APPENDIX.

BLANK VERSE.

I.

PREFATORY NOTE.

A SENTENCE in the essay on England's literary debt to Italy (see above, p. 177) furnishes me with a pretext for reprinting two separate studies on Blank Verse. They were composed with a view to illustrating the rhetoric rather than the prosody of this metre, on the conviction that though Blank Verse is an iambic rhythm, it owes its beauty to the liberties taken with the normal structure. The licences allowed themselves ir this metre by great masters of versification may be explained, I think, invariably when we note the accent required by the rhetorical significance of their abnormal lines.

It can fairly be argued, however, that with this end in view [ have paid too little attention to the prosody of Blank Verse, or, in other words, to its scansion by feet. In order to meet this objection, some prefatory remarks may here be offered upon the difficult question of quantity and accent.

We are accustomed, roughly speaking, to say that ancient metre depends on Quantity and modern metre on Accent. The names Dactyl, Spondee, Trochee, &c., were invented in the analysis of Greek metres to express certain combinations of long and short

1 I have not attempted to avoid repetitions in this Appendix. Its three parts were written at intervals during the last ten years; and two of them have been separately published. My purpose will be sufficiently served by a simple reprint, and I trust that the reader will not be fatigued by occasional recapitulation of the points I have sought to establish.

syllables, without reference to pitch or emphasis. But when we speak of Quantity in English metre, we mean the more or less accentuation of syllables. Thus an English trochee is a foot in which the first syllable is more accentuated than the second; an iamb is the contrary. In the transition from the ancient to the modern world the sense of Quantity seems to have been lost, and its values were replaced by Accent. We find, for example, in the watchsong of the Modenese soldiers, which can be referred to a period about the middle of the tenth century, such iambics as the following :

Divina mundi rex Christe custodia,

Sub tua serva haec castra vigilia.

Both lines have an accentual as well as a quantitative trochee in the fourth place. In the second line the accents on the first syllable of tua, and on the second syllable of vigilia, which would have been too slight to lengthen them for a classical bar, are allowed to supply the place of quantity.

If Latin verses could thus be written without attention to quantity, this shows that the feeling for it had expired; and even at a period which may still be called classical, the gradual blunting of the sensibility can be traced in the shortening of vowel sounds. It will suffice to quote the following hexameter :—

Caetera mando focis spernunt quae dentes acuti.

The Pompeian graffiti prove abundantly that among the common people at any rate it had never been acute; and we are led to the conclusion that scansion by quantity in Latin was an artificial refinement, agreeable to highly educated ears. When, therefore, we proceed to state that English lines ignore quantity, we mean that the cultivated feeling for the relative values of long and short syllables has never been sufficiently vivid with us to make us particular about preserving them. We are satisfied with the values afforded by accentuation, though there is no doubt that verses can be written with correct accentuation which shall also preserve quantity in the classic sense. Tennyson's experiments in Alcaics, Hendecasyllabics, and Sapphics suffice for proof. The difference between us and the cultivated ancients in this respect may, in a measure, be due to our comparatively negligent pronunciation. For instance, we do not pronounce the word mella as the Italians do, so as to give the full value to both 's. We have not trained

our ear to require, or our vocal organs to make, that delicate differentiation of syllables according to their spelling-in other words, to separate instead of slurring the component parts of speech-on which quantity depends. These considerations lead to a theory of metrical analysis which may be offered with some diffidence.

The laws of metre are to be found in the natural rhythm of words; for each word in every language has its own rhythmical form. This natural rhythm is expressed in pronunciation, and is determined by the greater or less time consumed in the enunciation of the syllables. Quantity and Accent distinguish two conditions of this expenditure. Quantity, apart from Accent, is the measure of time, lengthened or abbreviated, necessary for the due articulation of the component parts of language. Thus, generally speaking, a long syllable is one in which double vowels or a vowel before accumulated consonants demand a full time for their utterance; a short syllable is one in which a single vowel or a vowel before a simple consonant may be uttered in a half time. Me (double e) and Tunc are long: Que (single e) and Sub are short. It is agreed, apparently, in European metres to take account only of full and half times; yet much of the more subtle rhythmical effects depends upon the relative values of syllables which can only be conventionally regarded as not exceeding or falling short of one of the two limitations. Not every long is of exactly equal length. Not every short is of exactly equal brevity. Accent is indifferently used to indicate two separate conditions. It is either the measure of intonation, heightened or lowered, or else it is enforced utterance. Of the former sort of accent, or pitch, which probably played an important part in Greek versification, no account need at present be taken. The latter, or ictus, has the effect of quantity, inasmuch as it renders more time needful for the stress laid upon the syllable-the accumulated volume of sound requiring a greater effort of the vocal organs, and consequently a retarded utterance. Every word, then, in articulation is subject to conditions of time, implying what we call Quantity and Accent; and in many words quantity is hardly distinguishable from accent. Thus, in the line :

Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi,

the quantity of Tityre can be represented either as a double vowel followed by two simple vowels, requiring a time and two half times for enunciation, or else as an ante-penultimate accent. Without

pursuing this analysis into further details, it may be possible to define Quantity as enunciation retarded or accelerated by the greater or less simplicity of the sound to be formed by the vocal organs; Accent as the retardation of a simple sound by the increased effort of the vocal organs needed for marking the ictus. They are both, so to speak, in the category of time; and though it is necessary to distinguish them, it should not be forgotten that their importance in prosody is due to the divisions and subdivisions of time they represent.

The consideration of Pause and Elision will help to illustrate these definitions. When two strong consonants have to be pronounced together, there must always be a pause between them, and with the pause an expenditure of time. That is the secret of the quantity ascribed to the preceding vowel. Thus amor in amor est has the value of, because no pause is needed, no second consonantal sound being produced after its pronunciation; in amor dans it has the value of, because a fresh consonant has to be formed. The English do not mark this pause clearly. In other words, they do not give full value to each consonant, especially when the same letter is repeated. The Italians do the first syllable of mellifluo, for instance, must be articulated mel'-lifluo; and so jealous is the spirit of the language on this point that in words like accento the value of the double cc is preserved by a t'-ch sound. It may be asserted that in proportion as the pronunciation of syllables in a language is more or less perfect, in the same proportion will the sense for quantity be vivid, and quantitative versification be easy.

:

Elision can be explained on the same principles. Since no fresh effort, no pause, no new expenditure of time is needed when two vowels come together, they are suffered to pass as one. How true a law this is may be perceived when we remember that vulgar persons introduce an r between two a's, owing to the difficulty of otherwise articulating them separately. The Lucretian elision of the finals in words like moenibus, before a consonant, probably shows that this final sibilant was on the point of becoming mute; and the recognised elision of m in words like mecum before a vowel may in like manner indicate that this liquid had become practically mute, mecum tending toward the modern meco.

The main drift of the foregoing analysis has been to show that both Quantity and Accent have a common element of Time. It consequently follows that metres which, like the English, prac

tically ignore quantity, can be scanned in feet, or divided into bars, by accent. Yet the result will never be so accurate as in the case of quantitative rhythms, chiefly because accent itself is variable with us; and the same combinations of syllables, by a slight shifting of accents, may appear to one observer a dactyl, to another an anapæst, and so forth.

An instance may be furnished by the following line, which is a passable hendecasyllabic Blank Verse :—

She in her hands held forth a cup of water.

If we accentuate the first syllable, the rhythm would most naturally be marked thus:

But this does not yield even a 'licentiate iambic.' Therefore, in order to bring it within the rule of the metre, we must shift the accent and scan:

It is of no use to complain that the line is a bad one, and ought to be re-written, because similar lines are of plentiful occurrence in our best dramatic writers. Without such irregularities, Blank Verse would be monotonous.

Licences which would have been intolerable to a Greek ear, such as successive trochees in the third and fourth places, of which there are several specimens in Milton, or a trochee in the second place, which is a favourite expedient of Shelley's, are far from disagreeable in the English iambic. Indeed, so variable is its structure that it is by no means easy to define the minimum of metrical form below which a Blank Verse ceases to be a recognisable line. It is possible that the diminution of the English,iambic by one foot less than the Greek renders its licences more tolerable, and facilitates that interweaving of successive lines by which so many discords are resolved in a controlling harmony. Lastly, it may be observed that, being an accentual metre, blank verse owes much of its rhythmical quality to emphasis. For emphasis is but enforced accent; and when the proper emphasis has been discovered in a line, the problem of its rhythmical structure has almost always been solved. It is thus that close attention to the rhetoric of Blank Verse becomes absolutely necessary.

It will be seen from the foregoing observations that I am neither