symonds-blank verse

8/13/2019 Symonds-Blank Verse

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ONTENTS

PREF TORY NOTAncient metre depends on quantity, modern metre on accent

Decay of sense of quantity even in classical times-Englishverse depends on accent-Distinction between quantity andaccent-Pause and elision-Lines scanned by accent lessprecise than lines scanned by quantity-Hence the licenceof Blank Verse-Quantitative scansion of Blank Verse is not aright canon of criticism-Complexity of the whole questionof metre-The best craftsmen work by instinct . Pp. 1-15

THE HISTORY OF BL NK VERSEVaried and plastic quality of English Blank Verse-Limitation of

the iambic by the Greeks- Sackville and Norton introduceBlank Verse-Marlowe's Tamburlaine -Blank Verse perfected by Marlowe-His exuberance and variety-Shakspere-Musical quality of his verse-His freedom from mannerismBen Jonson-Beaumont and Fletcher-Marston-Other

Elizabethan Dramatists-Licence of Webster-His justification-Milton-Decadence of Blank Verse-Dryden-ThomsonCowper-Coleridge-Wordsworth-Byron- Revival of BlankVerse by Keats- and Shelley- Browning- SwinburneTennyson - Tennyson s mastery of the metre - Generalconsiderations of the scope of Blank Verse-Blank Verseonly the metre of genius . . Pp. 16-72

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C O N T E N T SI l l

TH BL NK V RS O MILTONMilton the heir of the Elizabethan Dramatists-The writers of the

Restoration adopt the couplet-Johnson's criticism of MiltonHis canon of perfection-Todd's criticism of Johnson s

essay- Comparison with Greek comic metre- Attemptsto analyse Blank Verse by rules of Greek and Latinprosody-The result unsatisfactory-Real nature of Milton sBlank Verse- Its irregularities the result of emphasisand correspondence of sound with sense - Some linesstill remain almost inexplicable-Milton influenced by thevariety of Virgil-and of Dante-Alliteration and assonanceHow used by Milton-Change in Milton s Blank VerseMelody and freshness of Comus -Sublimity of ParadiseLost -Comparative ruggedness of Paradise Regained Severity of Samson Agonistes -Increasing dominance ofintellectual quality Pp. 73-II3

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BL NK VERSEthemselves in this metre by great masters ofversification may be explained I think invariably when we note the accent required bythe rhetorical significance of their abnormallines.

t can fairly be argued however that withthis end in view I have paid too little atten-tion to the prosody of Blank Verse or inother words to its scansion by feet. In orderto meet this objection some prefatory remarksmay here be offered upon the difficult questionof quantity and accent.

We are accustomed roughly speaking tosay that ancient metre depends on Quantityand modern metre on Accent. The namesDactyl Spondee Trochee c., were inventedin the analysis of Greek metres to expresscertain combinations of long and short syllables without reference to pitch or emphasis.But when we speak of Quantity in Englishmetre we mean the more or less accentuationof syllables. Thus an English trochee is afoot in which the first syllable is more accen-


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BL NK VERSEtuated than the second; an iamb is the contrary. In the transition from the ancient tothe modern world the sense of Quantity seemsto have been lost and its values were replacedby Accent. We find for example in thewatch-song of the Modenese soldiers whichcan be referred to a period about the middleof the tenth century such iambics as thefollowing:

Divina mundi rex Chrlste custodiaSub tua serva haec castra vigilia.

Both lines have an accentual as well as aquantitative trochee in the fourth place. Inthe second line the accents on the firstsyllable of tua and on the second syllable ofvigilia which would have been too slight tolengthen them for a classical bar are allowedto supply the place of quantity.

f Latin verses could thus be written without attention to quantity this shows that thefeeling for it had expired ; and even at aperiod which may still be called classical thegradual blunting of the sensibility can be

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BLANK VERSEtraced in the shortening of vowel sounds.t will suffice to quote the following hexa-

meterCaetera mando focis spernunt quae dentes acuti.

The Pompeian gr ffiti prove abundantlythat among the common people at any ratet had never been acute ; and we are led to

the conclusion that scansion by quantity inLatin was an artificial refinement, agreeableto highly educated ears. When, therefore,we proceed to state that English lines ignorequantity, we mean that the cultivated feelingfor the relative values of long and shortsyllables has never been sufficiently vividwith us to make us particular about pre-serving them. We are satisfied with thevalues afforded by accentuation, though thereis no doubt that verses can be written withcorrect accentuation which shall also preservequantity in the classic sense. Tennyson sexperiments in Alcaics, Hendecasyllabics, andSapphics suffice for proof. The differencebetween us and the cultivated ancients in

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BLANK VERSEthis respect may in a measure be due toour comparatively negligent pronunciation.For instance we do not pronounce the wordmella as the Italians do so as to give the fullvalue to both l s. We have not trained ourear to require or our vocal organs to makethat delicate differentiation of syllables accord-ing to their spelling in other words toseparate instead of slurring the componentparts of speech on which quantity depends.These considerations lead to a theory ofmetrical analysis which may be offered withsome diffidence.

The laws of metre are to be found in thenatural rhythm of words ; for each word inevery language has its own rhythmical form.This natural rhythm is expressed in pronun-ciation and is determined by the greater orless time consumed in the enunciation of thesyllables. Quantity and Accent distinguishtwo conditions of this expenditure. Quantityapart from Accent is the measure of timelengthened or abbreviated necessary for the


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BLANK VERSEan important part in Greek versification noaccount need at present be taken. The latteror ictus has the effect of quantity inasmuchas it renders more time needful for thestress laid upon the syllable the accumu-lated volume of sound requiring a greatereffort of the vocal organs and consequentlya retarded utterance. Every word then inarticulation is subject to conditions of timeimplying what we call Quantity and Accent;and in many words quantity ts hardlydistinguishable from accent. Thus in theline:

Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi

the quantity of Tityre can be representedeither as a double vowel followed by twosimple vowels requiring a time and twohalf times for enunciation or else as an ante-penultimate accent. Without pursuing thisanalysis into further details it may be possibleto define Quantity as enunciation retarded oraccelerated by the greater or less simplicityof the sound to be formed by the vocal


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BLANK VERSEorgans ; Accent as the retardation of a simplesound by the increased effort of the vocalorgans needed for marking the ctus Theyare both so to speak in the category oftime ; and though it is necessary to distin-guish them it should not be forgotten thattheir importance in prosody is due to thedivisions and subdivisions of time theyrepresent.

The consideration of Pause and Elisionwill help to illustrate these definitions. Whentwo strong consonants have to be pronouncedtogether there must always be a pausebetween them and with the pause an expen-diture of time. That is the secret of thequantity ascribed to the preceding vowel.Thus mor in mor est has the value of vubecause no pause is needed no second con-sonantal sound being produced after itspronunciation ; in mor d ns it has the valueof u- because a fresh consonant has to beformed. The English do not mark thispause clearly. In other words they do not

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BLANK VERSEfinal sibilant was on the point of becomingmute and the recognised elision of m inwords like mecum before a vowel may in likemanner indicate that this liquid had becomepractically mute mecum tending toward themodern mecoThe main drift of the foregoing analysishas been to show that both Quantity andAccent have a common element of Time.It consequently follows that metres whichlike the English practically ignore quantitycan be scanned in feet or divided into barsby accent. Yet the result will never be soaccurate as m the case of quantitativerhythms chiefly because accent itself isvariable with us and the same combinationsof syllables by a slight shifting of accentsmay appear to one observer a dactyl toanother an anaprest and so forth.

An instance may be furnished by the follow-ing line which is a passable hendecasyllabicBlank Verse :

She in her hands held forth a cup of water.IO


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BLANK VERSEI f we accentuate the first syllable, therhythm would most naturally be marked thus :

vv l 1 vJ v l :But this does not yield even a licentiate

iambic. Therefore, in order to bring it withinthe rule of the metre, we must shift the accentand scan

It is of no use to complain that the lines a bad one, and ought to be re-written,

because similar lines are of plentiful occurrence in our best dramatic writers. Withoutsuch irregularities, Blank Verse would bemonotonous.

Licences which would have been intolerableto a Greek ear, such as successive trochees inthe third and fourth places, of which there areseveral specimens in Milton, or a trochee inthe second place, which is a favourite expedientof Shelley's, are far from disagreeable in theEnglish iambic. Indeed, so variable is its


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BLANK VERSEstructure that it is by no means easy to definethe minimum of metrical form below which aBlank Verse ceases to be a recognisable line.It is possible that the diminution of theEnglish iambic by one foot less than theGreek renders its licences more tolerable andfacilitates that interweaving of successive linesby which so many discards are resolved in acontrolling harmony. Lastly it may beobserved that being an accentual metreblank verse owes much of its rhythmicalquality to emphasis. For emphasis s butenforced accent ; and when the properemphasis has been discovered in a linethe problem of its rhythmical structure hasalmost always been solved. It is thus thatclose attention to the rhetoric of Blank Versebecomes absolutely necessary.

