Poe, Edgar (1809-1849).—The greatest master of original prosodic effect that the United States have produced, and an instinctively and generally right (though, in detail, hasty, ill-informed, and crude) essayist on points of prosodic doctrine. Produced little, and that little not always equal; but at his best an unsurpassable master of music in verse and phrase.
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744).—Practically devoted himself to one metre, and one form of it—the stopped heroic couplet,—subjected as much as possible to a rigid absence of licence; dropping (though he sometimes used them) the triplets and Alexandrines, which even Dryden had admitted; adhering to an almost mathematically centrical pause; employing, by preference, short, sharp rhymes with little echo in them; and but very rarely, though with at least one odd exception, allowing even the possibility of a trisyllabic foot. An extraordinary artist on this practically single string, but gave himself few chances on others.
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth (1802-1839)—An early nineteenth-century Prior. Not incapable of serious verse, and hardly surpassed in laughter. His greatest triumph, the adaptation of the three-foot anapæst, alternately hypercatalectic and acatalectic or exact, which had been a ballad-burlesque metre as early as Gay, had been partly ensouled by Byron in one piece, but was made his own by Praed, and handed down by him to Mr. Swinburne to be yet further sublimated.
Prior, Matthew (1664-1721).—Of special prosodic importance for his exercises in anapæstic metres and in octosyllabic couplet, both of which forms he practically established in the security of popular favour, when the stopped heroic couplet was threatening monopoly. His phrase equally suitable to the vers de société of which he was our first great master.
Robert of Gloucester (fl. c. 1280).—Nomen clarum in prosody, as being apparently the first copious and individual producer of the great fourteener metre, which, with the octosyllabic couplet, is the source, or at least the oldest, of all modern English forms.
Rossetti, Christina Georgina (1830-1894) and Dante Gabriel (1828-1882).—A brother and sister who rank extraordinarily high in our flock. Of mainly Italian blood, though thoroughly Anglicised, and indeed partly English by blood itself, they produced the greatest English sonnets on the commoner Italian model, and displayed almost infinite capacity in other metres. Miss Rossetti had the greater tendency to metrical experiment, and perhaps the more strictly lyrical gift of the song kind; her brother, the severer command of sculpturesque but richly coloured form in poetry.
Sackville, Thomas (1536-1608).—One of the last and best practitioners of the old rhyme-royal of Chaucer, and one of the first experimenters in dramatic blank verse.
Sandys, George (1578-1644).—Has traditional place after Fairfax and with Waller (Sir John Beaumont, who ought to rank perhaps before these, being generally omitted) as a practitioner of stopped heroic couplet. Also used In Memoriam quatrain.
Sayers, Frank (1763-1817).—An apostle, both in practice and preaching, of the unrhymed verse—noteworthy at the close of the eighteenth century—which gives him his place in the story.
Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832).—The facts of his prosodic influence and performance hardly deniable, but its nature and value often strangely misrepresented. Was probably influenced by Lewis in adopting (from the German) anapæstic measures; and certainly and most avowedly influenced by Coleridge (whose Christabel he heard read or recited long before publication) in adopting equivalenced octosyllabic couplet and ballad metres in narrative verse. But probably derived as much from the old ballads and romances themselves, which he knew as no one else then did, and as few have known them since. Applied the method largely in his verse-romances, but was also a master of varied forms of lyric, no mean proficient in the Spenserian and in fragments, at least, of blank verse.
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616).—The catholicos or universal master, as of English poetry so of English prosody. In the blank verse of his plays, and in the songs interspersed in them, as well as in his immature narrative poems and more mature sonnets, every principle of English versification can be found exemplified, less deliberately "machined," it may be, than in Milton or Tennyson, but in absolutely genuine and often not earlier-found form.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822).—The great modern example of prosodic inspiration, as Keats, Tennyson, and Mr. Swinburne are of prosodic study. Shelley's early verse is as unimportant in this way as in others; but from Queen Mab to some extent, from Alastor unquestionably, onwards, he displayed totally different quality, and every metre that he touched (even if possibly suggested to some extent by others) bears the marks of his own personality.
Shenstone, William (1714-1763).—Not quite unimportant as poet, in breaking away from the couplet; but of much more weight for the few prosodic remarks in his Essays, in which he directly pleads for trisyllabic (as he awkwardly calls them "dactylic") feet, for long-echoing rhymes, and for other things adverse to the "mechanic tune by heart" of the popular prosody.
Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586).—A great experimenter in Elizabethan classical forms; but much more happy as an accomplished and very influential master of the sonnet, and a lyric poet of great sweetness and variety.
Southey, Robert (1774-1843).—A very deft and learned practitioner of many kinds of verse, his tendency to experiment leading him into rhymelessness (Thalaba) and hexameters (The Vision of Judgment); but quite sound on general principles, and the first of his school and time to champion the use of trisyllabic feet in principle, and to appeal to old practice in their favour.
Spenser, Edmund (1552?-1599).—The second founder of English prosody in his whole work; the restorer of regular form not destitute of music; the preserver of equivalence in octosyllabic couplet; and the inventor of the great Spenserian stanza, the greatest in every sense of all assemblages of lines, possessing individual beauty and capable of indefinite repetition.
Surrey, Earl of, the courtesy title of Henry Howard (1517-1547).—Our second English sonneteer, our second author of reformed literary lyric after the fifteenth-century break-down, and our first clearly intentional writer of blank verse.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909).—Of all English poets the one who has applied the widest scholarship and study, assisted by great original prosodic gift, to the varying and accomplishing of English metre. Impeccable in all kinds; in lyric nearly supreme. To some extent early, and, still more, later, experimented in very long lines, never unharmonious, but sometimes rather compounds than genuine integers. Achieved many triumphs with special metres, especially by the shortening of the last line of the Praed-stanza into the form of "Dolores," which greatly raises its passion and power.
Tennyson, Alfred (1809-1892).—A poet who very nearly, if not quite, deserves the position accorded here to Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. Coming sufficiently late after the great Romantic poets of the earlier school to generalise their results, he started with an apparent freedom (perfectly orderly, in fact) which puzzled even Coleridge. Very soon, too, he produced a practically new form of blank verse, in which the qualities of the Miltonic and Shakespearian kinds were blended, and a fresh metrical touch given. All poets since—sometimes while denying or belittling him—have felt his prosodic influence; and it is still, even after Mr. Swinburne's fifty years of extended practice of it, the pattern of modern English prosody.
Thomson, James (1700-1748).—The first really important practitioner of blank verse after Milton, and a real, though rather mannerised, master of it. Displayed an equally real, and more surprising, though much more unequal, command of the Spenserian in The Castle of Indolence.
Tusser, Thomas (1524?-1580).—A very minor poet—in fact, little more than a doggerelist; but important because, at the very time when men like Gascoigne were doubting whether English had any foot but the iambic, he produced lolloping but perfectly metrical continuous anapæsts, and mixed measures of various kinds.
Waller, Edmund (1606-1687).—A good mixed prosodist of the Caroline period, whose chief traditional importance is in connection with the popularising of the stopped couplet. His actual precedence in this is rather doubtful; but his influence was early acknowledged, and therefore is an indisputable fact. He was also early as a literary user of anapæstic measures, and tried various experiments.
Watts, Isaac (1674-1741).—By no means unnoteworthy as a prosodist. Followed Milton in blank verse, early popularised triple-time measures by his religious pieces, evidently felt the monotony of the couplet, and even attempted English Sapphics.
Whitman, Walt[er] (1819-1892).—An American poet who has pushed farther than any one before him, and with more success than any one after him, the substitution, for regular metre, of irregular rhythmed prose, arranged in versicles something like those of the English Bible, but with a much wider range of length and rhythm, the latter going from sheer prose cadence into definite verse.
Wordsworth, William (1770-1850).—Less important as a prosodist than as a poet; but prosodically remarkable both for his blank verse, for his sonnets, and for the "Pindaric" of his greatest Ode.
Wyatt, Sir Thomas (1503?-1542).—Our first English sonneteer and our first reformer, into regular literary verse, of lyric after the fifteenth-century disorder. An experimenter with terza, and in other ways prosodically eminent.
(It has seemed desirable to give some account (to an extent which would in most cases be disproportionate for the Glossary) of the ascertained, probable, or supposed origin of the principal lines and line-combinations in English poetry. The arrangement is logical rather than alphabetical. Slight repetition, on some points, of matter previously given is unavoidable.)
