Eleventh Century, End:

Eleventh Century, First Half:

Eleventh Century, Beginning:

Tenth Century, End:

Ninth Century:

Eighth Century:

Seventh Century:

§ 75. The evidence contained in this chapter, with regard to the continuous survival, in its essential rhythmical features, of the Old English native verse down to modern times, may be briefly summed up as follows:—

4. The rhythm of these sixteenth-century lines is indistinguishable from that of a four-accent metre which is popular in English and German poetry down to the present day.

These facts appear to leave no room for doubt that the Germanic metre has had a continuous history in English poetry from the earliest times down to the present, and that the long line, in Old and Middle English as in Modern English, had four accents (two in each hemistich). The proof acquires additional force from the fact, established by recent investigations, that the most important of the metrical types of the Old English hemistich are found again in Middle and Modern English poetry.

PART II. FOREIGN METRES

DIVISION I. The Foreign Metres in General
CHAPTER V. INTRODUCTION

§ 76. It was not till about 150 years after the Norman Conquest that foreign metres were introduced in English literature under the influence of French and Low Latin versification. For these, too, the general law observed in all accentual poetry holds good, viz. that the word-accent and the syntactical accent must coincide with the rhythmical accent. This rule, however, was easier to observe in the old native four-beat alliterative metre, in which the proportion and order of accented and unaccented syllables admit of many variations, than in metres consisting of equal measures, which follow stricter rules in that respect. In the older native verse accordingly we seldom find deviations from this fundamental rule, whereas in the newer foreign metres they are more frequent and striking.

With regard to the development of various even-measured rhythms from these four different kinds of feet, it will suffice to consider the iambic and trochaic metres only, as these are the most important, and the formation of the anapaestic and the dactylic metres is to be explained in the same way.

§ 77. According to the number of feet we may classify the different kinds of line—retaining the classical nomenclature—as dimeters, trimeters, tetrameters, &c.; (one meter always consisting of two iambic or trochaic, or anapaestic feet), so that, for instance, an iambic tetrameter contains eight iambic feet. Lines or rhythmical sections consisting of complete feet, i.e. of an equal number of accented and unaccented syllables, are called acatalectic or complete lines (dimeters, trimeters, &c.). If, however, the last foot of a line or of a rhythmical section be characterized by the omission of the last syllable, i.e. by a pause, the line is called catalectic or incomplete. The following examples will serve to illustrate the meaning of these terms:

Catalectic iambic tetrameter:

Acatalectic trochaic tetrameter (not represented in Middle English):

Catalectic trochaic tetrameter:

A line in which the whole last foot is supplied by a pause is called brachycatalectic.

Brachycatalectic iambic tetrameter:

Brachycatalectic trochaic tetrameter:

If both rhythmical sections of a tetrameter are brachycatalectic we get one of the four varieties of the Middle English Alexandrine—the only one that has continued in use in Modern English poetry.

Alexandrine:

These are the principal forms of rhythmical sections made up of disyllabic feet that occur in Middle English and Modern English Poetry.

§ 78. The breaking up of these long lines (consisting of two rhythmical sections) into shorter lines is usually effected by rhyme. Thus, if both rhythmical sections of the acatalectic tetrameter are divided by what is called leonine rhyme we get the short four-foot couplet imitated from the French vers octosyllabe, as in the following verses taken from the Middle English A lutel soth sermon (ll. 17–20):

A Modern English example is—

Another stanza of four lines is formed when the first rhythmical sections of two tetrameters rhyming together are also connected in the corresponding place (viz. before the caesura) by another species of rhyme, called interlaced or crossed rhyme (rime entrelacée):

Cf. these verses with an earlier version of the same legend (quoted p. 127), where only the second sections are connected by rhyme.

A Modern English example is—

Corresponding short trochaic lines result from the acatalectic trochaic tetrameter broken by leonine or inserted rhyme. In Middle English poetry, however, they occur but very seldom in their pure form, i.e. with disyllabic rhymes; in most cases they have monosyllabic or alternate monosyllabic and disyllabic rhymes.

