No More Learning

He declines to be
'blindly partial' to Dryden, defends Jonson and Shakespeare
against detraction, ridicules the 'tedious scenes' of Crowne,
whom he had used as the instrument of his jealousy, and detects
a sheer original in Etherege, who returned the compliment by
painting him as Dorimant. He finds the right epithets for ‘hasty
Shadwell' and 'slow Wycherley,' chooses Buckhurst for pointed


## p. 215 (#237) ############################################

Sir Charles Sedley
215
(
6
satire, and extols the 'gentle prevailing art' of Sir Charles Sedley.
For the uncritical populace, he expresses his frank contempt.
'I loathe the rabble,' says he, 'tis enough for me'
If Sedley, Shadwell, Sheppard, Wycherley,
Godolphin, Butler, Buckhurst, Buckingham
Approve my Sense, I count their Censure Fame.
It is Rochester's added distinction that, almost alone in his
age, he wrote lyrics touched with feeling, even with passion.
Though, at times, he makes sport of his own inconstancy, though,
like the rest, be rimes ‘kisses' with 'blisses' and 'heart' with
smart,' he could yet write
An Age in her Embraces past,
Would seem a Winter's Day;
or, still better, those lines to his mistress, which begin, 'Why dost
thou shade thy lovely face,' and which none of his fellows approached.
Here, the metre is as far beyond their reach as the emotion:
Thou art my Way: I wander if thou fly.
Thou art my Light: if hid, how blind am I.
Thou art my Life: if thou withdraw'st, I diel.
Nor should ever be forgotten that masterpiece of heroic irony
The Maim'd Debauchee, who, like a brave admiral, crawling to
the top of an adjacent hill, beholds the battle maintained, when
fleets of glasses sail around the board. ' You can but say of it, as
of much else, that it bears the stamp of Rochester's vigour and
sincerity in every line, and that he alone could have written it
Sir Charles Sedley, if he lacked Rochester's genius, was more
prosperously endowed. He was rich as well as accomplished, and
outlived his outrageous youth, to become the friend and champion
of William III. Born in 1639, he preceded Rochester at Wadham
college, and came upon the town as poet and profligate at the
restoration. Concerning his wit, there is no doubt. Pepys pays
it a compliment, which cannot be gainsaid. He went to the
theatre to hear The Maides Tragedy, and lost it all, listening to
Sedley's discourse with a masked lady "and a more pleasant
rencontre I never heard,' and his exceptions 'against both words
and pronouncing very pretty! Dryden describes Sedley as 'a more
elegant Tibullus,' whose eulogy by Horace he applies to him:
Non tu corpus eras sine pectore: Dii tibi formam,
Dii tibi divitias dederant, artemque fruendi.
He applauds above all the candour of his opinions, his dislike
of censoriousness, his good sense and good nature, and proclaims
the accusations brought against him as 'a fine which fortune
1 See appendix to second impression.


## p. 216 (#238) ############################################

216
The Court Poets
sets upon all extraordinary persons. It is certain that, with
'
the years, his gravity increased, and the quip which he made
to explain his hostility to James II, who had taken his daughter
for his mistress, and made her countess of Dorchester, was but an
echo of his lost youth. 'I hate ingratitude,' said he, 'the King
has made my daughter a countess; I can do no less than try to
make his daughter a Queen. '
As a poet, he followed obediently the fashion of the time.
He wrote The Mulberry Garden, which failed to please Pepys
or to provoke a smile from the king, and The Tyrant King of
Crete. He perverted Antony and Cleopatra into rime, and permits
the Egyptian queen to speak these last words:
Good asp bite deep and deadly in my breast,
And give me sudden and eternal rest. [She dies.
He translated Vergil's Fourth Georgic as well as the Eclogues,
and composed a poem on matrimony called The Happy Pair,
which was long ago forgotten. Such reputation as he has guarded
depends wholly upon his songs. What Burnet said of him might
be applied to them with equal truth: ‘he had a sudden and
copious wit, but it was not so correct as lord Dorset's, nor 80
sparkling as lord Rochester's. ' He had far less faculty than
either Rochester or Dorset of castigating his idly written lines.
He was content with the common images of his day, with the
fancy of Gradus ad Parnassum. The maids and shepherds of
his songs like their 'balmy ease' on 'flowery carpets' under the
e
sun's genial ray. Their only weapons are 'darts and flames. '
In the combination of these jejune words there can be no feeling
and no surprise. But Sedley had his happy moments, in which
he discarded the poor artifices of his muse, and wrote like a free
and untrammelled poet. Phyllis is my only Joy, apart from its
metrical ingenuity, has a lyrical sincerity which has kept it fresh
unto this day. Written to be sung, it is the work not of a fop
but of a poet. A near rival is ‘Not Celia that I juster am,'
memorable for its epigrammatic conclusion,
When Change itself can give no more,
'Tis easy to be true.
When he condescends to lyrical patriotism, Sedley is seen at his
worst. Not even his hatred of James II can palliate such doggerel as
Behold the happy day again,
Distinguish'd by the joy in every face;
This day great William's life began
Boul of our war and guardian of our peace.


## p. 217 (#239) ############################################

Buckhurst
217
6
For the rest, Rochester's criticism of Sedley is not without truth.
He praised the gentle Art,
That can with a resistless Power impart
The loosest wishes to the chastest Heart.
Sedley's early ambition could not be more justly or delicately
expressed
The reputation of Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst and then
earl of Dorset, is a puzzle of literary history. An age lavish of
panegyric exhausted in his praise all its powers of flattery. In
no other poet will you find so vast a disproportion between his
works and the eulogies they evoked. Some specimens of Dryden's
adulation have already been quoted. And Dryden did not stand
alone. Prior was his friendly rival in exaggeration.
The manner in which he wrote,' said he of Buckhurst, will hardly ever
be equalled. . . . Every one of his pieces is an ingot of gold, intrinsically and
solidly valuable; such as wrought or beaten thinner, would shine thro' a
whole book of any author. '
For every virtue of his friend's writings Prior found a happy
image. There is a lustre in his verses,' he wrote, 'like that of
the sun in Claude Lorraine's landskips; it looks natural, and is
inimitable. ' And when we turn from the encomiasts to the poet's
own works, we find them to be no more than what Johnson called
them, the effusions of a man of wit, gay, vigorous, and airy. '
Buckhurst was, above all, a satirist. He had the mordant
humour, the keen eye, the perfect concision of phrase, essential to
one who lashes the follies of his age. He knew not how to spare
the objects of his contempt. He left upon his enemies not the
flicker of irony, but the indelible mark of his scorn. Rochester,
in a line of praise, not of ill-nature, as Dryden took it, called him
a
'the best good man with the worst natur'd Muse,' a line which
Buckhurst's addresses To Mr Edward Howard seem to justify.
Of their skill and energy, there can be no doubt. Their victim,
assuredly, found them deficient in good taste. "The gentleman,'
says Prior, ‘had always so much the better of the satirist, that the
persons touched did not know where to fix their resentments,
and were forced to appear rather ashamed than angry. ' It was
more anger than shame, I imagine, that attacked Edward Howard,
when he read Buckhurst's ferocious lines upon his plays.
The best known of all his works is the celebrated song, To all
you Ladies now at Land, a true ballad in form and rhythm,
touched in every line with the inborn wit and sentiment of its
author, who sees the sea with the eye of a landsman and courtier,
6
a