I. Alliterative.—Enough has probably been said above of the old alliterative line and its generic character; while the later variations, which came upon it after its revival, have also been noticed and exemplified. Its origin is quite unknown; but the presence of closely allied forms, in the different Scandinavian and Teutonic languages, assures, beyond doubt, a natural rise from some speech-rhythm or tune-rhythm proper to the race and tongue. It is also probable that the remarkable difference of lengths—short, normal, and extended—which is observable in O.E. poetry is of the highest antiquity. It has at any rate persevered to the present day in the metrical successors of this line; and there is probably no other poetry which has—at a majority of its periods, if not throughout—indulged in such variety of line-length as English. Nor, perhaps, is there any which contains, even in its oldest and roughest forms, a metrical or quasi-metrical arrangement more close to the naturally increased, but not denaturalised, emphasis of impassioned utterance, more thoroughly born from the primeval oak and rock.
II. "Short" Lines.—Despite the tendency to variation of lines above noted, A.S. poetry did not favour very short ones; and its faithful disciple and champion, Guest, accordingly condemns them in modern English poetry. This is quite wrong. In the "bobs" and other examples in Middle English we find the line shortened almost, if not actually, to the monosyllable, and this liberty has persisted through all the best periods of English verse since, though frequently frowned upon by pedantry. Its origin is, beyond all reasonable doubt, to be traced to French and Provençal influence, especially to that of the short refrain; but it is so congenial to the general tendency noted above that very little suggestion must have been needed. It must, however, be said that very short lines, in combination with long ones, almost necessitate rhyme to punctuate and illumine the divisions of symphonic effect; and, consequently, it was not till rhyme came in that they could be safely and successfully used. But when this was mastered there was no further difficulty. In all the best periods of English lyric writing—in that of Alison and its fellows, in the carols of the fifteenth century, in late Elizabethan and Caroline lyric, and in nineteenth-century poetry—the admixture of very short lines has been a main secret of lyrical success; and in most cases it has probably been hardly at all a matter of deliberate imitation, but due to an instinctive sense of the beauty and convenience of the adjustment.
III. Octosyllable.—The historical origin of the octosyllabic (or, as the accentual people call it, the four-beat or four-stress line) is one of the most typical in the whole range of prosody, though the lesson of the type may be differently interpreted. Taking it altogether, there is perhaps no metre in which so large a body of modern, including mediæval, poetry has been composed. But, although it is simply dimeter iambic, acatalectic or catalectic as the case may be, it is quite vain to try to discover frequent and continuous patterns of origin for it in strictly classical prosody.[162] Odd lines, rarely exact, in choric odes prove nothing, and the really tempting
of Pindar is an uncompleted fragment which might have gone off into any varieties of Pindaric. There are a few fragments of Alcman—
and of the genuine Anacreon—
in the metre, while the spurious verse of the "Anacreontea," a catalectic form with trisyllabic equivalence, seems to have been actually practised by the real poet. Alternately used, it is, of course, frequent in the epodes of Horace, in Martial, etc. But the fact remains that, as has been said, it is not a classical metre to any but a very small extent, though those who attach no value to anything but the "beats" may find it in bulk in the anapæstic dimeter of Greek and Latin choruses. It is in the Latin hymns—that is to say, in Latin after it had undergone a distinct foreign admixture—that the metre first appears firmly and distinctly established. In the fourth century, St. Ambrose without rhyme, and Hilary with it, employ the iambic dimeter, and it soon becomes almost the staple, though Prudentius, contemporary with both of them and more of a regular poet, while he does use it, seems to prefer other metres. By the time, however, when the modern prosodies began to take form, it was thoroughly well settled; and every Christian nation in Europe knew examples of it by heart.
It still, however, remains a problem exactly why this particular metre should, as a matter of direct literary imitation, have commended itself so widely to the northern nations. They had nearly or quite as many examples in the same class of the trochaic dimeter
and they paid no attention to this, though their southern neighbours did. They had, from the time of Pope Damasus[163] downwards, and in almost all the hymn-writers, mixed dactylic metres to choose from; but for a staple they went to this. It seems impossible that there should not have been some additional and natural reasons for the adoption—reasons which, if they had not actually brought it about without any literary patterns at all, directed poets to those patterns irresistibly. Nor, as it seems to the present writer, is it at all difficult to discover, as far at least as English is concerned, what these reasons were.