In like manner the catalectic iambic tetrameter is broken up by inserted rhyme into two short verses, viz. one of four feet with a monosyllabic ending, and one of three feet with a disyllabic ending, as in the following examples:

A tetrameter brachycatalectic in both sections may also be broken up either by leonine or by inserted rhyme. The following examples illustrate respectively these two methods:

In the same manner the verse of four feet mentioned above is broken up into two lines of two feet, and the two-feet line into two lines of one foot, as in the following examples:

§ 79. In the fourteenth century the heroic verse was added to these Middle English metres; a rhyming iambic line of five feet, formed after the model of the French line of ten syllables, e.g.:

Finally, the verse used in the tail-rhyme staves (rime couée) must be mentioned. As this verse, however, usually appears only in that form in which it is broken up into three short ones which compose one half of the stave, its origin will be more properly discussed in the second Book, treating of the origin and form of the different stanzas. To begin with, however, it was simply a long line of three rhythmical sections. Indications of this are here and there found in the way in which it is arranged in MSS. and early printed books, e.g. in the first version of the Legend of Alexius,[126] where it is written in triple columns on the large folio pages of the Vernon MS. in the Bodleian Library:

§ 80. These are the simplest forms of verse used in Middle English poetry; they can be varied, however, in many ways. First, they are not restricted to monosyllabic or masculine endings or rhymes, but like their French models, admit also of disyllabic or feminine rhymes. Further, the caesura, where it occurs at all, may be masculine as well as feminine. The septenary line, however, in its strict form admits only of monosyllabic caesura and disyllabic ending.

Caesura and rhyme are in this respect closely analogous. For the difference between the two kinds of caesura and between the two kinds of rhyme is, that in the case of a masculine caesura or rhyme the pause occurs immediately after the last accented syllable of the rhythmical section, whereas in the case of a feminine caesura or rhyme an unaccented syllable (sometimes even two or more unaccented syllables[127]) follows upon the last accented one before the pause takes place. Combinations of masculine caesura with masculine or with feminine line-endings or rhymes, or the reverse, are, of course, allowed and of frequent occurrence.

We quote in the first place some Middle English and Modern English examples of masculine caesura in the Septenary, in the Alexandrine, in lines of five and of four measures and—for the sake of comparison—in the four-beat verse:

Of the feminine caesura there are two different kinds, viz. the so-called Epic and Lyric caesura.[128] In the Epic caesura in Iambic metre the pause occurs, as in the feminine rhyme, after a supernumerary syllable which follows upon the last accented one of the section the next iambic foot following upon it in the usual manner. In the Lyric caesura in Iambic metre, on the other hand, the pause occurs within a foot, i.e. after the regular unaccented syllable of an iambic foot.

These three different kinds of caesura may be more simply defined as follows: In the ordinary iambic line the caesura occurring after a regular unaccented syllable is a feminine Lyric one (thus: ...⏑–́⏑|–́⏑–́...); the caesura occurring after an accented syllable is a masculine one (thus: ...⏑–́|⏑–́⏑–́...); and that which occurs after a supernumerary unaccented syllable immediately following upon an accented one is a feminine Epic caesura (thus: ...⏑–́⏑|⏑–́⏑–́...).

These different kinds of caesura strictly correspond to their French models. The Epic caesura, which to some extent disturbs the regular rhythmic flow of a verse, is by far the least frequent in metres of equal feet.

In the alliterative line, on the other hand, as this metre does not consist of equal feet, the feminine caesura, which is, from a rhythmical point of view, identical with the Epic, is commonly used both in the Old English and in the Middle English period, being produced by the natural quality of the types A, C, D, and by the resolution of the last accented syllable in the types B and D (of the Old English verse). For this reason it also occurs more frequently than the other kinds of caesura in the Modern English four-beat line.

This may be illustrated by the following examples:

Epic caesura:

Lyric caesura:

All three kinds of caesura will have to be treated systematically later on in connexion with the iambic rhyming verse of five measures, the character of which they affect very much.

§ 81. The variety caused by the different kinds of caesura in the structure of the metres of equal measures, formed on the principle of a regular alternation of unaccented and accented syllables, is much increased by other causes arising from the different nature of Romanic and Germanic versification. These variations came into existence, partly because the poets, in the early days of the employment of equal-measured rhythms, found it difficult, owing to want of practice, to secure the exact coincidence of the word-accent and the metrical accent, partly because for linguistic or (in the case of the later poets) for artistic reasons they considered it unnecessary to do so. They therefore either simply suffered the discord between the two kinds of accentuation to remain, or, in order to avoid it, permitted themselves licences that did violence either to the rhythmic laws of the verse itself, or to the customary pronunciation of the words as regards the value of syllables (i.e. their being elided or fully sounded) or word-accent.