## p. 218 (#240) ############################################

218
The Court Poets
8
and who sends his tears a speedier way than the post: 'The tide
shall bring them twice a day. Tradition has persuaded the world
'
to believe that they were written at sea, in the first Dutch war,
1665, the night before an engagement' As Johnson says, 'seldom
any splendid story is wholly true,' and this splendid story must be
abandoned. The hereditary intelligence of the earl of Orrery
made Johnson suspicious, and today we have surer intelligence
even than lord Orrery.
‘By coach to my Lord Brunker's,' wrote Pepys on 2 January 1665, 'by
appointment, in the Piazza in Covent-Guarding; where I occasioned much
mirth with a ballet I brought with me, made from the seamen at sea to their
ladies in town. '
Though Pepys says that Sir W. Pen, Sir G. Ascue and Sir J. Lawson
'made them,' it is evident that it is Buckhurst's 'ballet' that is in
his mind, and as Pepys knew it six months before the battle, clearly
Buckhurst did not write it at sea, with the expectation of an
engagement upon him. The time and place of its writing, how-
ever, do not lessen the admirable quality of the ballad, which keeps
its place in our anthologies by its own shining merits.
Nevertheless, not his ballad, not his satires, not his songs,
quick as they are with epigram and wit, justify the praises which
have been generously bestowed upon their author. It may be
that we have but a fragment of his work; that, as Prior suggests,
he cared not what became of his verses when the writing of them
had amused his leisure. Many of his happiest efforts may have
been preserved only by memory, like the sayings of the ancient
Druids. If that be so, they have perished as utterly as the Druids
and their wisdom. The mere rumour of them cannot affect our
judgment, and we are driven to conclude that it was Buckhurst
the man, not Buckhurst the poet, who won the universal esteem.
The follies of his youth were easily forgiven, or, rather, the excel-
lences of his maturer years showed the brighter with his follies for
a background. His character was as amiable as his pen was acrid.
Rochester, never lavish of compliments, paid him the highest that
ingenuity could devise. 'He did not know how it was,' said he,
'but my Lord Dorset might do anything, yet was never to blame. '
His skill in diplomacy, his tact in affairs, are acknowledged by all,
and he was evidently one of those who, without effort, claim and
keep the respect and affection of their fellows. Prior's eulogy of
his virtues is as sincere as it is eloquent, and if we estimate his
poetry more modestly than his contemporaries, we may still echo
their praises of his character and person.
>


## p. 219 (#241) ############################################

Mulgrave's Essay upon Poetry 219
8
It would be difficult to find a greater contrast to Buckhurst than
John Sheffield, earl of Mulgrave, and duke of Buckinghamshire,
who was as little able to hold the sympathy of his age as to preserve
the reputation of poet which once was his. Not even the tongues of
flatterers can defend him successfully against the assault of truth.
'He is a nobleman of learning,' wrote Macky, 'and good natural parts, but
of no principles. Violent for the High Church, yet seldom goes to it. Very
proud, insolent, and covetous, and takes all advantages. In paying his debts
unwilling; and is neither esteemed, nor beloved: for notwithstanding his
great interest at court, it is certain he has none in either House of Parliament,
or in the country'
The conduct of his quarrel with Rochester, and whatever else is
known of him, justify this harsh opinion. As a writer of verses,
he is fluent and undistinguished. His Temple of Death has no
better claim to be remembered than his Ode on Love. In The
Vision, which was written during a voyage to Tangier, we come
with surprise upon a line, 'odd antic shapes of wild unheard of
things,' which is not made up of current phrases, and echoes the
true sentiment of romance. His Essay on Satire, which cost
Dryden an encounter with Black Will, belies the principles
which he himself has set forth: the accent of the scold is heard
in every line. The work by which he is best known is An Essay
upon Poetry, a piece of rimed criticism, then fashionable. It is
neither profound nor original. Even as a chapter in the history
of criticism it is not valuable, because whatever of wisdom it
contains is borrowed from Boileau. It is full of commonplaces,
his own and others. 'Nature's chief masterpiece,' says he, 'is
writing well. Number and rime he finds 'but vulgar arts,' and
employed in vain without genius, 'for that's the soul. ' He dis-
courses, without illumination, of satires, songs, odes and epics.
As for dialogue, he finds that 'Shakespeare and Fletcher are the
wonders now, pays a lofty tribute to Homer-Read Homer once,
and you can read no more,' and in the second edition, published
nine years after the first, in 1691, puts Milton on the topmost
pinnacle of fame, above even Tasso and Spenser. This is the
highest feat of his intelligence, and he would have deserved still
greater credit for it, had not Roscommon anticipated him. In
general, he leans to the school of 'good sense'; he accepts Dryden's
definition of wit,'exact propriety of word and thought,' and would
judge poetry by a rigid standard of life. In condemning ‘such
nauseous songs as the late Convert made,' he voided his spleen
against his old enemy, Rochester, and suggested his dislike of the
sheer wit of restoration comedy. His condemnation inspired
0


## p. 220 (#242) ############################################

220
The Court Poets
name,
Robert Wolseley, in his preface to Valentinian (1685), valiantly to
defend the memory of his friend Rochester, and to strike a blow
for the freedom of poetry.
'It never yet came into any man's Head, who pretended to be a Critick,'
says Wolseley, "except this Essayer's that the Wit of a Poet was to be
measured by the worth of his Subject, and that when this was bad, that must
be so too; the manner of treating the subject has hitherto been thought the
true test, for as an ill Poet will depresse and disgrace the highest, so a good
one will raise and dignifie the lowest. '
Poetry, it may be assumed, was but an interlude in the life
of Mulgrave. Politics were always his chief employment, from
which he retired only while William III was on the throne. The
favourite of queen Anne, he held high office during her reign,
opposed the duke of Marlborough, ill requited the queen’s amia-
bility by inviting the princess Sophia to England, and built the
palace in the park, which, more than his works, keeps green his
Wentworth Dillon, earl of Roscommon, on the other
hand, meddled in the affairs of the court as little as he
practised its vices. Born in Ireland during the reign of
Strafford, his kinsman, he was given the name of that states-
man, who presently sent him to his own estate in Yorkshire to
be educated. He showed an aptitude for learning, and, as his
biographer says, 'attain'd to write in Latin with classical elegance
and propriety. When the blow fell upon Strafford, Roscommon
was sent to Caen to complete his education, and spent the
years of civil war in learning the life and language of foreign
countries, 'applying himself particularly to the knowledge of
medals, which he gained in perfection. ' He returned to England
at the restoration, a scholar, an honest man, and something of a
prig. He had but one vice, the unamiable vice of gambling, with
which he diminished his resources, and which once, in Dublin,
went near to cause his death. A friend of Dryden, he engaged
that great man's sympathy for his favourite project, the founding
of a British Academy which should 'refine and fix the standard
of our language. ' And the academic bent of his mind is seen in
his verses. His Essay on Translated Verse might well have been
an exercise presented to an academy of letters. It is tame, frigid
and uninspired. Johnson says he is the only correct writer of
verse before Addison,' a judgment which sets a strange meaning
upon correctness. The poets to whom Roscommon owes the
greatest debt are Horace, whom he says he has served more
than twenty years, and Boileau, whose apologue of the quack he
introduces into his poem without pertinence. The style of the