The discovery might be made "out of one's own head"; but here as elsewhere Layamon is a most important assistant and safeguard. A mere glance at any edition of alliterative verse, printed in half lines, will show that it has a rough resemblance on the page to octosyllabics, though the outline is more irregular. A moderately careful study of Layamon shows, as has been indicated, that, in writing this verse with new influences at work upon him, he substitutes octosyllabic couplet for it constantly. And the history in the same way shows that this occasional substitution became a habitual one with others. Not that there is any mystical virtue in four feet, despite their frequency in the actual creation: but that, as an equivalent of the old half line, the choice lies practically between three and four. Now a three-foot line, though actually tried as in the Bestiary and in parts of Horn, is, as a general norm, too short, is ineffective and jingly, brings the rhyme too quick, and hampers the exhibition of the sense by a too staccato and piecemeal presentment. The abundant adoption of the octosyllable in French no doubt assisted the spread in English. But it is not unimportant to observe that English translators and adapters of French octosyllabic poems by no means always preserve the metre, and that English octosyllables often represent French poems which are differently metred in the original.
IV. Decasyllable.—A connected literary origin for this great line—the ancient staple of French poetry, the modern staple of English, and (in still greater modernity) of German to some extent, as well as (with the extension of one syllable necessitated by the prevailing rhythm of the language) of Italian throughout its history—has always been found extraordinarily difficult to assign. That some have even been driven to the line which furnishes the opening couplet of the Alcaic
or
an invariably hendecasyllabic line of the most opposite rhythm, constitution, and division, will show the straits which must have oppressed them. The fact is that there is nothing, either in Greek or Latin prosody, in the least resembling it or suggestive of it. To connect it with these prosodies at all reasonably, it would be necessary to content ourselves with the supposition, not illogical or impossible, but not very explanatory, that somebody found the iambic dimeter too short, and the iambic trimeter too long, and split the difference.
In another way, and abandoning the attempt to find parents or sponsors in antiquity for this remarkable foundling, a not wholly dissimilar conjecture becomes really illuminative—that the line of ten syllables (or eleven with "weak ending") proved itself the most useful in the modern languages. As a matter of fact it appears in the very earliest French poem we possess—the tenth- or perhaps even ninth-century Hymn of St. Eulalia:
and in the (at youngest) tenth-century Provençal Boethius:
If it still seem pusillanimous to be content with such an explanation, one can share one's pusillanimity with Dante, who contents himself with saying that the line of eleven syllables "seems the stateliest and most excellent, as well by reason of the length of time it occupies as of the extent of subject, construction and language of which it is capable." And in English, with which we are specially, if not indeed wholly, concerned, history brings us the reinforcement of showing that the decasyllable literally forced itself, in practice, upon the English poet.
This all-important fact has been constantly obscured by the habit of saying that Chaucer "invented" the heroic couplet in English—that he, at any rate, borrowed it first from the French. Whether he did so as a personal fact we cannot say, for he is not here to tell us. That he need not have done so there is ample and irrefragable evidence. In the process of providing substitutes for the old unmetrical line, it is not only obvious that the decasyllable—which, from a period certainly anterior to the rise of Middle English, had been the staple metre, in long assonanced tirades or batches, of the French Chansons de geste—must have suggested itself. It is still more certain that it did. It is found in an unpolished and haphazard condition, but unmistakable, in the Orison of our Lady (early thirteenth century); it occurs in Genesis and Exodus, varying the octosyllable itself, in the middle of that age; it is scattered about the Romances, in the same company, at what must have been early fourteenth century at latest; it occurs constantly in Hampole's Prick of Conscience at the middle of this century; and there are solid blocks of it in the Vernon MS., which was written (i.e. copied from earlier work), at latest, before Chaucer is likely to have started the Legend of Good Women or the Canterbury Tales. That his practice settled and established it—though for long the octosyllable still outbid it in couplet, and it was written chiefly in the stanza form of "rhyme-royal"—is true. But by degrees the qualities which Dante had alleged made it prevail, and prepared it as the line-length for blank verse as well as for the heroic couplet, and for the bulk of narrative stanza-writing. No doubt Chaucer was assisted by the practice of Machault and other French poets. But there should be still less doubt that, without that practice, he might, and probably would, have taken it up. For the first real master of versification—whether he were Chaucer, or (in unhappy default of him) somebody else, who must have turned up sooner or later—could not but have seen, for his own language, what Dante saw for his.