It will be seen from the foregoing observa-tions that I am neither for nor against themethod of scanning Blank Verse by thetraditional feet of Greek and Latin metres.The terms of ancient prosody represent per

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speculations to the world. The convictionthat as yet no congruity of doctrine has beenarrived at that we are still forced to adaptthe nomenclature of a prosody deduced fromthe analysis of the most highly perfectedGreek metres to rhythmical systems basedon different principles - that we have notsufficiently distinguished between the metricalsubstratum and the resthetical or rhetoricaleffect induces me to court censure, in thehope that further progress may be made in aregion where each observer is apt to tax hisfellow-workers with a want of intelligence.The best craftsmen work by instinct, and thesubtlest dt lettanti of their masterpieces arecontented with sensation. It still remains forthe analyst to discover the laws which haveregulated the artistic instinct in the productionof exquisitely pleasurable combinations.

* As instances of these difficulties, I might point out thechoice of hendecasyllabic iambic lines by the Italians, and theloose structure of the French Alexandrine, which seems todefy scansion, depending on cresura, pause, and rhyme.


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11THE HISTORY OF BLANK VERSE

NGLISH blank verse is perhaps, morevarious and plastic than any other

national metre. It is capable of being usedfor the most commonplace and the most sublime utterances ; so that, without any alteration in the vehicle, we pass from merelycolloquial dialogue to strains of impassionedsoliloquy, from comic repartee to tragic- eloquence, from terse epigrams t elaboratedescriptions. Originally instituted for thedrama, it received in Milton s hands an epicaltreatment, and has by authors of our ownday been used for idyllic, and even for lyricalcompositions. Yet all of these so widelydifferent applications have only served todevelop, without exhausting its resources.Plato mentions a Greek musical instrument

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BL NK VERSEepic or an idyll in iambics would to them haveseemed inexcusable. nd for this reason theiambic was limited both in its use and itsdevelopment Two sorts were recognised-the one adapted to the loose and flowing styleof comic conversation ; the other to the moreceremonious and measured march of tragicdialogue and description. But when theaction of the play became animated insteadof accelerating the iambic rhythm the poetused trochaic or anaprestic measures obeyingthe law of variety by adopting a new modeexternally fitted to express the change he hadm vtew.

In the infancy of our drama rhyme as thenatural accompaniment of medireval poetryhad universally been used until the courtiersof Elizabeth bethought them of inventingsome more solemn and stately metre in imi-tation of the classic. It will be rememberedthat attempts to naturalise Greek and Romanrhythms in our language were then fashion-able. Sidney and the lz'tera of the reo-

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BLANK VERSEp gus spent their leisure hours n fashioninguncouth hexameters ; and Roger Ascham,though he recognised the incapacity of Eng-lish for scansion, was inclined to welcomean unrhymed metre like the classical iambic.Surrey first solved the problem practically bytranslating parts of the .IEneid into versesof ten syllables without rhyme. But hismeasure has not much variety or ease. Itremained for two devoted admirers of classicalart Sackville and N orton, to employ whatSurrey called his strange metre in thedrama. Their Gorboduc, acted before theQueen in 1561-2, is the first tragedy writtenin blank verse. The insufferable monotonyand dreariness of this play are well knownto all students of our early literature. Yetrespect for its antiquity induces me to give aspecimen of its quaint style. We must remember in reading these lines that they arethe embryon of Marlowe's, Shakspere's, andMilton's verse.


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BLANK VERSEestablished blank verse as the popular dramaticmetre of the English. With this opinion allstudents who have examined the origin of ourtheatrical literature will, no doubt, agree. ButMarlowe did not merely drive the rhymedcouplet from the stage by substituting theblank verse of his contemporaries : he createda new metre by the melody, variety, and forcewhich he infused into the iambic, and leftmodels of versification, the pomp of whichShakspere and Milton alone can be saidto have surpassed. The change which heoperated was so thorough and so novel to theplaywrights as well as the playgoers of histime, that he met with some determined oppo-sition. Thomas N ash spoke scornfully of

idiot art masters, that intrude themselves toour ears as the alchemists of eloquence, who(mounted on the stage of eloquence) think toattract better pens with the swelling bombast~ bragging blank verse. In another sneerhe described the new measure as the spaciousvolubility of a drumming decasyllabon ; while

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BLANK VERSERobert Greene, who had written many wearisome rhymed dramas, talked of making versejet on the stage in tragical buskins, every wordfilling the ear like the fa-burden of Bow bell,daring God out of heaven with that atheistTamburlan, or blaspheming with the madpriest of the Sun. But our licentiateiambic was destined to triumph. Greene andNash gave way before inevitable fate, andwrote some better plays in consequence.

Let us inquire what change Marlowe reallyintroduced, and what was his theory ofdramatic versification. He found the tensyllabled heroic line monotonous, monosyllabicand divided into five feet of tolerably regularalternate short and long. He left it various inform and structure, sometimes redundant bya syllable, sometimes deficient, enriched withunexpected emphases and changes in the beat.He found no sequence or attempt at periods;one line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were made after the same model.He grouped his verse according to the sense,


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BLANK VERSEobeying an internal law of melody, and allow-ing the thought contained in his words todominate their form. He did not force hismetre to preserve a fixed and unalterable type,but suffered it to assume most variable m o d u l a ~tions, the whole beauty of which dependedupon their perfect adaptation to the current ofhis ideas. By these means he was able toproduce the double effect of variety and unity,to preserve the fixed march of his chosenmetre, and yet, by subtle alterations in thepauses, speed and grouping of the s y l l a b l e ~to make one measure represent a thousand.Used in this fashion, blank verse became aProteus. It resembled music, which requiresregular time and rhythm but, by the employ-ment of p h ~ e induces a ~ i g h e r kind ofmelody to rise above the common and despoticbeat of time. Bad writers of blank verse, likeMarlowe's predecessors, or like those who inall ages have been deficient in plastic energyand power of harmonious modulation, producesuccessions of monotonous iambic lines, s a c r i ~

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BLANK VERSEficing the poetry of expression to the mechanismof their art. Metre with them ceases to be theorganic body of a vital thought, and becomesa mere framework. And bad critics praisethem for the very faults of tameness andmonotony which they miscall regularity ofnumbers. t was thus that the sublimest aswell as the most audacious of Milton s essaysin versification fell under the censure ofJohnson.

It is not difficult to support these eulogiesby reference to Marlowe s works ; for someof his finest blank verse passages allow themselves to be detached without any greatnJUry to their integrity. The following may

be cited as an instance of his full-voicedharmony. Faustus exclaims:

Have I not made blind Homer sing to meOf Alexander s love and ffinon s death ?And bath not he who built the walls of TroyWith ravishing sound of his melodious harpMade music with my Mephistophiles ?

We feel at once that a new spirit has beenbreathed into the metre a spirit of undefin-

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BLANK VERSEThe didactic dignity of Marlowe's verse

may be gathered from these lines in Tam-burlaine :

Our souls whose faculties can comprehendThe wondrous architecture of the world,And measure every wandering planet's course,Still climbing after knowledge infinite,And always moving as the restless spheres,Will us to wear ourselves, and never restUntil we reach the ripest fruit of all,That perfect bliss and sole felicity,The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

Again, as if wishing to prove what liberties might be taken with the iambic metrewithout in ury to its music, Marlowe wrotethese descriptive lines m the Jew ofMalta :

Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,And seld seen costly stones of so great price,As one of them, indifferently rated,May serve, in peril of calamity,To ransom great kings from captivity.

The licence of the first and third line s bothdaring and successful. The second departs


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BL NK VERSEless from the ordinary rhythm, while the fourlast carry back the period into the usual flowof Marlowe s verse.

The four passages which I have quoted are,perhaps, sufficient to prove that blank versewas not only brought into existence, but alsoperfected by Marlowe. It is true that, like allgreat poets, he left his own peculiar imprinton it, and that his metre is marked by analmost extravagant exuberance, impetuosity,and height of colouring. It seems to flow fromhim with the rapidity of improvisation, and tofollow a law of melody rather felt than studiedby its author. We feel that the poet loved togive the rein to his ungovernable fancy, for-getting the thought with which he started,revelling in sonorous words, and pouringforth a stream of images, so that the mindreceives at last a vague and various impressionof sublimity.Marlowe s contemporaries soon caught thetrick of sonorous versification. The obscureauthor of a play which has sometimes been

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BLANK VERSEattributed to Marlowe, wrote these lines inthe true sty e of his master :

Chime out your softest strains of harmony,And on delicious music s silken wingsSend ravishing delight to my love s ears.