## p. 221 (#243) ############################################

Roscommon
22I
Essay never rises above a prosaic commonplace. It is only by
courtesy that we call such couplets as these poetry:
Provok'd too far, we resolutely must
To the few virtues that we have be just,
or
From hence our gen'rous Emulation came,
We undertook, and we perform'd the same.
The few precepts which he gives us would not prove of the
smallest use to the translator. They are little else than the plati-
tudes generally beloved by moral guides. Polonius himself might
have composed this specimen:
The first great work (a Task perform’d by few)
Is that yourself should to yourself be true.
He was as resolute a champion of 'good sense' as Rymer
himself, and he treats Homer with the same scant courtesy which
the author of A Short View meted out to Shakespeare:
For who, without a qualm, hath ever lookt
On holy garbage, tho' by Homer Cookt,
Whose rayling hero's, and whose wounded gods
Make some suspect, He snores as well as nods.
In the controversy between morality and art, he is strongly
ranged on the side of morality. “Want of decency is want of
sense,' says he in a line that Mulgrave pilfered. He shines most
• brilliantly in aphorisms, but he cannot sustain his wisdom; and
what most surprises us in An Essay on Translated Verse is its
reception. In Granville's eyes, he, with Mulgrave's aid, had en-
tirely eclipsed 'the Stagyrite and Horace. ' Henceforth, said this
too flattering critic, ‘we need no foreign guide. ' But let it not be
forgotten that Roscommon, before Mulgrave, discerned the genius
of Milton and the splendour of blank verse. His theory was
better than his precept. In his version of Ars Poetica, he
proved that, however deep might be his admiration of Milton, he
could not emulate the noble dignity of his style. Nevertheless,
the merit of one who, in 1684, dared to write blank verse, is not
that he uses it well, but that he uses it at all. Perturbed by the
religious strife which followed James II's accession to the throne,
Roscommon took the prudent resolution, says his biographer, 'to
pass the remainder of his life at Rome, telling his friends it would
be better to sit next to the chimney when the chamber smok'd. '
He did not effect his purpose. Overtaken by the gout, he died
suddenly, reciting as he died two lines of his own:
My God, my father, and my friend,
Do not forsake me at my End.


## p. 222 (#244) ############################################

CHAPTER IX
THE PROSODY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
.
In the last summary of prosodic progress given in this work? ,
we saw how, with Spenser, something like a new era of English
versification was reached; how that versification was again adjusted
to the demands at once of metrical form and of the ear; how,
by Spenser himself, and by his contemporaries, “poetic diction'
of the best sort was once more constructed; and how, in short,
something like the Chaucerian position was once more attained,
but with the metrical forms immensely varied, and with these
forms adjusted to a condition of the language which has proved
relatively permanent.
Spenser died in the penultimate year of the sixteenth century,
Dryden in the last year of the seventeenth, and the period between
the two deaths witnessed large and definite prosodic progress : not
always in the limited and flattering acceptation of the word, but
always progress in the true historical sense. Many of the examples
and evidences of this—the dramatic blank verse of Shakespeare
and his elder and younger craft-fellows; the remarkable array of
later Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline lyric; the practical
creation of non-dramatic blank verse by Milton; the rival forms
of stopped and overflowing couplet—have been separately con-
sidered under the heads of the greater and lesser poets who
exemplified them. These particular considerations will only be
summarised here to the extent necessary for a general view of
the whole tendencies and results of the prosodic périod. But an
attempt will be made to map this out clearly; for, historically, if
we consider, there is hardly a more important field of English
versification in existence.
The point to start with, and to keep in mind as steadily as
possible, is that the effort to drag English prosody out of its
fifteenth century Slough of Despond—the effort begun by Wyatt
and Surrey, continued by Sackville and his contemporaries and
completed by Spenser-resulted, almost inevitably, in somewhat
I see ante, vol. in, chap. XII.


## p. 223 (#245) ############################################

Variations of the lambic Line
223
too great insistence on strict and nearly syllabic regularity of
metre. The elasticity and variety of English verse which had
been the most precious heritage from the union of Teutonic and
Romance qualities had been a little lost sight of, even to the
extent of the strange delusion-formulated as theory by Gascoigne
in the face of facts, and evidently entertained by much greater
and later poets in practice—that English possessed a foot of two
syllables, iambically arranged, and that foot only.
Had this delusion not been counterworked, the loss would have
been immense ; but, fortunately, the counterworking went on in
two—in fact in three-important directions. In the first place,
the abundant composition of songs for music necessitated now the
admixture, now the constant observance, of 'triple time. In the
second, metrical composition in this triple time, with no idea of
music, was popular; and, though not much affected by the greater
poets, it was sporadically cultivated by the lesser, from Tusser on-
wards. But the great instrument, pattern and storehouse (to
regard it from different points of view) in the recovery-slowly
though this recovery was effected—was blank verse.
It is one of the paradoxes frequent in prosodic as in other
history that this verse, in its origin and for some considerable
time, might seem to have been chosen as the very sanctum of the
foot of two syllables only. In Surrey, you will not find a trisyllabic
foot; except, and then rarely, by giving value to a syllable (such
as one or other of those in ‘spirit ') which was probably, if not
certainly, meant by the poet to be slurred-though it may improve
the verse to unslur it. So, in the rare fragments (such as
Gascoigne's Steele Glas) of other non-dramatic sixteenth century
work; and so, almost more, when the drama seized on blank
verse, or blank verse on the drama. The tramp of Gorboduc is
as unbroken as the ticking of a clock, as the 'rub-dub’-not yet
‘rub-a-dub'-of the drum to which it was early compared.
But it was impossible for a true dramatist who was also a true
poet to remain content with the single-moulded, middle-paused,
strictly iambic 'decasyllabon. Although this forms the staple
'
verse of Peele and Greene and Marlowe, occasional escapes of
passion break through the restraints in all directions, though the
trisyllabic foot is still very uncommon with them. But Shakespeare,
in a manner dealt with more in detail in the proper place, gradually
dispenses with all restraints not absolutely necessary to the reten-
tion of the general rhythm of the line. Only, perhaps, by reading
successively—with attention to the scansion-say, a passage of