V. Alexandrine.—The Alexandrine or verse of twelve syllables, iambically divided, does not resemble its relation, the octosyllable, in having a doubtful classical ancestry; or its other relation, the decasyllable, in having none. It is, from a certain point of view, the exact representative of the great iambic trimeter which was the staple metre of Greek tragedy, and was largely used in Greek and Roman verse. The identity of the two was recognised in English as early as the Mirror for Magistrates, and indeed could escape no one who had the knowledge and used it in the most obvious way.
At the same time it is necessary frankly to say that this resemblance—at least, as giving the key to origin—is, in all probability, wholly delusive. There are twelve syllables in each line, and there are iambics in both. But to any one who has acquired—as it is the purpose of this book to help its readers to acquire or develop—a "prosodic" sense, like the much-talked-of historic sense, it will seem to be a matter of no small weight, that while the cæsura (central pause) of the ancient trimeter is penthemimeral (at the fifth syllable), or hepthemimeral (at the seventh), that of the modern "Alexandrine" is, save by rare, and not often justified, license, invariably at the sixth or middle—a thing which actually alters the whole rhythmical constitution and effect of the line.[164] Nor, is the name to be neglected. Despite the strenuous effort of modern times to upset traditional notions, it remains a not seriously disputed fact that the name "Alexandrine" comes from the French Roman d'Alexandre, not earlier than the late twelfth century, and itself following upon at least one decasyllabic Alexandreid. The metre, however, suited French, and, as it had done on this particular subject, ousted the decasyllable in the Chansons de geste generally; while, with some intervals and revolts, it has remained the "dress-clothes" of French poetry ever since, and even imposed itself as such upon German for a considerable time.
In English, however, though, by accident and in special and partial use, it has occupied a remarkable place, it has never been anything like a staple. One of the most singular statements in Guest's English Rhythms is that the "verse of six accents" (as he calls it) was "formerly the one most commonly used in our language." The present writer is entirely unable to identify this "formerly": and the examples which Guest produces, of single and occasional occurrence in O.E. and early M.E., seem to him for the most part to have nothing to do with the form. But it was inevitable that on the one hand the large use of the metre in French, and on the other its nearness as a metrical adjustment to the old long line or stave, should make it appear sometimes. The six-syllable lines of the Bestiary and Horn are attempts to reproduce it in halves, and Robert of Brunne reproduces it as a whole.[165] It appears not seldom in the great metrical miscellany of the Vernon MS., and many of Langland's accentual-alliterative lines reduce themselves to, or close to it; while it very often makes a fugitive and unkempt appearance in fifteenth-century doggerel. Not a few of the poems of the Mirror for Magistrates are composed in it, and as an alternative to the fourteener (this was possibly what Guest was thinking of) it figures in the "poulter's measure" of the early and middle sixteenth century. Sidney used it for the sonnet. But it was not till Drayton's Polyolbion that it obtained the position of continuous metre for a long poem: and this has never been repeated since, except in Browning's Fifine at the Fair.
So, the most important appearances by far of the Alexandrine in English are not continuous; but as employed to vary and complete other lines. There are two of these in especial: the first among the greatest metrical devices in English, the other (though variously judged and not very widely employed) a great improvement. The first is the addition, to an eight-line arrangement in decasyllables, of a ninth in Alexandrine which constitutes the Spenserian stanza and will be spoken of below. The other is the employment of the Alexandrine as a variation of decasyllable in couplet, in triplet and singly, which is, according to some, including the present writer, visible in the "riding-rhyme" of Chaucer; which is often present in the blank verse of Shakespeare; not absent from that of Milton in his earlier attempts; employed in decasyllabic couplet by Cowley, and (with far greater success) by Dryden; gradually abandoned and unfavourably spoken of by Pope; but revived with magnificent effect by Keats in Lamia.
VI. Fourteener.—On this, as indeed on most of these heads, it will be well to compare the continuous survey of scanned examples and the remarks there. This line (or its practical equivalent under the final e system, the fifteener) is probably the oldest attempt to get a single metrical equivalent for the old divided stave. Its own equivalents exist, of course, both in Greek and Latin, but it is rather doubtful whether these had much or anything to do with its genesis. A more probable source, if any source of the kind is wanted, has been suggested in the peculiar Latin thirteener so popular in the Middle Ages, and best known by the lines attributed to Mapes—
With a "catch" syllable at each half[166] you get the full accentual iambic fifteener, and the fourteener follows.