Peele contented himself with repeating hismore honeyed cadences.Shakspere, next to Marlowe, had more

influence than any poet on the formation ofour blank verse. Coleridge has maintainedthat his diction and metre were peculiarly hisown, unimitated and inimitable. But I believethat a careful comparison of his style with thatof his contemporaries will make it evident thathe began a period in which versification wasrefined and purified from Marlowe s wordiness.Shakspere has more than Marlowe s versa-tility and power but his metre is never soextravagant in its pomp of verbal grandeur.He restrains his own luxuriance, and does notallow himself to be seduced by pleasing sounds.His finest passages owe none of their beautyto alliteration, and yet he knew most exquisitely

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how to use that meretricious handmaid ofmelody. Nothing can be more seductive thanthe charm of repeated liquids and vowels inthe following lines :

On such a nightStood Dido with a willow in her handUpon the wild sea banks and waft her loveTo come again to Carthage.

Nor again did Shakspere employ big sound-ing words so profusely as Marlowe but reservedthem for effects of especial solemnity as in thespeech of Timon

Come not to me again : but say to AthensTimon bath made his everlasting mansionUpan the beached verge of the salt flood ;Whom once a day with his embossed frothThe turbulent surge shall cover; thither comeAnd let my gravestone be your oracle.

But Shakspere did not always or indeed oftenemploy these somewhat obvious artifices ofharmonious diction. The characteristic of hisverse is that it is naturally unobtrusively andenduringly musical. We hardly know whyhis words are melodious or what makes them


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BLANK VERSEalways fresh, whereas the more apparentcharms of Fletcher and of Marlowe pall uponour ears. Throughout his writings there is asubtle adjustment of sound to sense, of loftythoughts to appropriate words; the ideasevolve themselves with inexhaustible spon-taneity, and a suitable investiture of languageis never wanting, so that each cadenced periodseems made to hold a thought of its own, andthought is linked to thought and cadenceto cadence in unending continuity. Inferiorartists have systems of melody, pauses whichthey repeat, favourite terminations, andaccelerations or retardations of the rhythm,which they employ whenever the occasionprompts them. But there is none of this inShakspere. He never falls into the common-place of mannerism. Compare Oberon sspeeches with Prospero s, or with Lorenzo s,or with Romeo s, or with Mark Antony s;under the Shaksperian similarity there is adifferent note in all of these, whereas we knowbeforehand what form the utterances of


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BLANK VERSEBellario, or Philaster, or Memnon, or Ordellain Fletcher must certainly assume. As asingle instance of the elasticity, self-restraint,and freshness of the Shaksperian blank verse ;of its freedom from Marlowe's turgidity, orFletcher's languor, or Milton's involution; ofits ringing sound and lucid vigour, the following celebrated passage from Measure forMeasure may be quoted. t illustrates thefreedom from adventitious ornament and theorganic continuity of Shakspere's versification,while it also exhibits his power of varying hiscadences and suiting them to the dramaticutterance of his characters.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ;This sensible warm motion to becomeA kneaded clod ; and the delighted spiritTo bathe in fiery floods, or to resideIn thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice ;To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,And blown with restless violence aboutThe pendant world ; or to be worse than worstOf those that lawless and incertain thoughtsImagine howling ;- t is too horribleThe weariest and most loathed worldly life,

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BLANK VERSEThat age, ache, penury, and imprisonmentCan lay on Nature, is a paradiseTo what we fear of death.

Each of Shakspere's contemporaries andsuccessors among the dramatists commanded astyle of his own in blank verse composition.It was so peculiarly the function of the stageand of the playwrights at that particular epochto perfect this metre, that I do not think somedetailed examination of the language of thedrama will be out of place. Coleridgeobserves that Ben Jonson's blank verse isvery masterly and individual. To thiscriticism might be added that it is the blankverse of a scholar-pointed, polished, and freefrom the lyricisms of his age. It lacks har-mony and is often laboured : but vigorous andsolid it never fails to be. This panegyric ofpoetry from the I talianised version of EveryMan in his Humour, may be taken as a speci-men of his most animated style:I can repel opinion and approve

The state of poesy, such as t is,Blessed, eternal, and most true divine ;Indeed, if you will look on poesy,

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BLANK VERSEThe melody which gives so chaste and eleganta beauty to these lines is invariable in theverse of Beaumont and Fletcher. We havetoo much of it there and surfeit on sweets ; forin a very short time we discover the trick ofthese great versifiers and learn to expect theirluxurious alliterations and repeated ccesuras atthe end of the fifth syllable. Their redundantand deficient lines the sweetness long drawnout of their delicious cadences become wellknown. Then the movement of their verse isnot like that of Shakspere self-evolved andthoroughly organic; it obeys a rule; luxury issought for its own sake and languor followsas a direct consequence of certain verbal mannerisms. Among these may be mentioned adecided preference for all words in which thereis a predominance of liquids and of vowels.For instance in this line :

Showers hails snows frosts and two-edged winds that primeThe maiden blossomsthere is no unlicensed redundancy of syllables ;but the labour of getting through so many

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BLANK VERSEaccumulated sounds produces a strange retardation of the movement. Another peculiarity isthe substitution of hendecasyllabic lines forthe usual decasyllable blank verse throughlong periods of dialogue. In one scene of

Valentinian there are fifty-five continuouslines of which only five are decasyllabic versesthe rest being hendecasyllables ; so that thelicence of the superfluous syllable which isalways granted in dramatic writing for the sakeof variety becomes in its turn far more cloying than a strict adherence to the five-footedverse. It is also noticeable that this weakending is frequently constructed by the additionof some emphatic monosyllable. Thus:

Or:

I do remember him ; he was my guardianAppointed by the senate to preserve me:What a full majesty sits in his face yet.The desolations that this great eclipse works.

The natural consequence of these delays andIanguors in the rhythm is that the versification of Beaumont and Fletcher has always ameandering and rotary movement. It does

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BLANK VERSEDust, and an endless darkness, and dare you, woman,Desire this place ?

01 d. Tis of all sleeps the sweetest;Children begin it to us, strong men seek it,And kings from height of all their painted gloriesFall like spent exhalations to this centre.

There the poet should have stopped, forexquisite thoughts have hitherto been renderedin exquisite language. He continues, however,for five lines of inferior beauty.

Turning from the more celebrated to theless distinguished playwrights, we find almostuniversally the power of writing forcible blankverse. Marston condensed much thought intohis lines, and made such epigrams as these :

Can man by no means creep out of himselfAnd leave the slough of viperous grief behind ?

or such addresses of concentrated passion asthis prologue :

Therefore w proclaimf any spirit breathes within this round,

Uncapable of weighty passion(As from his birth being hugged in the armsAnd nuzzled twixt the breasts of Happiness),Who winks and shuts his apprehension upFrom common sense of what men were, and are ;Who would not know what men must be : let suchHurry amain from our black-visaged shows;


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BLANK VERSEWe shall afright their eyes. But i f a breastNailed to the earth with grief i f any heartPierced through with anguish pant within this ring;f there be any blood whose heat is choked

And stifled with true sense of misery- f aught of these strains fill this consort -They do arrive most welcome.

We find both quaintness of language androughness of rhythm in these lines ; but howweighty how eloquently solemn is the apo-strophe to those of the spectators whose ownsorrows render them participant of tragic woes.It is clear that a large and broad style a senseof rhythm and a freedom n the use of blankverse as a natural vehicle of thought wereepidemic in that age.

Facility for expressing every shade of senti-ment or reflection in clear and simple linesbelonged peculiarly to Decker HeywoodMiddleton and Rowley poets who made butlittle pretension to melodious charms andflowers of fancy but whose native ear main-tained such flowing periods as the following :

D Thy voice sends forth such music that I neverWas ravished with a more celestial sound.

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BLANK VERSEparticularly true of Massinger. It w ll benoticed that all the changes in his rhythm areaccounted for by changes in the thought, oranswer to supposed alterations of the actor sgestures and of his voice. In lighter moods,Massinger could use hendecasyllabic periodswith much of Fletcher s melody. This is aspectmen:

Not f r from where my father lives, a lady,A neighbour by, blest with as great a beautyAs nature durst bestow without undoing,Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought thenAnd blessed the house a thousand times she dwelt in.

This beauty, in the blossom of my youth,When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness,In ll the bravery my friends could show me,In ll the faith my innocence could give me,In the best language my true tongue could tell me,And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me,I sued and served. Long did I love this lady,Long was my travail, long my trade, to win her;With all the duty of my soul I served her.