## p. 224 (#246) ############################################

224 The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
Gorboduc and one of the famous Hamlet soliloquies; and by
following up this pair with another-say, one of Turbervile's poems
and a song from Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, or
The Tempest-can anyone who has not deliberately studied prosody
appreciate the recovery of liberty in its process and in its fulfilment.
There will not be found any real 'irregularity'-lines of intended
similarity will never be observed to vary in 'accent' or 'foot
division'—whichever arrangement may be preferred. The blank
verse will sometimes extend itself to alexandrines, perhaps, in
a few cases, to fourteeners, and sometimes contract itself to
fragments (i. e. lesser multiples of the unit than five), which may
end with half, as well as whole, feet. The lyrics may-generally
will-present arrangements of different multiples. But these
multiples, in the lyric case, will be adjusted to a definite stanza-
symphony, and, in both cases, the individual correspondent lines,
though they may present syllabic difference, will be found to be
essentially equivalent-trisyllabic, occasionally monosyllabic, feet
(or accent groups) being substituted for dissyllabic? .
1 The actual opening lines of Gorboduc will do perfectly well, with the observation
that the rime of shame' and 'blame' is a mere accident, though rather an interest-
ing one, as showing that it was still difficult to avoid dropping into' this ornament
of poetry.
The sillent night | that brings | the quiſet pause,
From painful travails of the wea|ry day,
Prolongs | my careful thoughts / and makes / me blame
The slow | Aurore | that so I for love | or shame
Doth long | delay | to show | her blushſing face,
And now the day renews | my grief|ful plaint.
Here, every foot is dissyllabio and dissyllabio only: while there is hardly one, even
'Aurore' or '-vails of,' which is not, according to ordinary English pronunciation, a
pure iamb. And every line has five, and five only, of such feet without an eleventh
syllable, and even without a prosodic overrun, though there may be no stop in punc-
tuation, and even a connection in sense, at blame' and shame,' with the next verse.
Now take a Hamlet piece, observing that rearrangement of the lines, though in
some cases possible, will not affect the argument. For you will never get them into
exact decasyllabong. Neither will allowance of, or insistence on, slur help to bridge the
difference, for there is nothing in the Gorboduc passage like 'gen’ral' or 'ign'rant. '
For He cuba !
What's Hecuba | to him or he / to Hejcuba ?
That he should weep | for her? | What should be do,
Had he | the motive and the cure / for passion
That I have? He I would drown the stage / with tears,
And cleave the genſērăl eār | with hor/rid speech,
Make mad | the guilty and | appal | the free-
Confound the ig|nðrănt and amaze | indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet Il
and so forth. Here, you have a mode of procedure as different as possible. Even if any.
one objects to the alexandrine in 'What's Hecuba,' he will have to allow redundance
6


## p. 225 (#247) ############################################

Foot Equivalence and Stanza Variation 225
This instinctive carrying out, however, of the principles which
have been shown in previous chapters as at work since the
thirteenth century, at least, was not thoroughly understood by
any poet except Shakespeare. His contemporaries and successors
in lyric, with a few exceptions, though they fully compre-
hend line variety in length and the stanza symphony produced
thereby, did not venture on any large proportion of equivalence in
individual feet. And there was not any harm in this, for the
construction of their stanzas, with alternation of long and short
lines, was so intricate and varied that it almost produced the
effect of foot-substitution. But, in blank verse, the result of
insufficient understanding was more disastrous.
They saw the
to the extravagant extent of three syllables ; even if, as pointed out above, he denies
the trisyllabic feet . . neral ear,' • . norant and,' preferring 'th' ignorant' or the
ign'rant' or some other monstrosity or cacophony, the racked or erased syllables will
still confront him. There is redundance which cannot be explained away in 'passion';
there is overrunning not merely of sense or grammar but in the whole rhetorical
prosodic cadence and complexion of the passage. And the fragmentary lines ‘For
Hecuba ' and · Yet I,' if this last be taken separately (and, if it be not, as in the folio, it
will make another alexandrine or another trisyllabic redundance), are perfectly regular
-two feet in the one case, one in the other.
Now to lyric. This piece of Turbervile
The green | that you did wish / me wear
Aye for your love
And on | my helm | a branch | to bear
1
Not to remove
Was evler you to have | in mind
Whom Cuſpid hath | my fere | assigned
is pretty enough ; but, if its grammar is rather poetically free, its metre is as prosodi.
cally strict and limited as possible. Once more, nothing but dissyllabic feet and, once
more, all those feet evidently intended for iambs—any doubt about 'Aye for and . Not
to' being removed by comparison with the other stanzas. Compare Ariel :
Where | the : bee | sucks : there suck I
In a : cow slip's : bell|I ; lie
There I : couch | when : Owls | do cry
On the : bat’s | back : do I : fly
Af|ter summer : merrily-
Merrily : merrily : shall | I live : now
Under the : blossom that : hangs | on the : bough.
Here, there are two possible ways of scansion indicated by the straight and
dotted lines respectively—the one representing iambio-anapaestic with anacrusis, the
other trochaic dactylio, but both far from the straight and direct iambio run. And
80 Amiens, in actually corresponding lines :
Who doth / ambi|tion shun),
strict iambs ; but
And loves to lie | 7 the sun |
with anapaest substituted in one place.
It is only necessary to add that an objection sometimes made, Oh! but these are
different tunes,' is quite beside the mark. The tunes may have been instrumental in
suggesting prosodic arrangements; but the difference of the arrangements themselves
remains.
E. L. VIII.
CH. Y
15