Perhaps, though it is difficult to recognise the fourteener-rhythm attributed by Guest and others to Cædmon and later A.S. writers, it is not necessary to look for any foreign sources as other than auxiliary to the development of the metre in English. So soon as a definite iambic mould, with or without trochaic and anapæstic substitution, began to be impressed on the language, the amount of stuff usual in a full line would naturally fall into fourteener shape. It did so, we know, as early as the Moral Ode at least; and barely a century later, it showed its popularity by the abundant use of Robert of Gloucester and the Saints' Lives writers. Nor, although the inevitable and fortunate break-up into ballad eight-and-six encroached on its rights to a large extent, and the alliterative revival still more, did it lose its attraction, as Gamelyn and other things show, till it got half drowned in the doggerel welter of the fifteenth century. From this the earlier Elizabethans fished it out, cleaned and mended it for practice both independently and as part of the "poulter's measure," while the finest example existing was given by Chapman's Iliad in the early seventeenth century. More recently, except in the Sigurd variety, it has been seldom used for long poems, but has served as the vehicle of many of the finest short pieces in the poetry of the nineteenth century.
VII. Doggerel.—In the sense (see Glossary) in which this ambiguous word applies to line, it is very important to acquire some notion of its meaning, but rather difficult to put that notion except very hypothetically. It is, in this use, conveniently applied to an enormous mass of verse—sometimes hardly deserving that name, but principally produced in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—which refuses, except occasionally, to adjust itself to any standard, even liberally equivalenced, of iambic octosyllable, decasyllable, Alexandrine, and fourteener, or of the trochaic and anapæstic metres corresponding to some of these, though it comes nearest to the anapæstic division. The pure accentualist may dismiss it as lines of so many irregular beats, and trouble himself no farther. But that, on the principles of this book, will not do. An exceedingly interesting parallel between it (as well as one of its regularised forms, the anapæstic dimeter) and the Spanish long line, or "Arte Mayor," has been drawn by Professor Ker. (See Bibliography.) But, without either taking or opposing his view, there is no doubt of the existence of this mare magnum of imperfect versification. It seems to have been fed by various streams. In the first place, as we see from the Gamelyn metre, and from some nursery songs (which, though they cannot be older than formed Middle English, may be nearly as old), like "The Queen was in the Parlour," the fourteener had a tendency to break itself into roughly balanced halves of sometimes different rhythm. The Alexandrine, never quite at home in English, would naturally bulge and straddle in the same way. On the regular and continuous anapæstic swing nobody had yet hit for long, though it probably arose in part from this very chaos. But perhaps the most abundant source of all was the attempt to write Chaucerian decasyllables with a constantly altering pronunciation, and the break-down in it. Examples of various forms of doggerel, with their corresponding metres, are given below.[167]
VIII. "Long" Lines.—Beyond the fourteener or fifteener English verse has, until quite modern times, rarely gone. There are sixteeners to be found in fourteenth-century verse, in the disorderly welter of the fifteenth, and (no doubt deliberately used) in the experiments of the Mirror for Magistrates; but neither they, nor any longer still, commended themselves much to any English poet before Mr. Swinburne. His experiments are famous, and some examples of them are given elsewhere. Their spirit and sweep has made not a few readers look on them with favour; but it may be questioned whether any lines beyond seven feet—and whether even six- and seven-foot lines when trisyllabic feet are allowed—do not tend to break themselves up in English. In Mr. Swinburne's own case certainly, and perhaps in some others, the seven-foot anapæstic line of Aristophanes gave the suggestion, while the abundant practice in so-called English hexameters may also have had not a little to do with it.
I. Ballad Verse.—A good deal has been said incidentally about this at several points in the preceding text; but summary, and a little repetition, will not be out of place here. There has been an idea with some that it is a shortened form of the Romance-six (see next article) or rime couée; but this does not seem to the present writer nearly so probable as the supposition of a break-up of the certainly earlier fourteener couplet, which gives it at once.[168] It is, however, not improbable that the crystallising of this was assisted by the hesitation, also noticed in text, between octosyllabic and hexasyllabic couplet. The indecision and vacillation, noticeable in such a piece as Horn, between the four- and three-foot line, would easily settle to alternation more or less regular, and then, with the assistance of the broken fourteener, into quite regular use. We do not, however, find decided examples much before "Judas" and the Gospel of Nicodemus in the late thirteenth century; it is not common in the early mysteries, though there are approaches to it; and it seems first to have secured the popular ear in the much-discussed compositions which give it its name, and which, in English, are very doubtfully to be traced before the late fourteenth century. These, however, "estated" it once for all; though for a long time it was treated with the usual mediæval freedom—wisely restored by Coleridge in the Ancient Mariner—and the exact number of four lines, 8, 6, 8, 6, was not adhered to. The further fixed variations, familiar from Psalm- and Hymn-books, of "L.M." (long measure) or octosyllabic quatrain; "C.M." (common measure), the actual 8 and 6; and "S.M." (short measure) 6, 6, 8, 6, date only from Elizabethan times, the last being a breaking-up of the then favourite "poulter's measure" or alternate Alexandrine and fourteener.