There is no need to call attention to thealliterative structures of this period. They arestrongly marked. Massinger represents awhole class of the later Elizabethan play-

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BLANK VERSEwrights, who used a flowing blank verse, per-fected by long practice for the purpose of thestage. Shirley was one of this set he wroteevenly and with due attention to the meaningof his words. But there were other ambitiousversifiers, like Ford, who sought for morerecondite and elaborate graces. t has beenthought that Ford imitated Shakspere in hisstyle as much as in the situations of hisdramas. I cannot myself perceive much traceof Shakspere in the verse of Ford but thesetwo specimens will enable the reader to judgefairly of his rhetoric :

Hie to thy father s house, there lock thee fastAlone within thy chamber; then fall downOn both thy knees, and grovel on the ground ;Cry to thy heart, wash every word thou utterestIn tears, and (if t be possible) of blood :Beg heaven to cleanse the leprosy of lustThat rots thy soul; acknowledge what thou art,A wretch, a worm, a nothing : weep, sigh, prayThree times a day, and three times every night;For seven days space do this; then, if thou findestNo change in thy desires, return to me,I ll think on remedy. Pray for thyselfAt home, whilst I pray for thee here; awayMy blessing with thee-we have need to pray.

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BLANK VERSEThe lines are much more broken up than isusual with our dramatists. They sparkle withshort sentences and quick successtons ofreiterated sounds. The same effect is noticeable in Calantha's dying speech, where thesituation is quite different :

Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadowOf my contracted lord: bear witness all,I put my mother's wedding-ring uponHis finger; 'twas my father's last bequest:Thus I now marry him whose wife I amDeath shall not separate us. 0, my lords,I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture,When one news straight came huddling on another,Of death, and death, and death ; still I danced forward.But it struck home, and here, and in an instant.Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries,Can vow a present end to all their sorrows ;Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them.They are the silent griefs which cut the heart strings;Let me die smiling.

This is a sculptured and incisive style.Even the largo to borrow a term from music)of Calantha's address to her nobles, though itassumes hendecasyllabic stateliness, maintainsthe crisp and pointed motion of the lines thathad preceded it. While speaking of Ben

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BLANK VERSEJon son or of Mars on would have been theproper time to mention the blank verse ofGeorge Chapman, a very manly and scholar-like author. He expressed philosophical ideasin elevated language. This eulogy of honour-able love is vigorous in thought as well asmetre:

Tis nature s second sun,Causing a spring of virtues where he shines ;And as without the sun, the world s great eye,All colours, beauties, both of art and nature,Are given in vain to man; so without loveAll beauties bred in women are in vain,All virtues born in men lie buried ;For love informs them as the sun doth colours ;And as the sun, reflecting his warm beamsAgainst the earth, begets all fruits and flowers,So love, fair shining in the inward man,Brings forth in him the honourable fruitsOf valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts,Brave resolution, and divine discourse.

There is nothing in this passage which can betermed highly poetical. It is chiefly interest-ing as showing the plasticity of language andof metre in the hands of our Elizabethanauthors. They fixed their minds upon theirthoughts, as we should do in writing prose,


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BLANK VERSEand turned out terse and pregnant lines notunadorned with melody.

I have hitherto purposely abstained fromspeaking about W ebster a poet of no ordinarypower whose treatment of blank verse isspecially illustrative of all the licences whichwere permitted by the playwrights of thattime. His language is remarkably condensedelliptical and even crabbed. His verse isbroken up into strange blocks and massesoften reading like rhythmical prose. It is hardfor instance to make a five-footed line out ofthe following :

To be executed again who must despatch me ?Yet close analysis will always prove that therewas method in the aberrations of W ebster andthat he used his metre as the most delicateand responsive instrument for all varieties ofdramatic expression. A voiding the sing-songof Greene and Peel the lyrical sweetness ofFletcher the prosaic gravity of Jonson thelimpid fluency of Heywood and Decker thetumid magniloquence of Marlowe and the

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BLANK VERSEglittering regularity of Ford, he perfected astyle which depends for its effect upon theemphases and pauses of the reciter. One ofthe most striking lines in his tragedy of the

Duchess of Malfi proves how boldly andhow successfully W ebster sacrificed metre toexpressiOn. A brother is looking for the firsttime after death on the form of a sister whomhe has caused to be murdered :

Cover her face ; mine eyes dazzle ; she died young.There is no c ~ s u r a no regular flow of verse,in this line, though in point of syllables it isnot more redundant than half of Fletcher'sEach sentence has to be said separately, withlong intervals and sighs, that indicate theworking of remorseful thought. The power-ful collocation of his words may be illustratedby such a line as :

Other sins only speak; murder shrieks outwhere the logical meaning can hardly fail tobe emphasised by the reader. Scansion inthe verse of Webster is subordinate to the

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BLANK VERSEpurpose of the speaker ; in writing it he nodoubt imagined his actors declaiming withgreat variety of intonation with frequent andlengthy pauses and with considerable differences in the rapidity of their utterances. Thedialogue of the duchess with her waiting-maidon the subject of the other world and death isamong the finest for its thoughts and language.As far as rhythm contributes to its excellencesthey depend entirely upon the pauses emphases and irregularities of all sorts whichare used. The duchess begins :

0, that it were possible we mightBut hold some two days conference with the dead.From them I should learn somewhat I am sureI never shall know here.

Up to this point the verses have run smoothlyfor W ebster. But the duchess has exhaustedone vein of meditation. Her voice sinksand she falls into a profound reverie. Whenshe rouses herself again to address Cariolashe starts with a new thought and the lineis made redundant:

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BLANK VERSEI ll tell thee a miracle ;

I am not mad yet to my cause of sorrow :The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,The earth of flaming sulphur; yet I am not mad.

To eke out the second line the voice is madeto dwell with emphasis upon the word mad,while the third and fourth have each twelvesyllables, which must be pronounced withdesperate energy and distinctness-as it wererapidly beneath the breath. But again herpassion changes. It relents, and becomesmore tender. And for a space we have versesthat flow more evenly :

I am acquainted with sad misery;As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar;Necessity makes me suffer constantly,And custom makes it easy.

At this point she sinks into meditation, andon rousing herself again with a fresh thought,the verse s broken and redundant :

What do I look like now ?Cariola answers plainly, and her lines havea smooth rhythm :


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BLANK VERSEmade on Webster's style apply with almostequal force to that of his contemporaries. Weread in Hamlet, for instance :

This bodily creation ecstasyIs very cunning in.

EcstasyThe second line is defective in one syllable.That syllable, to Shakspere's delicate sense ofthe value of sounds and pauses, was suppliedby Hamlet's manner. The prince was meant,no doubt, to startle his audience by the suddenrepetition of the word ' ' ecstasy, after a quickgesture of astonishment.

To those who read the pages of ourdramatists with this conception of their metre,its irregularities furnish an unerring index tothe inflections which the actors must have used,to the characters which the poets designed, andto the situations which they calculated. Thewant of action is thus in some measure com-pensated, and it becomes apparent that thetrue secret of blank verse consists in the properadaptation of words and rhythms to the sense

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BL NK VERSEcontained in them. On this point I havealready more than once insisted. I repeat itbecause it seems to me that blank verse cannote properly appreciated, far less properly

written, un]ess it be remembered that thoughtmust always run before expression, and mouldlanguage to its own particular uses. Blankverse is indeed a sort of divinised prose.Unlimited by rhyme or stanza, it has the freedom of or to sol11 ta subject to severe laws ofrhythm. In the cunning use of this liberty,in the continual creation of melodious formadapted to the ever-varying subtleties ofthought and feeling, lies the secret of theversifier s art.

Having traced the origin and developmentof blank verse upon the stage, and seen thecongruence of liberty and law, the harmony ofthought and form, which constitutes its beauty,we can understand how Milton came to use itas he did. Milton was deeply read in theElizabethan auth6rs ; he profited by all ofthem and wore their mantle with a double

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BLANK VERSEThe first form is anomalous the second

makes a very decent hendecasyllabic. John-son Bentley and the like would rejoice in somanipulating a hundred characteristic pas-sages but true criticism looks backward anddeduces its grounds of judgment from thepredecessors rather than the successors of apoet. Adopting this standard we shouldtry Milton by Elizabethan models andnot by the versifiers of the eighteenthcentury.

But these examples are taken from atragedy. In Paradise Lost we find thatMilton has varied the dramatic rhythm bya very sparing use of hendecasyllable linesand by introducing far more involved andartificial cadences. In fact the flow of epicallanguage is naturally more sedate and com-plex than that of the drama ; for it has tofollow the thoughts of one mind through allits reasonings. Yet the dramatic genius ofthe metre is for ever asserting itself as inthe following lines :

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BLANK VERSERejoicing but with awe,

In adoration at his feet I fellSubmiss ; he reared me, and, Whom thou soughtestam,''

Said mildly, Author of all this thou seestAbove, or round about thee, or beneath.

