VII.

FALSE METRE AND DUBIOUS.

AN assumption that has been proceeded on throughout is that the true metre of any verse is that which the run of words sets to. If the professed metre be at variance with the run evident, the former is to be declared in the wrong; and if still the verse be characterised as of that metre, it must be with the qualification of false.

Tripping metre, as elsewhere stated, does not admit the hover, least of all in the first foot, that by which the run is so greatly determined. In the following, a piece apparently meant for trip, is in a fair way of lapsing into the forward, the third syllable being far stronger than the first :

Of Prometheus, how undaunted

On Olympus' shining bastions.
His audacious foot he planted,

Myths are told and songs are chaunted,

Full of promptings and suggestions.—LONGFELLOW.

This is by no means a solitary instance of the kind; the following is for the most part in the same predicament :

Do

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.

ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,

And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,

The young birds are chirping in the nest,

The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blooming toward the west-
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.-MRS. BROWNING.

Under this head must also come all attempted dactylic

verse which cannot be classed as revert (see ch. xv.), including the so-called English hexameter, which thus identifies itself in great measure with the verse last treated under the name of crown, being, as before said, the same with restrictions:

This is the forest prime|val. The murmuring pines | and the hem locks, Bearded with moss, and with garments green, | indistinct | in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic;

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighbouring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman ?

Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,— Men whose lives glided on like rivers that watered the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven? LONGFELLOW.

The true scanning of this measure is as marked in the sample, that which it naturally sets to in spite of anyone. The odd-over constant which every verse is seen to possess is the cause of the peculiar jerk which an impartial reader finds so dislocating to his sense of euphony and melody, and which even the illustrious author of the above copy compares to a prisoner dancing to the music of his own chains.

The professed composition is that the fifth foot is a dactyl, the sixth a trochee, the other four feet either at will, making the scanning thus, with the accent at the beginning of the foot throughout:

This is the forest pri | méval. The | múrmuring | pínes and the | hémlocks

It may not be amiss to state the fathership of this metre. There are those who, resigning themselves to the futility of attempting to write in quantity, yet cling to classical metres by the fiction elsewhere set forth, the use of the same nominal feet. They reason thus of the hexameter:-Homer and Virgil have used this metre with vast effect, and we of

this country, though pronouncing their languages after our own fashion, as were they so much English, are yet able to get from them a full and flowing melody of undeniable worth :

Arma virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinia venit

Littora; mult(um) ill(e) et terris jactatus et alto,
Vi superum, saevae memorem Junonis ob iram.
Multa quoqu(e) et bello passus, dum conderet urbem,
Inferretque Deos Latio: genus unde Latinum,
Albanique patres, atqu(e) altae moenia Romae.

If so good an effect, they argue, can be got from Latin treated as English, why not obtain the same effect in English itself, by arranging it in like manner? The result may be seen in the example before given.

The reasons of the difference ought not to be far to seek. The prime cause, as may well be supposed, is in the unaccordant natures of the two languages. The simple state of the case is, that Latin, with its sonorous syllables, will bear what English with its vowels three-quarters mutes will not.

In English, every syllable of a word that receives the accent is relatively more important than the others. The word centres in that syllable, and the rest is but enclitic to it. But though we professedly treat Latin as English, the accent we throw on the words of that language is by no means the equivalent in that respect of what we throw on our own; we indeed single out one syllable, but we by no means degrade the others.

Substitute a single English word in place of the closing one in each Latin line, and the whole melody of the verse will be destroyed :

Arma virumque cano Trojae qui primus ab army
Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinia forest

Littora; mult' ill' et terris jactatus exhausted

Vi superum, saevae memorem Junonis ob absent.

Need more be said to make clear that to rule the two lan

guages on one pattern, must needs lodge the perpetrator in a quagmire?

But in supposing the English put through the same discipline as the Latin, a further error is committed. The accent in the latter language has been made to undergo a displacement not to be thought of in English. Where, in dealing with separate words, we should before have said cáno, we now say canó. Trójae has become Trojáe; fáto, fató; profúgus, profugús; pássus, passús, and so on.

Latin being a dead language, we treat it as we please, but in English nothing is more vital than the accent; the language will bear violence in any particular rather than in that. Fancy reading:

This is the forest primevál. The murmuring pines and the hemlock, but such would be only analogous. It is rather that hence in the ancient model the real hexameter cadence is procured, than from anything answering to run either backward or forward in English, which in Greek and Latin seems mainly indeterminate.

The English hexameter, from its very structure, tends to the rise almost throughout, even more than crown verse; with mid-cesura, unless, indeed, remaining slow, it unavoidably does, the last member being set so by rule, the first not having scope to be other, a quick foot in the second place being debarred, even more completely than a slow one in the sixth. In the second member there is indeed a rare occasional fall, known as the spondaic ending :

Into this wonderful land, at the base of the Ozark Mountains, Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred housetops. But the term spondaic is no longer truly applicable here, for the weight of the syllables is little regarded in the arrangement, and even if it were, would not tell to any purpose.

Actual fall, even in an opening four-foot member, where it can come about, is somewhat rare :—

Happy was he who might touch her hand and the hem of her garment. She, too, would bring to her husband's house delight and abundance.

Four dissyllabic feet in one member is more frequent; but the whole, it is seen, is but crown again under restriction.

Such an exceptional line as

Stand like harpers | hoar, || with beards | that rest on their bosoms, must be held to scan thus, 'hoar' forming a foot to itself; for the attraction of the other verses will cause the run to revert to the forward at the cesura. (See further on this subject, chaps. xvi. and xvii.)

Be it remarked, from their very rigidity, a certain advantage accrues to the practiser of hexameters; for his range of expression being limited by law, he cannot be held responsible for not going beyond it, whence the troublesome branch of the subject dubbed 'presentation' will hardly be a concern to him, for the jerking of the metre so determines the one unalterable expression, that how a thing is said in it, or in what words, appears of little or no account, and not to be metrically reflected at all.

Some may deem that crown verse as set forth has been allowed too great license; some, on the other hand, may incline to quite the contrary opinion; but all in practice can please themselves. Any system must be finally judged by its products, over which there is no controlling canon, nor can there be any above that of pleasing proportion regulated by good taste.

There may still be those who will adhere to this restricted form of the metre, for false or not in dactylic regard, it exists for what it is worth; but if such there should be, let them be particularly careful, whenever the first foot is meant to be a trochee, that the opening syllable of every line be strongly accentual, otherwise the verse, having a tendency to lapse into the forward from the very beginning, will appear of five feet, not six :

As apart by the window she stood, with her hand in her lover's,—
And the notary rising, and blessing the bride and the bridegroom.

Of the elegiac as received on this plan, take the following,