II. Romance-Six or Rime Couée.—As in the case of the ballad-four, much has been said about this earlier. In considering its origin it is particularly desirable to distinguish between the possible source of the principle and the probable derivation of the actual form. The term couée (caudatus), which, as has been pointed out, does not apply very obviously or appropriately to our actual romance-stanza, appears to refer originally to the peculiar jingly infusion of rhyme into Latin hexameters which has been traced back at least to the twelfth century, and the most famous example of which is the original of "Jerusalem the Golden," the De Contemptu Mundi of Bernard of Morlaix—
where the rhyme "in the tail" appears clearly enough. It is also not inappropriate to the form in which Robert of Brunne writes his verse of the kind, as in Guest's example:
Sometimes, however, he also batches the two first divisions:
But it came generally to be written in short lines straight on after the form now familiar. How or why it became so favourite a measure for romance is not, I believe, known. Direct French influence could certainly have had little to do here; for though the six-line measure appears in Marot (early sixteenth century), it is not common earlier, and I am not even aware of any perfect example[169] of it, in the abundant variety of French and Provençal lyric during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; while it is quite unknown to the longer French romances. But it is nearly as easy to remember—or to extemporise in default of memory—as the couplet itself. And it looks as if it were less monotonous; though—as those who drew down on it the lash of Sir Thopas, and Sir Thopas itself, show—nothing can be more monotonous in actuality. Its extensions and variations, and its migration from long narrative to short lyrical use, have been noticed already. These may have been to some extent influenced by the great popularity of Marot's Psalms, though the metre had long been naturalised.
III. Octosyllabic and Decasyllabic Couplet.—Of the two great couplet metres in English, the octosyllabic requires little notice, because it is almost indissolubly connected with the octosyllabic line. As soon as rhyme appears, the old iambic dimeter, four-accent line, or whatever you like to call it, must fall into this shape, and does. There remains indeed the problem why we have no period, in French, of octosyllabic tirade or batch-writing as we have (see immediately below) of decasyllabic.[170] But it is certain that the octosyllabic couplet established itself very early in French, and that at the important nick of time, when English prosody was being formed late in the twelfth century, this couplet came to Layamon and others as a great influence in determining the shape which alteration of the old long line or halved stave should take in their hands.
Decasyllabic couplet, on the other hand, has a much more tardy and uncertain history; though, again, much that has to be said about it has been said in reference to the single line. As soon as that line makes its appearance, in the "Saint Eulalia" hymn, it does indeed make its appearance in couplet, rhymed or assonanced.[171] But the attraction of the longer batches in identical rhyme or assonance seems, however surprisingly,[172] to get the better; and this is the form that it takes in the Provençal Boethius and the French Saint Alexis. In fact, as has been hinted above, our own scattered decasyllabic couplet rather precedes the French, though Guillaume de Machault has the credit, rightly or wrongly, of teaching it to Chaucer. After Chaucer, at any rate, there needed nobody to teach it to Englishmen; although it underwent various vicissitudes, which are duly traced elsewhere.