## p. 226 (#248) ############################################

226 The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
6
writing everywhere on the wall, ‘Be bold I': they omitted to
notice the single warning, ‘Be not too bold ! '
The first excess of audacity was in the direction of the re-
dundant syllable. This, the occasional virtue of which had been
understood even by the Marlowe group, and was perfectly utilised
by Shakespeare, was carried, even by him, in his latest plays,
dangerously near, though never quite over, the limit. Whether
the similar exaggeration by Beaumont and Fletcher was original
or imitated—whether it preceded or followed Cymbeline, The
Winter's Tale and The Tempest—is a controversial point, and,
therefore, not to be treated at length or positively pronounced on
as matter of fact here. The opinion of the present writer is in
favour of imitation and following on the part of the twins. '
But the added exaggeration of redundance, though it pleases
different people differently when largely used, can hardly be
regarded as inconsistent with the retention of a sound standard
of blank verse in at least the dramatic variety. It is otherwise
with careless and exaggerated handling of the other means of
varying the measure-alteration of line length, shift or neglect of
pause and substitution of syllable groups. By neglecting to keep
the normal standard at least present in the background, so far as
these alterations are concerned, blank verse, already deprived of
the guard of rime, simply tumbles to pieces. It actually does so in
the work of D'Avenant, of Suckling and of not a few lesser men,
in the last fifteen or twenty years before the closing of the theatres.
No wonder that, after the restoration, we find it for a time losing
hold of the drama itself; and stigmatised as 'too mean for a copy
of verses' outside drama. The real wonder is at the magnificent
audacity of Milton in experimenting with it for dramatic or semi-
dramatic purposes so early as the date of Comus (actually after
D'Avenant's Albovine, if before Suckling's A glaura) and in choosing
it (exactly how much later is unknown) for the vehicle of Paradise
Lost. But this is to anticipate. There is much to be said of early
seventeenth century prosody before Milton and in the days when
he was writing but little verse. Especially, we have to deal with
the resurgence and (after some vicissitudes) establishment of the
decasyllabic couplet.
This couplet, it has been said, had been comparatively little
practised in the fifteenth and the greater part of the sixteenth
century. Except Dunbar, or whoever was the actual author of
The Freiris of Berwik, no one had got a real grip of it before
Spenser in Mother Hubber's Tale. But Drayton practised it


## p. 227 (#249) ############################################

The Decasyllabic Couplet
227
6
early in a form like Chaucer's own, neither definitely 'stopped'
nor definitely ‘enjambed'; and a phrase of his in prose, “the
attraction of the gemell'[twin) or 'geminell'(as he elsewhere calls
it), combines with Jonson's exaltation of it (transmitted to us by
Drummond) as an important tell-tale. The effect of the closing
couplets of Fairfax's Tasso is also attested in prose by Dryden on
the direct authority of Waller. But, earlier than Fairfax, Marlowe,
in Hero and Leander, had set the example, in extraordinarily
attractive form and matter, of the overlapped kind; and, on the
whole, this was preferred in the first half of the century. The
chief practitioners of it in the first quarter were Browne, Wither
and, perhaps, the enigmatic Chalkhill; in the second, Shakerley
Marmion and William Chamberlayne.
This variety has many attractions, evident even in these earl
examples, and fully developed later by Keats and William Morris.
So far as the subject goes, its superiority for narrative hardly
requires demonstration, The narrator acquires almost the full
liberty of prose in regard to the shortening and lengthening of his
sentences and to their adjustment in convenient paragraphs. He
need neither 'pad' in order to spread the sense into a couplet, nor
break the sense up in order not to exceed the two lines. His rime
is not intrusive or insistent; it neither teases nor interrupts.
On the other hand, the form provides him with all the additional
enticements of poetry, rhythm, rime itself as an agreeable ac-
companiment, the advantage of a more coloured and abundant
diction, the added ornament of simile and other poetic figure.
Unfortunately, as in the case of the freer blank verse, these
very advantages involve great temptations and great dangers,
of which some fuller account will be found in the chapter on the
lesser Caroline poets! The absence of restraint on sentence
construction leads to confused and inconsecutive writing, which, in
its turn, does almost more harm to the story than the power of
varying sentence length and of jointing sentences together does
good. But this is not all: the verse itself suffers, as verse. The
rime, if it escapes the danger of excessive prominence, incurs that
of being simply merged in the flow of overlapping lines. This
means that it also loses the power of fulfilling its function as
time-beater,' and that the individual line becomes flaccid and
imperfect in ictus. In fact, a general slovenliness comes over it;
and, whether by accident or definite causation, no chapter of
English poetry is more remarkable than this for ugly contractions,
i See vol. vir, chap. IV.
1542


## p. 228 (#250) ############################################

228 The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
a
not to be saved by the most liberal allowance of trisyllabic feet,
for libertine accentuation and for other laches of the kind.
On the other hand, the stopped form which had existed
separately in Chaucer himself, which was not unfrequent in
Spenser and Drayton and which, when the octave became popular,
almost obtruded itself as a constant coda, presented a combination,
beyond all question unrivalled in English poetry, of strength,
neatness and regular music. The encomiastic exemplification
of Sir John Beaumont shows us, with perfect clearness, and in
effective terms, what its admirers and practitioners found and
liked in it. The sweetness of the stanza, itself regular enough
but 'long drawn out,' had palled on them; the new overlapped
paragraphs were not regular and were more long drawn out still ;
while a third variety of couplet, which the satirists and, especially,
Donne were attempting? , revolted them, not without reason, by its
roughness. It may, perhaps, be questioned whether those to whom
obvious and unmistakable regularity is the chief charm of verse
have attained to the full understanding of it; but it is certain that,
for a very large number of persons, perhaps even a considerable
majority, regularity does provide this charm. They found it in the
stopped decasyllabic couplet, combined with the further charm of
exact and emphatic rimes, as well as with that (which seems, also,
to have appealed very strongly to popular favour) of limitation
of sense to a manageable modicum of metre.
The history of this battle of the couplets,' as it has been
termed, turns on the names and work of the poets mentioned
and of others. It must not be supposed—and, indeed, will hardly
be supposed by any one conversant with literary history—that
any one of them was a positive and exclusive propagandist of
either kind. Waller, who obtained his traditional title 'reformer
of our numbers' from his practice in the stopped kind, wrote
some of his latest, and some of his best, work in the other.
Cowley, too, affected both; though there is no doubt that his
6
1
The relish of the Muse consists in rhyme :
One verse must meet another like a chime.
Our Saxon shortness hath peculiar grace
In choice of words fit for the ending-place,
Which leave impression in the mind as well
As closing sounds of some delightful bell.
This passage, which is much longer, occurs in his verses addressed to king James
concerning the true form of English poetry.
3 The theory sometimes maintained that this roughness, especially in Donne's own
case, was a deliberate revolt from Spenserian smoothness, if not a deliberate attempt
at a new stress prosody, does not commend itself to the present writer.