Here if we ix our attention upon the linesand try to scan them, we find the third mostdissonant. But if we read them by the sense,and follow the grouping of the thoughts, weterminate one cadence at submiss, and aftera moment of parenthetical description beginanother period, which extends itself throughthe concluding lines. To analyse Miltonicblank verse in all its details would be thework of much study and prolonged labour.It is enough to indicate the fact that themost sonorous passages begin and end withinterrupted lines, including in one organicstructure, periods, parentheses, and paragraphsof fluent melody, that the harmonies arewrought by subtle and most complex allitera-tive systems, by delicate changes in thelength and volume of syllables, and by thechoice of names magnificent for their mere

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BLANK VERSEAfter perusing this quotation, let the reader

compare it with Claudio's speech on Deathin Measure for Measure, and observe thedifference between Shaksperian and Miltonic,between dramatic and epical blank verse.The one is simple in construction and pro-gressive, the other is complex and stationary ;but both are musical beyond the possibilityof imitation. The one exhibits a thought,in the process of formation, developing itselffrom the excited fancy of the speaker. Theother presents to us an image crystallisedand perfect in the poet's mind; the one isin time, the other in space the one is agrowing and the other a complete organism.The whole difference between the dramaand the epic is implicit in these periods.The one, if we may play upon a fancy, re-sembles Music, and the other Architecture.

In this again we find a proof that thestructure of blank verse depends upon thenature of the thought which it is meant toclothe. The thoughts of a dramatist whether


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BLANK VERSEhis characters converse or soliloquise-are, ofnecessity, in evolution ; the thoughts of anepical poet are before him, as matter whichhe must give form to. The richness andmelody and variety of his versification will,in either case, depend upon the copiousnessof his language, the delicacy of his ear, andthe fertility of his invention. We owe every-thing to the nature of the poet, and very littleto the decasyllables which he is using.

Milton was the last of the Elizabethans.With him the spirit of our literary renats-sance became for the time extinct. Evenduring his lifetime the taste and capacity for

blank verse composition had expired. It issaid that Dryden wished to put ParadiseLost into couplets, and received from Miltonthe indifferent answer, Let the young mantag his rhymes. Dryden, in his essay ondramatic poetry, defended the use of rhyme,and introduced the habit of writing plays inheroics, to the detriment of sense and characterand freedom. Yet there are passages in his

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BLANK VERSEYet, it must be remembered that the passageof the Mourning Bride, which hnson pre-ferred to any single piece of English descrip-tive poetry, first saw the light in 1697. Thelines begin- How reverend is the face of thistall pile. They are dignified, melodious, andclear; but we already trace in the handling ofthe language more of the effort after neatnessand precision, and less of Nature, than wascommon with the elder dramatists. After thedeath of Otway and Congreve, blank verseheld the stage in the miserable compositions ofthe eighteenth century ; but it had no truevitality. The real works of genius in thatperiod were written in couplets, and it was notuntil the first dawn of a second renaissance inEngland, that blank verse began again to bepractised. Meanwhile the use of the couplethad unfitted poets for its composition. Theiracquired canons of regularity, when applied toloose and flowing metre, led them astray.They no longer trusted exclusively to their ear,but to a mechanism which rendered accuracy

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BLANK VERSEof ear almost useless, not to say impossible.Hence it followed, that when blank versebegan again to be written, it found itself verymuch at the point where it had stood beforethe appearance of Marlowe. Even Thomson,who succeeded so well in imitating Spenserianstanza, wrote stiff and languid blank verse withmonosyllabic terminations and monotonouscadences a pedestrian style.

Cowper, in his translation of Homer, aimedat the Miltonic structure, and acquired asolemn though cumbrous versification. Thedescription of the Russian empress's ice-palace,in The Winter Morning Walk, proves howhe had imbued himself with the language ofthe Paradise Lost, and how naturally headapted it to his own thoughts. Coleridge'sblank verse has a kind of inflated grandeur,but not much of Elizabethan variety of music,subtlety of texture, and lightness of movement.His lines written in the Valley of Chamouniare sonorous; but they want elasticity, and areinferior in quality to his lyrics. Heaviness of

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BLANK VERSEstyle and turgid rhetoric deface his verse andprose alike. W ordsworth again could nothandle blank verse with any certainty ofsuccess. Wildernesses of the Excursion ,extend for pages and pages barren of beauty.We plod over them on foot, sinking knee-deepinto the clinging sand ; whereas the true masterof blank verse carries us aloft as on a wingedsteed through cloud and sunshine in a yieldingatr. W ordsworth mistook the language ofprose for that of Nature, and did not understand that natural verse might be writtenwithout the tedious heaviness of common disquisitions. One of his highest efforts is thepoem on the Simplon Pass, introduced into the

Prelude.'' This owes its great beauty to theperfect delineation which he has succeeded inproducing by suggestive images, by reiteratedcadences, by solitary lines, by breathless repetitions, by the perfect union, in short, whichsubsists between the poet's mind and thenature he is representing.

Byron again is uncertain in his blank verse.6


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BLANK VERSEThe lines on the Coliseum in '' Manfredare as good as a genuine Elizabethan passage,because they are spoken from the fulness ofa poet's heart, and with a continuity of thoughtand copiousness of language which insuredtheir organic vitality. But they are exceptional. Byron needed rhyme as an assistanceto his defective melody. He did not feelthat inner music which is the soul of trueblank verse and sounding prose. In Keatsat last we reach this power. His Hyperionis sung, not written, governed in all its partsby the controlling force of imagined melody.Its music is fluid, bound by no externalmeasurement of feet, but determined by thesense and intonation of the poet's thought,while like the crotalos of the Athenian fluteplayer, the decasyllabic beat maintains anuninterrupted under-current of regular pulsations. Keats studied Milton and strove toimitate him. But he falls below the majestyand breadth of Milton's manner. He is tooluxuriant in words and images, too loose in

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BLANK VERSEthe metre of Dryden, Churchill, Pope, andCrabbe, but in that of Marlowe and Fletcher.Nothing proves more significantly the distancebetween the Elizabethan spirit and the tasteof the eighteenth century, than the dissimilarityof these two metres, syllabically and in pointof rhyme identical. The couplets of Marlowe,Fletcher, Shelley, and Keats, follow the lawsof blank verse, and add rhyme-that is tosay, their periods and pauses are entirelydetermined by the sense. The couplets ofDryden and his followers resemble Ovid'selegiacs in the permanence of their form andthe restriction of their thought. Mr. Brown-ing, who is one of the latest and most charac-teristic products of the Elizabethan revival,has made good use of this loose rhymingmetre in Sordello. Among the mostmelodious passages of that poem may be foundthe following : You can believe

Sordello remost in the regal classNature has broadly severed from the massOf men, and framed for pleasure, as she framesSome happy lands that have luxurious names

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BLANK VERSEFor loose fertility; a foot-fall thereSuffices to upturn to the warm airHalf germinating spices mere decayProduces richer life and day by dayNew pollen on the lily petal growsAnd still more labyrinthine buds the rose.

The whole structure of this period in itspauses and studied disregard of the rhymedsystem is that of blank verse. The finalcouplet completes the sense and satisfies theear with regularity. Browning by fits andstarts produces passages of fine blank verseblowing out bubbles of magnificent sound asglass is blown from red-hot matter by thefierce breath and fiery will. Swinbume whenhe chooses sweeps the long purple blows thegolden trumpet and intones the sacrificialchaunt of the Elizabethan hierarchy. He isa supreme artist in words they obey himas the keys obey an organist and fromtheir combination he builds up melodiouspalaces of resonant magnificence. Tennysonmust be named the most original and greatestliving writer of blank verse. The classical

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BLANK VERSEbeauty of the Idylls of the King, theluxuriant eloquence of the Princess, thecalm majesty of Ulysses, the idyllic sweetness of CEnone, the grandeur of the

Mort d'Arthur, are monuments to thevariety and scientific grasp of his genius.Subtle melody and self-restrained splendourare observable throughout his compositions.He has the power of selection and ofcriticism, the lack of which makes blankverse tumid or prosaic. t may be noticedthat Tennyson has not only created forhimself a style in narrative and descriptiveblank verse, but that he has also adapted theProtean metre to lyrical purposes. Threesongs in the Princess, Tears, idle tears,

Now sleeps the crimson petal, and Comedown, 0 maid, are perfect specimens of mostmelodious and complete minstrelsy in words.We observe that the first of these songs isdivided into periods of five lines, each ofwhich terminates with the words days thatare no more. This recurrence of sound and