IV. Quatrain.—At a very early period, indeed as soon as they appear, Latin accentual rhythms have a tendency to batch themselves in four; as had, earlier still, Greek and Latin stanzas, Sapphic, Alcaic, and what not. The development of alternate rhyme in the octosyllabic quatrain or (v. sup.) ballad metre was certain to lead to a similar arrangement of decasyllables; and when rhyme-royal became popular the first four lines were so arranged, and might easily be broken off for separate use, as there is little doubt that the final couplet was. "Fours" of various arrangement are also abundant in lyric and in drama from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. But the greatest impulse was probably given to the alternate decasyllabic form by its adoption for the bulk of the English sonnet; and from this to separate use, which became common in the later Elizabethan poetry, there is but a very short step. The metre has always been a popular one since, and, in the hands of Dryden and Gray especially, is very effective. But a certain grave monotony about it has constantly invited modifications, of which the greatest and most successful, without altering the line-length, are those of FitzGerald in Omar Khayyám[173] and Mr. Swinburne in Laus Veneris;[174] with altered line-lengths, those of Tennyson in "The Poet,"[175] "The Palace of Art," and "A Dream of Fair Women." It was also tried in the seventeenth century as what may be called by anticipation "long In Memoriam measure"—that is to say, with the rhymes arranged abba.
V. In Memoriam Metre itself may have been suggested quite casually in the endless rhyme-welter of mediæval experiment. For instance, it occurs in lines 3 to 6 of Chaucer's nine-line stanza[176] in the Complaint of Mars, and the last eight of his ten-line in the Complaint to his Lady,[177] with decasyllabic lines, of course. It occurs also, with six-syllable lines, in the last halves of the octaves of No. XIX. of the York Plays.[178] Sidney has it as a "sport" or chance. But the first person to use it regularly and with octosyllables was Ben Jonson,[179] who was followed by Lord Herbert of Cherbury and George Sandys. Yet it was not widely taken up, though few measures could better have suited the "metaphysical" poets; and after that generation it remained unused till Tennyson, and by unwitting coincidence Rossetti, hit upon it just before the middle of the nineteenth century. Rossetti has also a very effective extension of it to seven lines abbacca.[180]
VI. Rhyme-Royal.—However much doubt there may be about the directly imitative origin of things like couplets, or even quatrains (which might, and almost certainly would, suggest themselves without pattern), the case is different with such a thing as the permutation of rhyme in a fixed order of sevens ababbcc. It may, therefore, be very likely that Chaucer took this from Guillaume de Machault, a slightly older French poet (1284?-1377), with whom he was certainly acquainted. If so, it is unlikely that Machault invented it, though he may have done so; for there is almost every possible cross-arrangement of rhymes in the enormous wealth of French and Provençal lyric from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. But it was certainly not a frequent metre before. On the other hand, Chaucer's Troilus made it the most fashionable metre in English throughout the fifteenth century for long narrative poems, and it was splendidly written by Sackville in the mid-sixteenth, but thereafter succumbed to the octave. The last considerable example of it, in the larger Elizabethan period, was the Leoline and Sydanis of Sir Francis Kynaston, a great admirer of Chaucer, who actually also translated part of Troilus into Latin rhyme-royal. But it was revived in the worthiest fashion by the late Mr. William Morris.
VII. Octave.—There are two principal eight-line stanzas of decasyllables used in English. The oldest form, employed by Chaucer, appears to have been derived from the French, as it is certainly used by Deschamps, and may have been by Machault. Here the rhymes are arranged ababbcbc. By addition of an Alexandrine this arithmetically makes the Spenserian (v. inf.). The other—later, but much more largely used—is derived from the Italian ottava rima, the rhyme order of which is abababcc. This is the kind employed by Fairfax (with great results, though rather in the direction of its final couplet than as a whole) in his translation of Tasso (1600), and (with a comic bent also directly imitated from Italian) by Frere in The Monks and the Giants, and (after him) by Byron in Beppo and Don Juan. The greatest modern serious employment of it is in Shelley's Witch of Atlas.
VIII. Spenserian.—The Spenserian stanza of nine lines—eight decasyllables and an Alexandrine, rhymed ababbcbcc—is entirely the invention of Edmund Spenser. It is false to say that it was "taken from the Italians"; for there is no such stanza in Italian, and the octave-decasyllabic part of it is rhymed differently from the Italian octave. It is irrelevant to say that it is the Chaucerian octave with an Alexandrine added; for it is exactly in the addition of the Alexandrine that the whole essence and the whole beauty of the stanza consist. It is still more irrelevant, though true, to assert that there had been a few attempts (as by More) to add an Alexandrine to other stanzas or to lengthen out their last line into one; for it is of this stanza that we are talking, and not of something else. Therefore it is sufficient to say once more that the Spenserian stanza is the invention of Edmund Spenser, and one of the greatest inventions known in prosody.
IX. Burns Metre.—This arrangement is found first in the verse of the Provençal prince, William IX. Count of Poitiers (poems about 1090).