## p. 229 (#251) ############################################

Miscellaneous Metres
229
Davideis, with its deliberate introduction of the alexandrine to
vary, weight and extend the stopped form, was of great moment.
On the other hand, as has been observed, Chamberlayne, the
author of Pharonnida, the longest and the best of the enjambed
couplet poems, employs the stopped form in his England's Jubile.
But, little by little, this form triumphed; and its superior
adaptation to the styles of poetry most popular after the restora-
tion-satire, didactics, epistles and the like-must have won the
day for it, even if the faults of its rival! had been less gross.
Nothing can be wisely regretted which gave us first Dryden and
then Pope. But, even if these great masters had not found in the
stopped couplet a metre exactly suited to their respective powers,
its regulative quality-the way in which it once more drove doggerel
out of English verse—would amply validate its claim to respect.
In miscellaneous metric, the performance of the first third of
the century is, also, very noteworthy, though in no single respect
of equal importance to that of the progress of blank verse and
the rivalry of the two couplets. Among endless experiments in
lyric, a peculiar form or phase of the old ballad or common measure
(86 86 abab) was developed by Jonson, Donne and others, the
most famous example of which is Jonson's cento from the Greek
of Philostratus, 'Drink to me only with thine eyes. ' In this, by
judicious fingering of the vowel sounds, and of the run of the metre,
a cadence arises which is almost peculiar to the period and which
is of extraordinary beauty. By Jonson, again, and by his disciples
Herbert and Sandys (the latter important, also, in the deca-
syllabic couplet), the peculiar inclusive arrangement of rime in
‘long' measure (8 888 abba) which is now associated (probably
for all time) with Tennyson's adoption of it in In Memoriam,
was hit upon, though not largely used or thoroughly perfected.
And the same lyrical genius which, in Jonson, was happily united
to other gifts and characteristics not often found in its company,
enabled him to practise what are sometimes called 'epode
arrangements-alternations of shorter and longer lines in couplet-
with singular felicity. Nor would it be possible to summarise in
any general terms of value the remarkable combinations of lines,
from the monosyllabic to the fourteener, with which his contem-
poraries and successors experimented, from Campion to Herrick in
point of time, and from Milton to John Hall in point of import-
ance.
This admirable practice in lyric was itself of great value in
1 See, again, vol. VII, chap. 19.


## p. 230 (#252) ############################################

230 The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
that regulative process which has been pointed out as one of the
chief duties incumbent on prosody during the century for counter-
balancing the tendency of blank verse in its decadence and that of
the enjambed couplet. But one of the names mentioned at the
close of the last paragraph indicates by itself at once this process
of regularisation and one of sanctioning and arranging liberty. The
progress of Milton's metrical development and practice, and the
way in which he ranks with Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare as
one of the four chief pillars of English prosody, have been explained
in the chapter specially devoted to him? It may, however, be
summarised here, in a slight variation of the words used above,
as the ordering of freedom. His verse paragraphs, the use of the
pause which helps powerfully to constitute them, the majestic
adaptation of his diction to his metre, his cunning management
of word sound and word colour-all these things must fill a
great place in the estimate of him as poet and prosodist. In
the general history of the latter subject, they become not
insignificant but of minor importance, compared with the iambic
and trochaic equivalence of his octosyllabic couplets in L'Allegro,
I Penseroso, Arcades and Comus, and of still less importance
when compared with the so-called 'irregularity' (call it what
you will and explain it on what theory you choose) of the
blank verse of Paradise Lost. The first of these inspires Dyer
in the early eighteenth century and Blake in the later with
measures almost miraculously alterative of the prevalent tunes ;
the second, though it produces, at least up to Cowper's latest work,
nothing equally beautiful as imitation, works in a fashion less
delightful, perhaps, but more beneficial still. For these Miltonic
anomalies--call them trochaic and anapaestic substitution, elision,
slur, irregularity of stress, wrenched accent or, once more, what
you will—insist, in any case, on receiving attention. They will
not let you alone: and you cannot let them alone. It is admitted,
with unimportant exceptions, throughout the eighteenth century
that Milton is a very great poet; and yet he is constantly out of
apparent harmony, at least with the accepted rules of poetry. Even
if you edit or alter him out of his own character, as did Bentley
and Pemberton; if you elide him into cacophony like most people
of that time; if you scold him for licentious conduct like
Bysshe and Scott of Amwell and Vicesimus Knox and even
Johnson, the 'shameless stones' of his actual verse architecture
remain unaltered, massive, resplendent. At any moment, some
1 See vol. VII, chap. V.


## p. 231 (#253) ############################################

Trisyllabic Measures or Effects
231
one may come who will read their lesson aright; at all moments,
they keep that lesson ready. Unless you cut Shakespeare and
Milton out of the book of English literature, the secret of English
prosody remains and will remain open,
With one important development of prosody during his time,
however, Milton had little to do, though the experiments of
Samson show that he may have thought of it latterly? . This
was the employment of the anapaest—not in occasional substitu-
tion for the iamb, but as the principal base-foot of metre? It has
been pointed out repeatedly that such use, between the time of
doggerel and the mid-seventeenth century, is rare in literature
though authentically established by Tusser, Humfrey Gifford,
Campion and others. But folk-song kept it; and, in such pieces
as Mary Ambree, which, perhaps, is as early as 1584, there is no
mistake about it. Yet literary poets are still shy of it, and it is
eurious how rare it is in the work of a man like Herrick, which
would seem imperatively to demand it, and which actually gets a
pseudo-trisyllabic effect out of strictly dissyllabic bases. In spite
of the pressing invitation of music, closely connected as it is with
the lyric of this period, there hangs about the triple time a sug-
gestion of frivolity and vulgarity which is formulated preceptively
at the beginning of the next century by Bysshe. Long before that,
however, it had forced itself upon book-poetry. Ere 1650 had
been reached, Cleiveland in his Mark Antony and Square-Cap,
Waller in his Saraband—both popular and widely read versifiers-
had employed it. But Cleiveland's handling is very uncertain;
and this uncertainty as to whether the authors meant iambic and
trochaic movement with trisyllabic substitution, or a mainly
trisyllabic measure with similarly occasional dissyllabic equivalence,
persists as late as some examples of Dryden.
This last named poet, however, brought his great metrical
skill, and his almost unchallenged authority, to the support of
trisyllabic measures, alike in many songs and lyrics scattered
about his plays, and in others not attached to any drama, but
published in his Miscellanies. The other numerous collections
of the middle and late seventeenth and the early eighteenth
centuries, from the Musarum Deliciae of Mennes (Minnes) and
Drunk | with idolſatry drunk , with wine
is possible, though, in the immediate context, not necessary.
2 The term anapaest is used because the present writer is convinced that almost
all mainly trisyllabio measures in English reduce themselves to that foot. But it is
probable that in many, if not most, cases, and certain that in some, the writers
thought of their movement as dactylic.
1