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BLANK VERSEblank verse unless they were distinctly under-stood to form a part of some continuous poemor dramatic dialogue. When therefore blankverse is used lyrically the poet who mani-pulates it has to deceive the ear by structuresanalogous to those of rhymed stanzas. Theharmony of our language is such as to admitof exquisite finish in this style but blankverse sacrifices a portion of its characteristicfreedom and assimilates itself to another typeof metrical expression in the process. Anotherpoint about blank verse is that it admits of nomediocrity; it must be either clay or gold.Its writer gains no unreal advantage from theform of his versification but has to producefine thoughts in vigorous and musical language.Hence we find that blank verse has been themetre of genius that it is only used suc-cessfully by indubitable poets and that it is nofavourite in a mean contracted and unimagina-tive age. The freedom of the renaissancecreated it m England. The freedom of ourcentury has reproduced it. Blank verse

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llTHE BL NK VERSE OF MILTON

MONG the many points which connectthe literature of this century with that

of the Elizabethan age there is none moremarked and striking than the revival of a truefeeling for the beauty of blank verse. Blankverse was the creation of our dramatists fromMarlowe to Massinger and Shirley Miltonreceived it at their hands ; but in appropriat-ing this metre to the E pie even M ii onthought it necessary to defend the use ofunrhymed verse. Milton belonged by educa-tion and by disposition to the age which forwant of a more accurate title has been calledElizabethan but which may better be describedas the Renaissance in England. That is tosay the spirit which gave form and life to ourliterature during the sixteenth and the first

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BL NK VERSEhalf of the seventeenth centuries, preserved itsfullest vigour and manifested itself with theutmost splendour in the genius of Milton. Butwhile he was yet alive, and by the publicationof his masterpiece was proving his legitimatedescent from the lineage of Spenser, Bacon,and Shakspere, a new and antagonistic spiritbegan to manifest itself. The poets and prose-writers of the Restoration stood no longer in aclose relation to Italy and the classics, nor didthey continue the tradition of the dramatistsof our renaissance. They followed Frenchexamples, and introduced another standard oftaste. One of the signs of this change was therejection of blank verse, their exclusive practiceof the couplet. To some extent this was areturn to old English precedents, to the rhym-ing metre of Chaucer and the earliest Englishplays. But the heroic verse, as developedby Dryden, was not a regular continuation ofthe tradition handed down from Chaucer andfrom Marlowe. It had less in common withthe metre of the Canterbury Tale and

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BLANK VERSE' 'Hero and Leander than with the FrenchAlexandrine and its adoption was one of thesigns of the French influence which prevailedthroughout the Restoration and which deter-mined the style of English literature for thefollowing century.The exchange of blank verse for therhyming couplet was not so insignificant as atfirst sight it may appear. It was no mere whimof fashion or voluntary preference among thepoets for one of two metres either of whichthey could have used with equal mastery. Onthe contrary it indicated a radical change inthe spirit of our literature. With the substi-tution of heroic for unrhymed verse the theoryand practice of harmony in English compo-sition were altered. What was essentiallynational in our poetry-the music of sustainedperiods elastic in their structure and governedby the subtlest laws of melody in recurringconsonants and vowels-was sacrificed for theartificial eloquence and monotonous cadenceof the couplet. For a century and a half the

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BL NK VERSEsummit of all excellence in versification was theconstruction of neat pairs of lines smoothindeed and polished but scarcely varying intheir form. The breadth and freedom of stylethe organic connection between thought andrhythm were abandoned for precise andstudied regularity; and corresponding to thisrestriction of the form and poetry was animpoverishment in its matter both of thoughtand fancy. The audacities of Shakspere andthe sublimities of Milton were no less unknownand unappreciated than the volume and thegrandeur of their metrical effects. We mightcompare this change in the spirit of our litera-ture to the extinction of all the architecturaloriginality of the earlier Italian Renaissancein the formal elegance of the Palladianstyle. Of course it is not to be denied thatmuch was gained as well as lost. Not to speakof the exaggerated conceits fantastic phrase-ology and faults of overstrained imaginationwhich were eliminated in the age of theRestoration and Queen Anne it must always

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BL NK VERSEbe remembered that few literatures can exhibittwo types of excellence so great and yet sodiverse as those of our Elizabethan andClassic periods. But the fact remains thatduring this century and a half our authorsabandoned the fields in which the earliest andmost splendid laurels of the English had beenwon and our critics lost the sense for beautiesof style .peculiarly national. To have writtentrue blank verse during the despotism of theheroic couplet would have been impossible andto appreciate Shaksperian or Miltonic melodywas equally beyond the capacities of cul-tivated taste. It was not until the spirit ofthe Elizabethan age revived in the authors ofthe commencement of the present century thatblank verse began once more to be constructedupon proper principles and to be accepted atits true value. Even then the habits of severalgenerations had to be laboriously broken andthe metre which every playwright of thesixteenth century commanded with facility wasused with pompous grandiosity or frigid


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BLANK VERSEbaldness, by poets even of distinguishedgenms.

These remarks serve merely as a prefaceto the following attempt to analyse the structure of Miltonic blank verse, and to explainsome of the mistakes which have been madeabout it. hnson's essay on the versificationof Milton proves the want of intelligencewhich prevailed in the last century, andshows to what extent the exclusive practiceof the couJ?let had spoiled the ears of criticsfor all the deeper and more subtle strains ofwhich our language is capable. hnson laysit down as a fixed canon that the Englishten-syllable iambic measure is only pure andregular when the accent rests upon everysecond syllable through the whole line. Thussuch lines as these :

His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings . . . .And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss, . .

which are not of very common occurrence mMilton, and perhaps are never met with msuccession, he admits as pure; while all the

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BLANK VERSEothers-those, that is to say, in which werecognise the triumphs of Miltonic ar t -hecondemns as more or less licentious withrespect to accent. The tender and patheticcadence of the last line in the following passage: This delicious place

For us too large, where thy abundance wantsPartakers, and uncropt falls to the ground,

ts stigmatised by Johnson as remarkably mharmonious. Cowley's exquisite line:

And the soft wings of peace cover him round.which exhibits a similar cadence, meets withthe same condemnation, Johnson addingmagisterially, with reference to both examples :

In these the law of metre is very grosslyviolated by mingling combinations of sounddirectly opposite to each other, as Milton expresses it in his sonnet to Henry Lawes, bycommttng short nd long and setting onepart of the measure at variance with therest. hnson' s ear, accustomed to thesing-song of the couplet, and his instinct

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BL NK VERSEHe thinks that he has answered Johnsonand established something positive by hiserudition n r metria. whereas he has onlyattained the negative result of demonstratingthat blank verse must not be considered amere sequence of iambi. It does not reallysatisfy any one to e told that two-fifths ofeach of these lines is what Horace might havecalled a choriambus, or that three-tenths ofsome other line is an anapcest. J ohnson, tobegin with, would not have been satisfied; forhe required iambi or their equivalents, andcritics like T odd think nothing of scanning ananapcest in the place of one of Johnson s feet.Nor can the classical scholar be satisfied ; foreven granting that English metrical feetmay be classified as tribrachs, dactyls, anapcests, choriambics, and so forth, there is noclassical precedent for versification which indiscriminately admitted all these kinds. TheGreek comic metre is the only parallel of anything like closeness ; and, even there, limitswere fixed beyond which the poet dare not

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BLANK VERSEventure. Such licences as Milton allowedhimself in his sublime epic would have beeninadmissible in the dialogue of the Frogs, andwould have been utterly abhorrent to the lawsof the Sophoclean Iambic. The unlearnedEnglish reader meanwhile will justly condemnthis talk about anapcests and choriambi asinappropriate. t cannot help him to perceivethe melody of a line to be told here is atrochee, or there I think I detect an amphi-brach; for although these terms may usefullybe employed between students accustomedto metrical analysis, they do not solvethe problem of blank verse. With classicalversification the case is different. Quantitydetermines every line ; a long syllable isunmistakable, and invariably weighs as equalin the scale against two short ones. Butnothing so definite can be established inEnglish metre. What one man reads as adactyl may seem like an anapcest or a tribrachto another. So little is our language subjectto the laws of quantity, that to have produced

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BLANK VERSEfour stanzas of decently correct English alcaicsis one of the proudest tours e for e of themost ingenious of our versifiers since Pope.Since therefore quantity forms no part atpresent of our prosody, and since the licencesof quantity in blank verse can never have beendetermined, it is plainly not much to the pur-pose to talk about choriambs in Milton. Theyare undoubtedly to be found there. Our dailyspeech is larded with trochees and cretics andso forth. But these names of classic feet donot explain the secret of the varied melody ofMilton. In order to show the uncertaintywhich attends the analysis of blank verse onthese principles, it is enough to mention thatSir Egerton Brydges scans the line alreadyquoted thus:

' Partii 1kers, nd 1uncropt I fii lls to tM I ground,

first an iambic; second, an iambic ; third, aspondee ; fourth, a dactyl ; fifth, a demifoot.He makes no mention of the choriamb, whichseemed so evident to Todd, while Keightley,

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BLANK VERSEwho has written learnedly in the same spirit,seems to reject spondees from his system.

