de Troyes.
According to Stengel (in Gröber's Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie), this octosyllabic French verse goes back to a lost vulgar Latin verse; this view is opposed by Dr. C. M. Lewis, in his Foreign Sources of Modern English Versification (Yale Studies in English, 1898), who finds its origin in the tetrameter of the Latin hymns. Dr. Lewis also attributes to this Latin verse more direct influence on English verse than is commonly assumed. Thus he finds in it, rather than in the French octosyllabics, the model of the verse of the Pater Noster, quoted below. The argument is briefly this: the Latin verse was both accentual and syllabic; the French verse was syllabic but not accentual; that of the Pater Noster is accentual but not syllabic; hence it is more nearly like the Latin than the French. A stanza of the Latin tetrameter, cited by Dr. Lewis from the hymn Aurora lucis rutilat, is as follows:
Compare these lines from the Brut of Wace:
The last four verses of this passage are cited by Schipper as illustrating the regular iambic character of the French octosyllabics; but Dr. Lewis regards the measure as purely syllabic, with no regard for alternation of accents, and instances the earlier lines of the passage as being quite as nearly anapestic as iambic. (See Schipper, vol. i. p. 107, and Lewis's monograph, as cited above, pp. 73 ff. See also Crow: Zur Geschichte des Kurzen Reimpaares in Mittel Englisch.) Dr. Lewis's conclusion is: "We may therefore sum up the whole history of our octosyllabic verse in this way: we borrowed its number of accents from the Latin, but owing to the vitality of our own native traditions we at first borrowed nothing further; the syllabic character of the verse (so far as it has been imported at all), came in only gradually, against stubborn resistance; and it came not directly from the Latin, but indirectly, through the French" (pp. 97, 98). Some of these statements are open to question; but however we may interpret the French verse of Wace and his contemporaries, it is obvious that in English the influence of the Latin and the French poetry would very naturally be fused, with no necessarily clear conception of definite verse-structure. Whether under French or Latin influence, however, the new tendency was for the more accurate counting of syllables. We may see some suggestion of this in the verses of St. Godric, quoted on p. 126, above, although they are not regularly iambic. The poem on the "Eleven Pains of Hell" (in the Old English Miscellany) shows the French influence clearly marked by the language of its opening verses:
(The Pater Noster, ab. 1175. In Morris's Old English Homilies, p. 55.)
This poem is sometimes said to show the first appearance of the octosyllabic couplet in English. It suggests the struggle between native indifference to syllable-counting and imitation of the greater regularity of its models. As Dr. Morris says of the next specimen: "The essence of the system of versification which the poet has adopted is, briefly, that every line shall have four accented syllables in it, the unaccented syllables being left in some measure, as it were, to take care of themselves." But this does not altogether do justice to the new regularity. Schipper says that of the first 100 lines of the poem 20 are perfectly regular. (See his notes in vol. i. p. 109.) In the following specimens we may trace the gradual growth of skill and accuracy.
(Genesis and Exodus, ll. 1285-1290. ab. 1250-1300.)
(The Owl and the Nightingale, ll. 835-842. Thirteenth century.)
(Barbour: Bruce, v. 89-98. ab. 1375.)
(Robert Manning of Brunne: Handlyng Synne, ll. 339-350. ab. 1300.)
(Lay of Havelok the Dane. ll. 1-16. ab. 1300.)
For lays and romances, both French and English, the four-stress couplet was an easy and favorite form. Compare the remarks of ten Brink: "We see how the short couplet, which is the standing form of the court-romance, was not only transmitted to it from the legendary, didactic, and historical poems, but was also suggested to it by those songs to which it was indebted for its own subject-matter. Other tokens indicate that a short strophe composed of eight-syllabled lines, with single or alternating rhymes, was a favorite form for many subjects in this jongleur poetry.... The simple form of the short couplet offered to the romance-poet no scope to compete in metrical technique with the skilled court-lyrists. He could prove his art only within a limited portion of this field: in the treatment of the enjambement and particularly of rhyme. The poet strove not only to form pure rhymes, but often to carry them forward with more syllables than were essential, and he was fond of all sorts of grammatical devices in rhyme." (English Literature, Kennedy trans., vol. i. pp. 174, 175.)
(John Gower: Prologue to Confessio Amantis. Ed. Pauli, vol. i. pp. 22, 23. ab. 1390.)
(Chaucer: House of Fame, ll. 1091-1108. ab. 1385.)
It was Gower and Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, who brought the use of the eight-syllable couplet to the point of accuracy and perfection. Gower made it the vehicle of the interminable narrative of the Confessio Amantis, using it with regularity but with great monotony. Chaucer transformed it into a much more flexible form (with freedom of cesura, enjambement, and inversions), using it in about 3500 lines of his poetry (excluding the translation of the Roman de la Rose), but early leaving it for the decasyllabic verse. In modern English poetry this short couplet has rarely been used for continuous narrative of a serious character, except by Byron and Wordsworth.
(Milton: Il Penseroso, ll. 155-166. 1634.)
(Samuel Butler: Hudibras, Part I. 1663.)
Butler made the octosyllabic couplet so entirely his own, for the purposes of his jogging satiric verse, that ever since it has frequently been called "Hudibrastic." The ingenuity of his rimes added not a little to its effectiveness. In the Spectator (No. 249) Addison said that burlesque poetry runs best "in doggrel like that of Hudibras, ... when a hero is to be pulled down and degraded;" otherwise in the heroic measure. He speaks also of "the generality" of Butler's readers as being "wonderfully pleased with the double rhymes."
(Thomas Parnell: A Night-Piece on Death, ab. 1715.)
Mr. Gosse speaks of Parnell's employment of the octosyllabic couplet in this poem as "wonderfully subtle and harmonious." (Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 137.)
(John Gay: The Hare and Many Friends, in Fables. 1727.)
Gay's use of the short couplet in his Fables sometimes shows it at its best for narrative purposes.
(Swift: On the Death of Dr. Swift. 1731.)
Swift made use of the octosyllabic couplet in nearly all his verse, and with no little vigor and originality. Mr. Gosse remarks: "His lines fall like well-directed blows of the flail, and he gives the octosyllabic measure, which he is accustomed to choose on account of the Hudibrastic opportunities it offers, a character which is entirely his own." (Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 153.)
(Collins: Ode to Liberty. 1746.)
(Burns: Tam O'Shanter, ll. 1-12. 1790.)
(Byron: The Prisoner of Chillon, iii. 1816.)
(Wordsworth: White Doe of Rylstone, canto vii. ll. 282-291. 1815.)
(Scott: The Lady of the Lake, canto v. st. xv. 1810.)
(William Morris: The Earthly Paradise; The Land East of the Sun. 1870.)