## p. 232 (#254) ############################################

232 The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
a
Smith to the Pills to Purge Melancholy of Tom D'Urfey, testify
at once to the popularity of the movement and to the increasing
skill of poets in it. The form which it most ordinarily takes is the
four-footed anapaestic quatrain, rimed in couplets and well illus-
trated by Mary Ambree itself. Some years before the close of the
seventeenth century, this form was taken up and perfected by
a poet who could not be pooh-poohed as unlettered, Matthew
Prior. It continued, indeed, for the best part of the eighteenth
century to be regarded as a 'light' measure, in more than the
character of its movement; in fact, the approach to more serious
uses was made earlier by the three-, than by the four-footed variety.
But the point of importance is the making good of a place of
vantage and security for a metre very different in character from
that which was to hold the actual domination of English prosody
for more than a hundred years.
Another, and somewhat similar, 'place of arms' was established
somewhat earlier, in the form of the octosyllabic couplet, by
Butler, and further fortified, not merely by Prior himself, but by
Swift, who was not unimportant, likewise, in regard to the anapaest.
This form was by no means the same as the Miltonic; and was also,
for a long time, more or less identified with satiric and other semi-
serious verse. It did not, as a rule, permit itself to 'fail in a
syllable,' as Chaucer quaintly and apologetically puts the rationale
of the other kind; and so it commended itself to the strong and
growing contemporary love for order. Butler marked its time unmis-
takably; and, while avoiding singsong, he thus avoided, at the same
time, the colourless fluency which syllabic exactitude had too often
invited or allowed (for instance, in Gower). But he indemnified him-
self for exactitude within the line by large extension at the end into
double and even triple rime; and his manipulation of the rime
generally, even without this extension, was marked by a pungency
which, of itself, would have given character to the verse. Prior,
and Swift when he did not aim at special burlesque effect (as, of
course, Butler had almost always done), reduced what has been
called the 'acrobatism’of the measure, but made it into something
much more than an "easy jingle'-a narrative and 'occasional
medium of unsurpassed capacity, providing an invaluable ease-
ment, if not a definite correction, to the larger couplet.
But the way in which the course of events and the genius of
Dryden 'settled the succession of the state' of prosody for some
century and a half to come in favour of that couplet itself is the
point of importance for the rest of this chapter. And, in order to
6


## p. 233 (#255) ############################################

The State of English Prosody about 1660 233
exhibit it to advantage, a short recapitulation of the actual state
itself, at about the year 1660, should be given.
By this time—as the reader of these chapters will have per-
ceived, if he has taken the trouble to read them consecutively,
almost the whole province of English prosody had been consciously
or unconsciously explored, though no ordnance map of it had been
even attempted, and very large districts had not been brought under
regular cultivation. Its life, to change the metaphor, had passed
from the stage of infancy in the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries to an almost premature state of accomplished growth at
the close of the last named, but had gone through a serious fit of
disease in the fifteenth. It had recovered magnificently during
the later sixteenth and earlier seventeenth, and, within this time,
had practically, though not theoretically! , completed the pioneer
exploration above referred to. But certain dangerous symptoms
had recurred in the breakdown of blank verse, in the roughness of
the satirists, in the flaccidity of the heroic enjambed couplet;
while the great tonic work of Milton, unlike that of Chaucer, was
not at once appreciated, though, perhaps for that very reason,
it had a deeper and more lasting effect. The immense increase of
range which had been given by the practice of the various stanzas,
of lyric, of octosyllable and decasyllable, of one other curious
development yet to be noticed and, above all, of blank verse,
had seemed, sometimes, to overpower the explorers' sense of
rhythm and metrical proportion—to afflict them with a sort of
prosodic vertigo. Either Milton or Shakespeare would have been
hazardous specific for this, inasmuch as neither-and, more
especially, not Shakespeare-used a technically rigid versification.
Nothing has ever been devised-probably nothing ever could be
devised-80 efficacious for medical purposes in this condition of
things as the stopped heroic couplet.
The development excepted above has been reserved for this v
place because it went on side by side with that of this couplet
itself, and occupied, as it were, the position of privileged ally.
This was the so-called 'Pindaric' of Cowley and his followers.
More or less irregular strophes of great beauty and very consider-
able length had been achieved by Spenser; and Ben Jonson had
attempted regular strophic correspondence, as, in fact, did Cowley
himself. But the Pindaric which he principally practised and
personally made popular, which Dryden raised to a really great
1 The few theorists between the death of Spenser and that of Dryden will be dealt
with at the end of this chapter,


## p. 234 (#256) ############################################

234 The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
poetic medium, in which cousin Swift' made notoriously un-
successful attempts and which, in the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth century, burdened the English corpus poeticum with
masses of intolerable verse, had no regular correspondence in the
line composition of strophe and antistrophe, and no regular division
of strophe, antistrophe and epode. It was merely a fortuitous
string of stanzas, of unequal but considerable length, individually
composed of lines also unequal in length, but arranged and rimed
entirely at the poet's discretion. The verse was, ordinarily, iambic
and adhered to this measure with tolerable strictness-
passages in
triple time being only inserted in pieces (like Dryden's Alexander's
Feast, but not his Anne Killigrew ode)intended for musical perform-
ance. It, therefore, did not act, like the anapaestic, and the octo-
syllabic, as an escapement from the heroic in the way of equivalent
substitution ; though, to some extent, it did so act in the less
important matters of line-length, pause and strictly coupled rime.
In later times—first, as regularised by Gray and, since the romantic
movement, in both regular and irregular forms—it has pro-
duced much magnificent poetry. But few of its practitioners,
except Dryden, between 1650 and 1750, made of it anything but a
row of formless agglomerations of line and rime-now hopelessly
flat, now absurdly bombasticmoften, if not usually, a mere mess of
prose, rhythmed with the least possible effect of harmony and
spooned or chopped into linefuls, after a fashion as little grateful
or graceful as might be. It is, on the whole, during this period,
a distinctly curious phenomenon; but, in more ways than one,
it adds evidence of the fact that period and metre were only well
married in the heroic couplet itself.
To say that this couplet could not have received its actual firm
establishment without Dryden would, perhaps, be less philosophical
than to say that the necessity of its establishment in its turn
necessitated the arising of a poet like Dryden. If Pope and he had
changed places, it is pretty certain that the domination of the form
would have been much shorter than it actually was. For Dryden had
by no means Pope's attachment to the couplet, the pure couplet and
nothing but the couplet; and his own form of it was much affected
by precedent poetry, thereby, as it were, gearing the new vehicle
on to the old. He took from Fairfax and Waller the sententious
tramp of the stopped measure; he took from Cowley the alex-
andrine licence with its powers of amplification and variation ; he
took-perhaps from nobody in particular—the triplet with its
similar reinforcement. He early adopted the use of the same


## p. 235 (#257) ############################################

Dryden's Couplet
235
word, emphatically repeated in different places of consecutive or
neighbouring lines so as to give relief to the unvarying smoothness
and the clockwork balance of the strict Wallerian type. Above
all, after he wrote his first batch of couplet poems near the time of
the restoration itself, and before he wrote his great satiric and
didactic pieces in the same measure twenty years later, he had an
enormous amount of practice in it through his heroic plays. The
actual poetic value of them does not here matter at all. A man of
Dryden's metrical gift could not have written even ten or twenty
thousand nonsense verses without becoming a thorough master of
the metrical capacities of his instrument. But, as a matter of fact,
little as the couplet may be suited to the necessities of the stage,
those necessities themselves force it to display capacities which it
would not otherwise show. People may laugh at (without, as
a rule, reading) The Indian Queen and Tyrannic Love, The
Conquest of Granada and Aureng-Zebe. But it is as certain as any
such thing can be that, without his practice in these plays, Dryden's
couplet would never have attained the astonishing and unique
combination of ease and force, of regularity and variety, which
it displays in Absalom and Achitophel and Mac Flecknoe, in
Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther. Nor was it merely
in the couplet itself that Dryden maintained that unceasing and
unstereotyped variety of practice, which made his last examples of
this particular metre in the Fables perhaps the capital instances of
their particular kind. He took good care never to allow himself
the sterilising indulgence of the single string. Reference has been
made to the excellence of his smaller lyrics (far too often not so
much undervalued as ignored) and of his larger; the stately
dignity of his decasyllabic quatrains in Annus Mirabilis, though
somewhat stiffer than it would have been if written at a later
date, is admirable in itself; he shows himself, rarely as he tried
them, a master of easy octosyllables; and his blank verse, when he
returned to it in All For Love, is of really splendid kind pro-
sodically, and has seemed to some almost the last English example
of the form (except certain still more splendid but much rarer and
briefer flashes of Lee) which really unites poetical and dramatic
quality.
All this practice, with its variety and its excellence, is reflected
in, and, probably, to no small extent contributed to, the peculiar
quality of what, after all, is Dryden's main poetic instrument the
couplet. This couplet is not, like Pope's, 'bred in and in' and
severely trained and exercised to a typical but somewhat limited


## p. 236 (#258) ############################################

236 The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
perfection. It is full-blooded, exuberant, multiform, showing,
sometimes, almost the rush of the anapaest, though it seldom-
perhaps never intentionally-admits the foot itself, and sometimes
almost the mass of the blank verse paragraph, though its pairs or
occasional triplets are usually complete in themselves. Dryden
attains his effects in it not merely by the special devices already
noted--alexandrine, triplet, repetition of emphasised word in
different place—but by an omnipresent and peculiar distribution
of the weight which, almost self-contradictorily destitute of
heaviness, characterises his verse. He poises and wields and
flourishes it like a quarterstaff with shifting load inside it. In
doing this, he necessarily often neglects the middle pause, and, not
unfrequently, breaks his line into sections brought about by pauses
and half pauses, which are superadded to, and, in a way, inde-
pendent of, the strict metrical division. Thus, a line partly quoted
already
To settle the succession of the state
is perfectly normal-five-footed or five-accented—to all but those
who deny the possibility of length or accent to‘the' and 'of,' while
even they can manage the fivefold subdivision in other ways.
But, in addition to this, Dryden has communicated to it a three-
fold rhetorico-prosodic arrangement
To settle—the succession of the state,
which, as do other things like it in other lines, entirely frees the
general context from the objection of mechanical jointing into
merely equal lengths. He has also a great tendency to 'bear up'
the ends of his lines and his couplets with important words-
especially when he uses middle pause—as in
They got a villain, and we lost a-fool,
or
Had more of lion in her than to fear.
But all this variation was strictly subjected, in Dryden's case,
to what he and his contemporaries, with almost everybody up to
the early part of the nineteenth century, and not a few people
since, called 'smoothness' or 'sweetness '-the origination of which
they were wont to attribute to ‘Mr Waller. ' That is to say,
you could never mistake the distinct iambic-and five-spaced
iambic-distribution of the line. Monotony was avoided ; but
confusion of the base of the versification was avoided still more
definitely and peremptorily. It is to this double avoidance that
the differentia of the Drydenian couplet is due, and to it the


## p. 237 (#259) ############################################

Preceptive Prosody
237
astonishing hold which that couplet, in-but not exclusively in-
the permutations which it underwent, maintained for nearly five
generations after Dryden began, and for more than three after he
had brought it to full perfection.
It was natural that the somewhat tyrannous way in which its
supremacy was exercised—the way in which, as may be seen later,
measures of more strictly poetical quality than itself were ostra-
cised or pooh-poohed-should make the revolt violent when that
revolt came. It is natural that, even to the present day, vindi-
cation of its merits should seem like treason to these measures, in
the eyes of wellmeaning, but somewhat uncatholic, lovers of poetry
itself. But no one who holds the balance true can share these
feelings. The couplet of Dryden and its follower, to which we
have not yet come, the couplet of Pope, together with other still
later varieties, blends of the two, are not the be-all and end-all
of English prosody: they leave out much and even forbid some-
thing that is greater than they. But the varieties constitute a
very great metrical group in themselves. Fresh varieties of the
stopped form-not much practised in the nineteenth century or in
the twentieth, as yet-have been foreshadowed by Keats, in Lamia,
and by Tennyson, in a brief but extraordinarily fine passage of
The Vision of Sin. But, whatever has been and whatever may
come, and whatever sins of omission and exclusion be on its head,
it established in the English ear a firm sense of rhythm that is
really rhythmical, and a notion-which may easily be carried too
far, but which is eminently salutary in itself-that combinations of
verse and arrangement of sense should obey some common law.
It is no treason, it is only reason, to combine with enthusiasm for
the prosody of Shakespeare and Milton and Shelley, admiration
for the prosody of Jonson, of Pope and (above both) of Dryden.
This chapter would be incomplete without a few remarks on
the preceptive prosody of the seventeenth century, although, in
amount of definite utterance, it is singularly meagre.
Some
obiter dicta of Drayton and others have been noted above. But
the classical metre quarrel, which furnishes much matter for
the middle and late sixteenth century, had died down with the
duel of Campion and Daniel ; the serious attention of the first
two generations of the century was directed to other things than
prosody, and the revival of general criticism in the third did not
take prosodic form, while the very multiformity and diversity of pro-
sodic practice, during the earlier period, may have had something


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238 The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
to do with the absence of theory. There is a very curious and
interesting preface by an unidentified ‘J. D. ' (who cannot have
been John Donne and is unlikely to have been John Dryden) to
the posthumous English Parnassus of Joshua Poole (1656–7),
containing some rather acute criticism on the prevailing faults
of its transition date. There are, also, the interesting remarks of
Samuel Woodford' as to Milton's versification. Milton himself,
in his scornful denunciation of rime before Paradise Lost, has
touched the subject, though he has hardly done so in the preface
to Samson Agonistes. But the main interest under this particular
head is an interest of a somewhat Hibernian kind, for it re-
gards two things that are not in existence, though we have
assurance, if not evidence, of the strongest kind that they formerly
were.
Jonson and Dryden, who were both, in a way, literary dictators,
the one for the first, the other for the last, third of the century,
were also men from whom prosodic discussion might naturally
have been expected, and from whom it ought to have been excep-
tionally valuable.