Though the attempt to apply the phraseo-logy of Greek and Latin prosody to theanalysis of blank verse is not really satis-factory, yet the principle of substitution ofother feet for iambs, asserted by ToddBrydges, and Keightley, in opposition toJohnson, was a step forward. They defendMilton s irregularities by saying that in theplace of two iambs he uses one choriambus,and that he employs trochees, anapcests, andtribrachs, under certain limitations, as freely asiambs. f these critics had advanced beyondthe nomenclature of classic prosody, this prin-ciple of substitution would probably have ledto a better understanding of the matter.English blank verse really consists of periodsof lines, each one of which is made up normallyof ten syllables, a stress or accent being thrownupon the final syllable in the line, so that thewhole inclines to the iambic rather than to anyother rhythm. The ten syllables are, also, if


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BL NK VERSEnormally cadenced so disposed that five beatsoccur in the verse at regular intervals. So far

hnson was right ; but he went wrong theinstant he proceeded to declare that deviationfrom this ideal structure of the line producedan inharmonious result. In truth it is pre-cisely such deviation that constitutes thebeauty of blank verse. When the metre wasfirst practised by Surrey Sackville Greene andPeele great hesitation was displayed as to anydeparture from iambic regularity ; but Marlowethe earliest poet of creative genius who appliedhimself to its cultivation saw that in order tosave the verse from monotony it was neces-sary to shift the accent and playing freely withfeet properly so called to be only careful topreserve the right proportions and masses ofsound. A verse may often have more thanten syllables and more or less than fiveaccents ; but it must carry so much soundas shall be a satisfactory equivalent for tensyllables and must have its accents so arrangedas to content an ear prepared for five. There

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BLANK VERSEliquid sounds, by packing one line withemphatic words so as to retard its movement,by winging another with light and hurriedpolysyllables, and by so adapting words tosense, and sense to rhythm, that pauses,prolongations, and accelerations, absolutelynecessary for the understanding of the matter,evoke a cadence of apparently unstudiedmelody. In this prosody the bars of themusical composer, where different values fromthe breve to the demi-semiquaver find theirplace, suggests perhaps a truer basis ofmeasurement than the longs and shorts ofclassic quantity. The following line fromMilton ( Paradise Regained, iii. 256):

The one winding, the other straight, and left between,affords a good instance of what is meant bythe massing of sounds together, so as toproduce a whole harmonious to the ear, butbeyond the reach of satisfactory analysis byfeet. It is not an Alexandrine, though, if weread t syllabically, it may be made to seemto have six feet. Two groups of syllables-

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BLANK VERSEThe one winding the other straight

-take up the time of six syllables and theverse falls at the end into the legitimateiambic cadence. At the same time it wouldno doubt be possible by the application ofa Procrustean method of elisions and forcibledivisions to reduce it to an inexact iambicthus:

Th one win ding th oth er straight.This instance suggests the consideration of

another point all-important in the prosody ofblank verse. It is clear that in the line justquoted the sense helps the sound and leads theear to mass the first eight syllables into the twogroups requisite for the rhythm of the verse.And this is not only once or occasionallybut always and invariably the case in allblank verse composed with proper freedom.In this respect the metre is true to its originalpurpose. It was formed for the drama whereit had to be the plastic vehicle of everyutterance and where a perfectly elastic adaptation of the rhythm to the current of the sense

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BL NK VERSEwas indispensable. The irregularities in itsstructure were the natural result of emphasis.This is illustrated by a line of Marlowe, asadmirable for its energy of movement as forits imagery :

See where Christ s blood stre ms in the firmament.That violent stress upon the verb was illegiti-mate according to iambic scansion ; but theverb required emphasis, and the verse gainedrather than lost by the deviation from itseven rise and fall. The one sound rule tobe given to the readers of dramatic blankverse, written y a master .of the art, is this :

ttend strictly to the sense and to thepauses ; the lines will then be perfectlymelodious ; but if you attempt to scan thelines on any preconceived metrical system,you will violate the sense and vitiate themustc. Even the abstruse and fantasticaudacities of W ebster, who is the veriestSchumann of blank verse, melt into melodywhen subjected to this simple process. Ifone does but conceive the dramatic situation,

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sympathise with the passions of the speaker,allow for the natural inflections of his voice,mark his pauses, and interpolate his inarticu-late exclamations, the whole apparently dis-jointed mass of words assumes a proper andmajestic cadence. Milton took blank versefrom the dramatists, and practised dramaticblank verse in Comus ; nor in his epicdid he depart from the rules of compositionwe have analysed. The movement of thesense invariably controlled the rhythm of theverse ; and most of his amorphous lines takeform when treated as the products of dramaticart. The following, for example, is one ofthose that puzzled hnson, although it iscomparatively regular :

Tis true, I am that Spirit unfortunate.

Johnson, searching for iambs, had not gazedinto the fallen Archangel's face-his disguisethrown off his policy abandoned-nor heardthe low slow accents of the two first syllables,the proud emphasis upon the fourth, the

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BLANK VERSEstately and melancholy music-roll which closedthe line. Yet, in order to understand therhythm of the verse as the poet wrote it, itwas necessary to have heard and seen thefiend as Milton heard and saw. The samemay e said about the spasms of intenseemotion which have to be imagined in orderto give its metrical value to this verse :

Me, me only, just object of his ire.It is obvious here that scansion by feet willbe of little use, though we may grant thatthe line opens with a spondee followed bya trochee. Its intention is understood as soonas we allow the time of two whole syllablesto the first emphatic me and bring over thenext words, m only in the time of anothertwo syllables, by doing which we g1vedramatic energy to the utterance. The truthof this method is still more evident when wetake for analysis a verse from the eighthbook of Paradise Lost, at first sight singularly inharmonious :Submiss; he reared me, and, Whom thou soughtest, I am.

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BLANK VERSEry to scan the line, and it seems a confusionof uncertain feet. Read it over by itself, and

its packed consonants offend the ear. Butnow supply the context :

Rejoicing, but with awe,In adoration at his feet I fellSubmiss ; he reared me, and, Whom thou soughtest,

am,Said mildly, Author of all this thou seestAbove, or round about thee, or beneath. -P. L. vili. 9.

It is now seen that the word submz ss belongsby the sense to the preceding period ; thewords, he reared me are a parenthesis of quickand hurried narration ; then another periodcommences. So dependent is sound on sense,and so inextricably linked together are theperiods in a complex structure of blank verse.It not unfrequently happens that a portion atleast of the sound belonging to a word atthe commencement of a verse is owed to thecadence of the preceding lines, so that thestrain of music which begins is wedded tothat which dies, by indescribable and almostimperceptible interpenetrations. The rhythmic

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BLANK VERSEthree syllables, gives perhaps the key to theothers. Though the English usage of wordsin iety precludes their elision to the extentrequired, we must imagine that Milton some-times gave to such words as satiety and so ietythe value of three syllables by treating theie almost as if it were a diphthong. Thewords would then stand at the end of thelines, each forming a ull foot, followed bythe licensed redundant syllable. It must,however, be mentioned that, in ParadiseLost at least, Milton does not often makeuse of the hendecasyllabic line, and also thatin two instances ( Paradise Lost, viii. 383,and ix. 1007), he uses so iety as a quadri-syllable. The ordinary way of explainingsuch lines is to say that they have two syllablesredundant, which is of course a statement ofthe fact. But here a difficulty which oftenmeets us in English scansion, owing to thedifferent values given at different times tothe same word, has to be faced. ociety willplay its part as two good feet in one line,

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and in another will have to do servtce as asingle foot or its equivalent The pheno-menon is common enough in dramatic blankverse, where accelerated and vehement enun-ciation justifies it.

It may here be remarked that Milton'sfamiliarity with what he calls the various-measured verse of the ancient poets, andwith the liquid numbers of the Italian hendeca-syllable, determined, to some extent, his treat-ment of our blank verse. The variety ofcadence and elaborate structure of Virgil'shexameters no doubt incited him to emulation.He must have felt that the unincumberedeloquence, which is suited to the drama, whereperspicuity is indispensable, would be out ofplace in the stationary and sonorous epic.Therefore, without seeking to reconstruct inEnglish the metres of the ancients, he adaptedthe complex harmonies of the Roman poets tothe qualities of our language. Like Virgil, heopened his paragraphs in the middle of aline, sustaining them through several clauses,

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BLANK VERSEtill they reached their close in another hemistich at the distance of some half a dozen carefully conducted verses. His pauses, therefore,are of the greatest importance in regulatinghis music. From the Italians, again, helearned some secrets in the distribution ofequivalent masses of sound. Milton s elisions,and other so-r.alled irregularities, have affinitieswith the prosody of Dante; for while thenormal Italian hendecasyllable runs thus :

o su, mo giu e mo ricirculando,the poet of the Inferno dares to write:

Bestemmiavano Iddio e lor parenti ;which is an audacity on a level with many ofMilton s.

Two elements of harmony in verse remainto be considered, each of which constitutes alarge portion of Milton s music, and withoutwhich his pompous rhythm would often behard and frigid. These are alliteration andassonance. Alliteration is the repetition of thesame consonant at the beginning of words in a

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BLANK VERSEsentence. Assonance is the repetition of thesame vowel n words which do not rhymestrictly. t is well known that the northernnations employed alliteration and not rhyme asthe element of melody in poetry. The Visionof Piers Ploughman for example is written ina metre of which this is a specimen:

In habit as a harmot unholy of worksWent wide in the world wonders to hear.

Assonance again is used by the Spanish poetsin the place of the fuller rhyme required byour ear. Words like pan and flare are asson-antal. The brief mention of these facts provesthat alliteration and assonance can satisfy thecraving for repeated sounds in poetry to whichmodern ears are subject since each of themhas taken the place of rhyme in systematicallycultivated literatures. It cannot be deniedthat the singsong jingle of the alliterativecouplet just quoted is intolerable to an edu-cated sense and it is on this account thatalliteration has fallen into general disrepute.Nothing is eas1er than to turn it to ridicule.

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BLANK VERSEWhen Shakspere, in Love's Labour's Lost,made Master Holofernes say :

I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility ;The preyful princess pierced and pricked a pretty

pleasing pricket,

he threw contempt upon the vulgar andilliterate abusers of an ornament they did notunderstand. Nothing, again, is easier thanto make verses that skip or hobble on allitera-tive crutches. Our ears are wearied withperiods like the following :

Creeps through a throbbing light that grows and glowsFrom glare to greater glare, until it gluts,And gulfs him in.

Yet in spite of all this the lofty muse ofMilton owes no small portion of her charmto this adornment. In order to understandthe Miltonic use of alliteration, it must beremarked that the faults of the verses justquoted are due to the alliteration being forcedupon the ear. It is loud and strident, notflattering the sense by delicate suggestionand subtle echoes of recurring sound, but


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BLANK VERSEFairer than feigned of old or fabled sinceOf faery damsels met in forests wideBy knights of Logres or of LyonesLancelot or Pelleas or Pellenore.-P. R. ii 358.

Here is one in which predominates:Sails between worlds and worlds with steady wingNow on the polar winds then with quick fanWinnows the buxom air ; till within soarOf towering eagles to all the fowls he seems

phrenix.-P. L. v 268.Three other instances of very marked allitera-tion may be pointed out to prove the fre-quence of repeated sounds which Milton some-times allowed himself. They are as follows :

War wearied bath performed what war can doAnd to disordered rage let loose the reinsWith mountains as with weapons armed which makesWild work in heaven and dangerous to the main.

P. L. vi. 695.But drive far off the barbarous dissonanceOf Bacchus and his revellers the raceOf that wild rout that tore the Thracian bardIn R h o d o p ~ where woods and rocks had earsTo rapture.-P. L. vii. 32.Moon that now meetest the orient sun now fliestWith the fixed stars fixed in their orb that flies ;And ye five other wandering fires that moveIn mystic dance not without song.-P. L. v. I75

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BLANK VERSEdescriptive or picturesque, as in the lines aboutthe Parthian bowmen :

Flying behind them shotSharp sleet of arrowy showers against the faceOf their pursuers.

P. R., i i i 323 cf. P. L., vi. 211-213).

The descriptive pomp of the alliterative systemts more remarkable in the passage whereRaphael relates the division of earth fromwater:

Immediately the mountains huge appear,Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheaveInto the clouds; their tops ascend the sky,So high as heaved the tumid hills, so lowDown sunk a hollow bottom, broad and deep,Capacious bed of waters. Thither theyHasted with glad precipitance, up-rolled,As drops on dust conglobing, from the dry;Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct,For haste ; such flight the great command im-

pressedOn the swift floods. As armies at the callOf trumpet for of armies thou hast heard-Troop to their standard, so the watery throng,Wave rolling after wave, where way they found;f steep, with torrent rapture, i f through plain,

Soft-ebbing : nor withstood them rock or hill;But they, or underground, or circuit wide

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BLANK VERSEWith serpent error wande,ring, found their way,And on the washy ooze deep channels wore.

P. L., vii. 285-303.Here the letters and h not inaptly, mark thefirmness and resistance of the earth, while wand r depict the liquid lapse of waters.

Enough, perhaps, has now been said toprove that the harmony of Milton s versedepends very greatly upon alliteration; andhere it may be observed that he not unfrequently repeats the same word, as muchwith a view to the recurrence of sound, aswith a rhetorical intention. In ParadiseRegained (iii. 109) there is a period oftwelve lines in which we find the word gloryeight times repeated, and the alliterationstrengthened by five subsidiary g s. At the205th line of the same book, there is a periodof six verses containing worse five times,supported by three subsidiary w s. In eachof these cases the repetition is of courserhetorically studied. A very remarkableinstance of the grandeur resulting from simplereiteration is the following :

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BLANK VERSEf I foreknew,Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault;

Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.P. L., iii II7.

The assonance of various forms of the soundadds to the volume of the music in these lines.

Assonance, though not so obvious as alliteration, is no less potent. Of its place in Milton'sversification something must be said.* Tobegin with, the poet was himself very sensitiveto the harmony of vowel sounds when wellpronounced. In his Epistle to MasterHartlib, he lays it down as a rule that, mthe education of youths, their speech is tobe fashioned to a distinct and clear pronunciation, as near as may be to the Italian,especially in the vowels. For we Englishmen, being far northerly, do not open ourmouths in the cold air wide enough to gracea southern tongue, &c. His blank verse

.. This also would be the place to discuss the occasionalrhymes found in Milton's blank verse. P. L., xi. 853-86o, hasno less than six assonantal endings. See, too, P. L., iv. 957;P. L., i 612.

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BL NK VERSEabounds in openmouthed, deep-chested a sand o s. Here is a passage in which theirassonance is all the more remarkable from theabsence of alliteration :

Say, Goddess, what ensued when Rapbael,The affable Archangel, bad forewarnedAdam, by dire example, to bewareApostasy, by what befell in HeavenTo those apostates; lest the like befallIn Paradise to Adam or his race,Charged not to touch the interdicted tree, c.

P. L., vii. 40.The opening lines of Book ii. the passageabout Mulciber at the end of Book i., andthe great symphonious period which describesthe movement of the fallen angels to theDorian mood of flutes and soft recorders,all serve to illustrate the gorgeousness ofMilton's assonance. In attempting to characterise the effect of these deeptoned vowels,it is almost necessary to borrow words fromthe art of colours, since what colours are topainting vowels are to verse. It would seem,after drinking in draught after draught ofthese intoxicating melodies, as if Milton with


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BLANK VERSEbethan drama. His style, it is true, is alreadymore complex and peculiarly harmonious, morecharacteristically Miltonic, than that of any ofthe dramatists. Yet there are passages m

Comus which remind us forcibly ofFletcher. Others, like the following :How sweetly did they float upon the wings

Of silence, through the empty vaulted night IAt every fall smoothing the raven downOf darkness till t smiled,

might have been written by Shakspere. Alli-teration is used freely, but more after themanner of Fletcher or of Spenser, not with thesustained elaboration of Milton's maturity.The truly Miltonic licences are rare ; we findfewer inverted sentences, less lengthy systemsof concatenated periods-in a word, a morefluent and simpler versification. Both in theimagery and the melody of Comus thereis youthful freshness, an almost wanton dis-play of vernal bloom and beauty. In the

Paradise Lost we reach the manhood of theart of Milton. His elaborate metrical structure,supported by rich alliteration and assonance,

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BLANK VERSEhere attains its full development. Already toothere is more of rugged and abrupt sublimityin the blank verse of the Paradise Lostthan can be found in that of Comus. Themetre, learned in the school of the Elizabethandrama, is being used in accordance with themodels of the Roman E pie. Yet the fancy ofthe poet has not yet grown chill or lost luxuri-ance, nor has his ear become less sensitiveto every musical modulation of which ourlanguage is capable. Paradise Regainedpresents a marked change. Except in descriptivepassages, there is but little alliterative melody ;while all the harsh inversions and ruggedeccentricities of abnormally constructed versesare retained. It is noticeable that hendeca-syllabic lines, which are but sparingly used in

Paradise Lost, only two occurring in thefirst book, become frequent in ' ' ParadiseRegained, and add considerably to theheaviness of its movement. These, forexample, are found within a short space in thefirst book:

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BLANK VERSELost, with all its full-toned harmonies. It hasthe grandeur of a play of Sophocles whichafter passing through the medium of the Latingenius, has been committed to English by theloft

symonds-blank verse

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