Complete Essays, Literary Criticism, Cryptography, Autography, Translations & Letters
etc. A regular alternation, as described, forms no part of any principle of versification. The arrangement of spondees and dactyls, for example, in the Greek hexameter, is an arrangement which may be termed at random. At least it is arbitrary. Without interference with the line as a whole, a dactyl may be substituted for a spondee, or the converse, at any point other than the ultimate and penultimate feet, of which the former is always a spondee, the latter nearly always a dactyl. Here, it is clear, we have no “regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity.”
“So as to produce harmony,” proceeds the definition “by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity,"— in other words by the alternation of long and short syllables; for in rhythm all syllables are necessarily either short or long. But not only do I deny the necessity of any regularity in the succession of feet and, by consequence, of syllables, but dispute the essentiality of any alternation regular or irregular, of syllables long and short. Our author, observe, is now engaged in a definition of versification in general, not of English versification in particular. But the Greek and Latin metres abound in the spondee and pyrrhic — the former consisting of two long syllables, the latter of two short; and there are innumerable instances of the immediate succession of many spondees and many pyrrhics.
Here is a passage from Silius Italicus:
Fallit te mensas inter quod credis inermem
Tot bellis quaesita viro, tot caedibus armat
Majestas aeterna ducem: si admoveris ora
Cannas et Trebium ante oculos Trasymenaque busta
Et Pauli stare ingentem miraberis umbram.
Making the elisions demanded by the classic Prosodies, we should scan these Hexameters thus:
Fallit / te men / sas in / ter quod / credis in / ermem /
Tot bel / lis quae / sita tot / caedibus / armat /
Majes / tas ae / terna du / cem s’ad / moveris / ora /
Cannas / et Trebi / ant ocu / los Trasy / menaque / busta /
Et Pau / li sta / r’ ingen / tem mi / raberis / umbram /
It will be seen that, in the first and last of these lines, we have only two short syllables in thirteen, with an uninterrupted succession of no less than nine long syllables. But how are we to reconcile all this with a definition of versification which describes it as “the art of arranging words into lines of correspondent length so as to produce harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity”?
It may be urged, however, that our prosodist’s intention was to speak of the English metres alone, and that, by omitting all mention of the spondee and pyrrhic, he has virtually avowed their exclusion from our rhythms. A grammarian is never excusable on the ground of good intentions. We demand from him, if from any one, rigorous precision of style. But grant the design. Let us admit that our author, following the example of all authors on English Prosody, has, in defining versification at large, intended a definition merely of the English. All these prosodists, we will say, reject the spondee and pyrrhic. Still all admit the iambus, which consists of a short syllable followed by a long; the trochee, which is the converse of the iambus; the dactyl, formed of one long syllable followed by two short; and the anapaest — two short succeeded by a long. The spondee is improperly rejected, as I shall presently show. The pyrrhic is rightfully dismissed. Its existence in either ancient or modern rhythm is purely chimerical, and the insisting on so perplexing a nonentity as a foot of two short syllables, affords, perhaps, the best evidence of the gross irrationality and subservience to authority which characterise our Prosody. In the meantime the acknowledged dactyl and anapaest are enough to sustain my proposition about the “alternation,” etc, without reference to feet which are assumed to exist in the Greek and Latin metres alone — for an anapaest and a dactyl may meet in the same line, when, of course, we shall have an uninterrupted succession of four short syllables. The meeting of these two feet, to be sure, is an accident not contemplated in the definition now discussed; for this definition, in demanding a “regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity,” insists on a regular succession of similar feet. But here is an example:
Sing to me / Isabelle.
This is the opening line of a little ballad now before me which proceeds in the same rhythm — a peculiarly beautiful one. More than all this:— English lines are often well composed, entirely, of a regular succession of syllables all of the same quantity:— the first line, for instance, of the following quatrain by Arthur C. Coxe:
March! march! march!
Making sounds as they tread,
Ho! ho! how they step,
Going down to the dead!
The first line is formed of three caesuras. The caesura, of which I have much to say hereafter, is rejected by the English Prosodies, and grossly misrepresented in the classic. It is a perfect foot — the most important in all verse — and consists of a single long syllable; but the length of this syllable varies.
It has thus been made evident that there is not one point of the definition in question which does not involve an error, and for anything more satisfactory or more intelligible we shall look in vain to any published treatise on the topic.
So general and so total a failure can be referred only to radical misconception. In fact the English Prosodists have blindly followed the pedants. These latter, like les moutons de Panurge, have been occupied in incessant tumbling into ditches, for the excellent reason that their leaders have so tumbled before. The Iliad, being taken as a starting point, was made to stand instead of Nature and common sense. Upon this poem, in place of facts and deduction from fact, or from natural law, were built systems of feet, metres, rhythms, rules — rules that contradict each other every five minutes, and for nearly all of which there may be found twice as many exceptions as examples. If any one has a fancy to be thoroughly confounded — to see how far the infatuation of what is termed “classical scholarship,” can lead a bookworm in the manufacture of darkness out of sunshine, let him turn over for a few moments any of the German Greek Prosodies. The only thing clearly made out in them is a very magnificent contempt for Leibnitzs principle of “a sufficient reason.”
To divert attention from the real matter in hand by any further reference to these works is unnecessary, and would be weak. I cannot call to mind at this moment one essential particular of information that is to be gleaned from them, and I will drop them here with merely this one observation — that employing from among the numerous “ancient” feet the spondee, the trochee, the iambus, the anapaest, the dactyl, and the caesura alone, I will engage to scan correctly any of the Horatian rhythms, or any true rhythm that human ingenuity can conceive. And this excess of chimerical feet is perhaps the very least of the scholastic supererogations. Ex uno disce omnia. The fact is that quantity is a point in whose investigation the lumber of mere learning may be dispensed with, if ever in any. Its appreciation is universal. It appertains to no region, nor race, nor era in special. To melody and to harmony the Greeks hearkened with ears precisely similar to those which we employ for similar purposes at present, and I should not be condemned for heresy in asserting that a pendulum at Athens would have vibrated much after the same fashion as does a pendulum in the city of Penn.
Verse originates in the human enjoyment of equality, fitness. To this enjoyment, also, all the moods of verse, rhythm, metre, stanza, rhyme, alliteration, the refrain, and other analagous effects, are to be referred. As there are some readers who habitually confound rhythm and metre, it may be as well here to say that the former concerns the character of feet (that is arrangements of syllables) while the latter has to do with the number of these feet. Thus by “a dactylic rhythm” we express a sequence of dactyls. By “a dactylic hexameter” we imply a line or measure consisting of six of these dactyls.
To return to equality. Its idea embraces those of similarity, proportion, identity, repetition, and adaptation or fitness. It might not be very difficult to go even behind the idea of equality, and show both how and why it is that the human nature takes pleasure in it, but such an investigation would, for any purpose now in view, be supererogatory. It is sufficient that the fact is undeniable — the fact that man derives enjoyment