The changes which the equal-measured rhythms have undergone and still undergo from the causes mentioned thus have relation partly to the rhythmic structure of the verse itself, partly to the value of syllables, and partly to the word-accent. From these three points of view we shall first consider the iambic equal-measured rhythm in general (this being the only species used in Middle English, and the one which in Modern English is of most frequent occurrence and influences all the rest), before we proceed to examine its individual varieties.

CHAPTER VI
VERSE-RHYTHM

§ 82. As in Greek and Latin metre, so also in the equal-measured rhythms of Middle and Modern English, it is a general law that the beginning or end of a metrical foot should, so far as possible, not coincide with the beginning or end of a word, but should occur in the middle, so that the individual feet may be more closely connected with each other. When this law is not observed, there arises what is technically called diaeresis, that is to say, the breaking up of the line into separate portions, which as a rule renders the verse inharmonious. On this account lines composed entirely of monosyllables are to be avoided. This law is more frequently neglected in Modern English poetry than in that of earlier times, because the rarity of inflexional endings makes its constant observance difficult.

§ 83. With regard to modulation, too, the lines with diaeresis differ from those without it. In lines with diaeresis all syllables or words with a rhythmic accent upon them are pronounced with nearly the same stress, while in lines without diaeresis the difference between the accented syllables is more noticeable. The two following examples taken from Milton’s Paradise Lost will serve to illustrate this, the difference of stress being indicated by different numbers under the accented syllables:

§ 84. With regard to the treatment of the rhythm the Middle English even-beat metres in some respects are considerably different from the Modern English metres, the reason being that the earlier poets, as yet inexperienced in the art of composing in even-beat measures, found it more difficult than Modern English poets to make the rhythmic accent coincide with the word-accent and the syntactic-accent (cf. pp. 126–7, 134).

While this metrical licence may mostly be attributed to want of technical skill in Middle English poets, it is frequently employed in the Modern English period, as the last example shows, with distinct artistic intention of giving a special emphasis to a particular word. Several Middle English poets, however, make but scant use of this licence, e.g. the author of The Owl and the Nightingale and Gower, while some of them, as Orm, never use it at all.

§ 85. These latter poets, on the other hand, make very frequent use of another kind of rhythmical licence, viz. level stress or hovering accent, as Dr. Gummere calls it; i.e. they subordinate the word-accent or the syntactic accent to the rhythmic accent, and so far violate the principal law of all accentual metre, which demands that those three accents should fall on one and the same syllable.

In most cases dissonant rhythmical accentuations of this sort are caused by the rhyme, especially in Middle English poetry, e.g.:

Cf. also: thing: writýng ib. 325–6; bremstóon: non ib. 629–30; ale-stáke: cake ib. 667–8; goddésse: gesse Chaucer, Knightes Tale, 243–4; herde: answérde ib. 265–6; assemblýnge : thynge Barclay, Ship of Fools, p. 20; similar examples are even to be met with in early Modern English poetry, e.g.: nothíng: bring Sur. 15; bemoaníng: king Wyatt, 206; welfáre: snare ib. 92; goodnéss: accéss ib. 209; manére: chere Surrey, 124, &c.

Sometimes it may be doubtful how a line should be scanned. In some cases of this kind the usage of the poet will decide the question; we know, for instance, that Orm never allows the omission of the first unaccented syllable. Where decisive evidence of this kind is wanting, the verse must be scanned in such a manner as to cause the least rhythmical difficulty. If a compound, or a word containing a syllable with secondary accent, does not fit in with the rhythmical accent, it is to be read, as a rule, with level stress when it occurs in the middle of a line (and, of course, always when it is the rhyme-word). On the other hand, if according to the rhythmical scheme of the line an unaccented syllable would be the bearer of the rhythmical stress, we must in most cases assume suppression of the anacrusis.

It would not be admissible therefore to scan:

but:

The licence of displacement of accent is an offence against the fundamental law of accentual verse, and therefore becomes more and more rare as the technique of verse becomes more perfect.

§ 86. Another metrical licence, which is not inadmissible, is the absence of a thesis in the interior of a line. This licence is not of the same origin in Middle English as in Modern English poetry.

In Middle English it generally appears to be a relic of the ancient alliterative verse (Types C and D) and to be analogous to the similar usage of the contemporary Middle English alliterative line, as e.g.: