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See also:VERSE (from See also:Lat. versus, literally a See also:line or furrow See also:drawn by turning the plough, from vertere, and afterwards signifying an arrangement of syllables into feet) , the name given to an assemblage of words so placed together as to produce a metrical effect. The See also:art of making, and the See also:science of analysing, such verses is known as Versification. According to Max See also: This appears from definite statements preserved in the fragments of See also:Aristoxenus of See also:Tarentum, a grammarian who lived in the See also:age of See also: For instance, what we are somewhat vaguely told of the See also:influence of a poet like See also:Archilochus, to whom the very invention of See also:trochaic and See also:iambic metre is, perhaps fabulously, attributed, points to the See also:probability that in Archilochus the Ionian See also:race produced a poet of extraordinary daring and delicacy of ear, who gathered the wandering rhythms that had existed, and had doubtless been used in an uncertain way before his See also:time, into a system which could be depended upon, and not in his hands only, to produce certain effects of welcome variety. His system would engage the attention of theorists, and we learn that by the time of See also:Plato See also:schools of oral metrical See also:education were already in existence, where the science of sounds and syllables was already beginning to be recognized, as may be seen in the Cratylus. Before long, the teachings in these peripatetic schools would be preserved, for safety's See also:sake, in writing, and the theoretic literature of versification would begin. In fact, we read in Suidas of a certain See also:Lasus of Hermione who wrote an Art of Poetry, and the age of this, the earliest of recorded authorities on the formal laws of verse, is fixed for us by the fact that he is spoken of as having been the See also:master of See also:Pindar. Of the writings of Lasus and his followers, however, nothing remains, and the See also:character of their teaching is problematical. In the 3rd See also:century B.C., however, we come upon a figure which preserves a definite character; this is Aristoxenus, the See also:disciple of See also:Aristotle, who gave his undivided attention to rhythm, and who lives, unfortunately only in fragments, as the most eminent musical critic of antiquity. The brief fragments of his Elements of Rhythm (puO z Ka vrotxsia), originally written in three books, are of unsurpassed value to us as illustrating the attitude of classical See also:Greece to the interrelation of verse and music. The third See also:book of Aristoxenus dealt specifically with M tr, or the application of rhythm to artistically composed and written verse. It is certain that, after the time of Alexander the Great, the theories of verse tended somewhat rapidly to See also:release themselves from the theories of music, and when, in the successive ages of Greek criticism, much attention was given to the laws of versification, less and less was said about harmony and more and more about metre. Rules, often of a highly arbitrary nature, were drawn up by grammarians, who founded their laws on a scholiastic study of the ancient poets. The See also:majority of the See also:works in which these rules were collected are lost, but an enchiridion of Greek metres, by Hephaestion, a scholiast of the 2nd century A.D., has been preserved. First printed in 1526, See also:editions and See also:translations of Hephaestion's See also:manual have not been infrequent. It is from Hephaestion that most of our ideas on the subject of classical prosody are obtained. His work, as we possess it, seems to be a See also:summary, made by himself, for use in schools, of an exhaustivetreatise he had published .on the Greek metrical system as a whole. in 48 books. The pre-eminent importance of Hephaestion was exposed to the learned See also:world of See also:Europe by Th. See also:Gaisford, in 181o. A contemporary of Hephaestion, Herodian, who was one of the most eminent of Alexandrian grammarians, gave See also:close attention to prosody, and was believed to have summed up everything that could be known on the subject of verse by critics of the and century A.D., in his MeyaAn ,rpor La, in twenty hooks. As Herodian, throughout his See also:life, seems to have concentrated his attention on the study of See also:Homer, it is supposed that he started with a See also:consideration of the metre and See also:accent of the Iliad. The almost complete loss of his See also:treatises is regrettable. See also:Philoxenus was the author of a very See also:early work, JIpi uirpwv; but this is entirely lost. In the musical cyclopaedia of See also:Quintilian, there was included a See also:chapter on the elements of the rhythmic art, and in this the metres recognized at the time were recorded and described. Among the Latin authorities on versification, the leading See also:place is taken, in the 1st century Inc., by Terentius See also:Varro, whose systematic treatment of metre in his works De sermone latino and De lingua See also:latina is often referred to But we know more of See also:Terentianus Maurus, who flourished in the second See also:half of the 2nd century A.D., since we possess from his hand a hand-book to metre, written in verse, in which, in particular, the Horatian metres are carefully analysed. He follows Caesius See also:Bassus, the friend of See also:Nero, who had dedicated to his imperial See also:patron a work on prosody, of which fragments exist. Three tracts, attributed to the rhetor C. See also:Marius See also:Victorinus (one entitled De ration metrorum), belong, to the 4th century, and are still quoted by scholars. Another early authority was h'lavius Mallius See also:Theodorus, whose De Metris has been frequently reprinted. The metrical theory of the See also:Byzantine grammarians was entirely in unison with the old tradition of the Alexandrian schools, and depended on the authority of Hephaestion. See also:Michael See also:Psellus, in the 9th century, wrote abundantly on the subject, and towards the close of the See also:Empire the verse-handbooks of See also:Isaac See also:Tzetzes (d. 1138) and of his See also:brother Joannes were in general use. A large number of other Byzantine scholiasts and theorists are mentioned in this connexion by Gleditsch. Very little attention was paid to metrical science in See also:medieval and even See also:Renaissance days. It is much to the See also:honour of English scholarship that the earliest modern writer who made a rational study of ancient metre was See also:Richard See also:Bentley, in his Schediasma de metris Terentianis, printed at See also:Cambridge in 1726. He was soon followed by the Germans, in particular by See also:Hermann, Boeckh and J. A. Apel. To this See also:day, See also:German scholarship easily leads in the rational and accurate study of classical versification. The See also:chief principle in ancient verse was quantity, that is, the amount of time involved in the effort to See also:express a syllable. Accordingly, the two basal types which See also:lie at the See also:foundation of classical metre are "longs " and " shorts." The See also:convention was that a long syllable was equal to two See also:short ones: accordingly there was a real truth in calling the succession of such " feet " metre, for the length, or See also:weight, of the syllables forming them could be, and was, measured. What has to be realized in speaking of ancient metre is that the value of these feet was defined with exactitude, not See also:left uncertain, as it is in modern European verse, when accent is almost always made the guiding principle. In Greek verse, there might be an ictus (stress), which See also:fell upon the long syllable, but it could only be a regulating See also:element, and accent was always a secondary element in the construction of Greek metre. The " feet " recognized and described by the ancient grammarians were various, and in their apparent diversity sometimes difficult to follow, but the comprehension of them is simplified if the student realizes that the names given to them are often superfluous. The main distinction between feet consists in the diversity of the relation between the strong and the weak syllables. There are naturally only two movements, the See also:quick and the slow. Thus we have the See also:anapaest (v v —, short-short-long) and the See also:dactyl (— long-short-short), which are equal, and differ only as regards the position of their parts. To these follow two feet which must be considered as in their essence non-metrical, as it is only in See also:combination with others that they can become metrical. These are the spondee (- -, long-long) and the pyrrhic ( short-short). Of more essential character are the two descriptions of slow feet, the iamb ( "—, short- long) and the trochee (— long-short). Besides these definite types, the ingenuity of formalists has invented an almost See also:infinite number of other " feet." It is, perhaps, necessary to mention some of the principal of these, 'although they are, in the majority of cases, purely arbitrary. In the rapid measures we find the tribrach (- - -e '--, short-shortshort), the molossus (---, Iong-long-long), the amphibrach (se- - short-long-short), the amphimacer (— -, longshort-long), the bacchius (v--, short-long-long) and the antibacchius (-- long-long-short). There is a See also:foot of four syllables, the choriamb (— —, long-short-shortlong), which is the fundamental foot in Aeolic verse—very frequently mentioned, but very seldom met with. It must not be forgotten that the prosodical terminology of the Greeks, which is often treated by non-poetical writers as something scientific and even sacrosanct, See also:dates from a time when ancient literature had lost all its freshness and impulse, and was exclusively the study of analysts and grammarians. Between the life of Pindar, for instance, and that of Hephaestion, the great metrical authority, there extends a longer See also:period than between See also:Chaucer and See also:Professor See also:Skeat; and to appreciate the value of the rules of Greek prosody we must recollect that those rules were invented by learned and See also:academic men to See also:account for phenomena which they observed, and wished to comprehend, in writings that had long been classical, and were already growing positively archaic. The fact seems to be that the combination of long and short syllables into spondees, iambs, dactyls and anapaests, forms the See also:sole genuine basis of all classical verse. Metre is a science which pays attention to all the possible See also:regular arrangements which can be made of these four indispensable and indestructible types. Of the metres of the ancients by far the most often employed, and no doubt the See also:oldest, was the dactylic See also:hexameter, a combination of six feet, five successive dactyls and a spondee or trochee: This was known to the ancients as " epic " verse, in contrast to the various lyrical measures. The poetry of Homer is the typical example of the use of the epic hexameter, and the character of the Homeric See also:saga led to the See also:fashion by which the dactylic hexameter, whatever its subject, was styled " heroic metre." The earliest epics, doubtless, were chanted to the See also:accompaniment of a stringed See also:instrument, on which the pulsation of the verse (E7rr7) was recorded. It was the See also:opinion of V. See also:Christ that the origin of the hexameter was to be sought in See also:hieratic poetry, the fulness of the long dactylic line attracting the priests to its use in the delivery of oracles, from which it naturally passed to See also:solemn tales of the actions of gods and heroes. It is more difficult to see how, later on, it became the vehicle for comic and satiric writing, and is found at last adopted by the bucolic poets for their amorous and See also:pastoral dialogues. The Homeric form of the dactylic hexameter has been usually taken, and was taken in classical times, as the normal one, but there have been many See also:variations. A hexameter found in See also:Catullus consists exclusively of spondees, and deviation from the See also:original heroic type could go no further. This concentration of heavy sounds was cultivated to give solemnity to the character of the line. In the whole See also:matter, it is best to recognize that the rules of the grammarians were made after the event, to account for the fact that the poets had chosen, while. adhering to the verse-structure of five rapid beats and a subsidence, to vary the See also:internal character of that structure exactly as their ear and their See also:passion dictated. This seems particularly true in the See also:case of the See also:caesura, where the question is not so much a matter of defining " male " caesura or " See also:female " caesura, " bucolic " caesura or " trochaic," as of patiently noting instances in which the unconscious poet, led by his See also:inspiration, has varied his pauses and his emphasis at his own See also:free will. The critics have written much of " prosodical See also:licence," but verse in the days of Homer, like verse now, is simply See also:good or See also:bad, and if it is good it may show See also:liberty and variety, but it knows nothing of " licence." We pass, by a natural transition, to the pentameter, whichis the most frequently employed of what are known as the syncopied forms of dactylic verse. It was used with the hexameter, to produce the effect which was early called elegiac, and its form shows the appropriateness of this See also:custom: "Cynthia prima fu- it, 11 Cynthia finis e- rit." A hexameter, full of See also:energy and exaltation, followed . by a descending and See also:melancholy pentameter, had an immediate tendency to take a complete form, and this is the origin of the See also:stanza. The See also:peculiar character of this two-line stanza has been fixed for all time by a brilliant See also:epigram of See also:Schiller, which is itself a specimen of the form: " See also:Im Hexameter steigt See also:des Springquells flussige Saute, Im Pentameter drauf fallt sie melodisch herab." Such a distich was called an See also:elegy, EXeyeiov, as specially suitable to an EXeyos or lamentation. It is difficult to say with certainty whether the distich so composed was essential as an accompaniment to See also:flute-music in the earliest times, or how soon there came to be written purely See also:literary elegies towards which the melody stood in a secondary or ornamental relation. It has, however, been observed that even when the distich had obviously come to be a purely intellectual or lyrical thing, there remained in the sound of the pentameter the trace of lamentation, in which its See also:primitive use at funeral services was clearly preserved. Other grammarians, however, among whom Casar, in his work on the origin of elegiac verse, is prominent, do not believe in the lugubrious essence of the pentameter, and think that the elegiacal See also:couplet was originally erotic, and was adapted to mournful themes by See also:Simonides. If we may See also:credit a'passage in See also:Athenaeus, it would seem that the earliest-known elegists, such as See also:Callinus and See also:Solon, wrote for recitation, pure and See also:simple, without the accompaniment of any instrument. Trochaic verse is called by the ancient grammarians See also:head-less (aich¢aaov), because it really consists of iambic verse deprived of its head, or opening syllable. The iambic
measure (s-- - se — S- -) becomes trochaic if we cut off
the first " short," and make it run — — v —. The pure trochaic trimeter and tetrameter had a character of breathless See also:speed, and sometimes See also:bore the name of choric (puOµds xopeios), because it was peculiarly appropriate to the See also:dance, and was used for poems which •expressed a. quickly stepping sentiment. It is understood that, after having been known as a musical movement, it was first employed in the See also:composition of poetry by Archilochus of See also:Paros, in the 7th century B.C.
Iambic metre was, next to the dactylic hexameter, the form of verse most frequently employed by the poets of Greek antiquity. Archilochus, again, who seems to have been a great initiator in the arts of versification, is credited with the invention of the iambic trimeter also, but it certainly existed before his time. See also: I I ---•
I L— _
The stanza of Alcaeus runs:-
- ... I
%I I
These marvellous inventions suited the different moods of these strongly contrasted lyrists, the " See also:violet-crowned, pure, softly smiling Sappho," and the Eery, vehement soldier who was Alcaeus. We must give them peculiar attention, since they were the two earliest See also:models for the lyric passion which has since then expressed itself in so many stanzaic forms, but in none of so faultless a perfection as the original Lesbian types.
The name of See also:Stesichorus of See also:Himera points to the belief of antiquity that he was the earliest poet who gave form to the choral See also:song; he must have been called the " See also:choir-setter " because he arranged and wrote for choirs semi-epic verse of a new See also:kind, " made up of halves of the epic hexameter, interspersed with short variations—epitrites, anapaests or See also:mere syncopae—just enough to break the dactylic See also:swing, to make the verse lyrical " (See also: The earliest use of poetry as a national art in Italy is to be judged by See also:inscriptions in what is called the Saturnian metre. Already, the first Latin epic poets, Livius Andronicus in his Odyssia, See also:Naevius in his Bellum Punicum, the Scipios in their Elogia, combined their See also:rude national sense of folk-song with a consciousness of the quantitative rules of the Greeks. But the same writers, in their dramas, undoubtedly used Greek metres without See also:adaptation, and it is therefore likely that the ancient Saturnian measure was already looked upon as barbarous, and it makes no further reappearance in Latin literature (cf. Gleditsch). The introduction of Greek dramatic metre marks the start of regular poetry among the Latins, which was due, not to men of Roman See also:birth, but to poets of Greek extractionor inhabiting the Greek-speaking provinces of Italy. These writers, bearing the See also:stamp of a widely recognized cultivation, threw the old national verse back into oblivion. Latin verse, then, began in a free but loyal modification of the principles of Greek verse. See also:Plautus was particularly ambitious and skilful in this work, and, aided by a native genius for metre, he laid down the basis of Latin dramatic versification. See also:Terence was a feebler and at the same time a more timid metrist. In See also:satire, the iambic and trochaic measures were carefully adaptedby See also:Ennius and See also:Lucilius. The dactylic hexameter followed, and Ennius, in all matters of verse a daring innovator, directly imitated in his Annales the epic measure of the Greeks. To him also is attributed the introduction of the elegiac distich, hexameter and pentameter. The dactylic hexameter was forthwith adopted as the leading metre of the Roman poets, and, as Gleditsch has pointed out, the basis upon which all future versification was to be erected was firmly laid down before the See also:death of Ennius in 169 B.C. Lucilius followed, but perhaps with some tendency to retrogression, for the Latin critics seem to have looked upon his metre as wanting both in melody and See also:elasticity. See also:Lucretius, on the other hand, made a further advance on the labours of Ennius, in his study of
" the rise And long See also:roll of the Hexameter."
Lest, however, this great form of verse should take too exclusive a place in the See also:imagination of the See also:Romans, a younger See also:generation, with See also:Laevius and Terentius Varro at their head, began to imitate the lyrical measures of the Greeks with remarkable success. Varro, who has been styled the earliest metrical theorist of See also:Rome, opened up a new See also: Although he is actually writing in dactylic hexameters, he does not mention this form of verse; he is chiefly occupied in describing, rather unscientifically, the iambic trimeter, and in praising the iamb, pes cites. He applauds, still somewhat vaguely, the stately versification of the precursors, Ennius and See also:Accius, and blames the immodulata poemata of careless modern writers, whose laxity is condoned by popular See also:ignorance. The only way to See also:escape such faults is to study the Greeks by See also:night and by day, but Horace evidently means by his exemplaria Graeca, not the scholiasts with their lists of metres and their laborious rules, but the old poets with their See also:fine raptures. On Italian ground he points to Plautus, and laments that the Romans of his own day, fascinated by softer cadences, have lost their veneration for the vigorous beauty of the Plautinos numeros. And Horace closes with a queer See also:suggestion, which may be taken as we please, that a poet in an age of flagging inspiration must See also:trust to his fingers as well as his ears. Modern Versification.—The main distinction between classical and modern versification consists in the See also:negligence shown by the moderns to quantity, which is defined as the length or shortness of the sound of syllables, as determined by the time required to pronounce them. This See also:dimension of sound was rigid in the case of Greek and Latin poetry, until, in what is known as the See also:Middle Greek period, there came in a general tendency to relax the exact value of sounds and syllables, and to introduce accent, which is a measure of quality rather than of quantity. A syllable, in modern verse, is heavy or See also:light, according as it is accented or unaccented—that is to say, according as it receives stress from the See also:voice or not. In the word " See also:tulip," for instance, the syllables are of equal length, but the accent is strongly upon the first. It is mainly a question of force with us, not of time as with the ancients. There is, however, an element of quantity in modern verse, as there was of accent in ancient verse. The foot, in modern verse, takes a less prominent place in itself than it did in Greece, and is regarded more in relation to the whole line of which it makes a See also:part. A mere counting of syllables is useless. In See also:Milton's
" From haunted See also:spring and See also:dale,
Edg'd with See also:poplar See also:pale,"
an ancient scholiast would have found it impossible to discover any harmony, for he would have had no means of measuring the value of the heavy accent on " edg'd," followed by a pause, and would have demanded another syllable in the second line to turn the whole into verse. The first poet to whom it occurred that it was needless to attach such predominant importance to quantity was See also:Gregory of Nazianzen (d. 389), a See also:Christian See also:bishop of the Greek See also: The earliest See also:standard work which exhibits in full the See also:definitions of Romance versification is the See also:Leys d'Amors of an unknown Provencal grammarian, written in 1356.' Another medieval See also:treatise of great importance is the De Vulgari Eloquentia, written by See also:Dante in 1304. There is this difference between these two works, that the former, written long after the flourishing period of the troubadours, analyses what has been accomplished in the past, while the other, See also:standing at the starting-point of Italian poetry, describes what has to be done in the future. Both of these authorities quote the ten-syllable line of five equal feet as most to be admired and as forming the basis of poetry. But the octosyllabic, almost in the earliest times, became a main favourite with the poets, and may be said to be the most frequently used of all lyrical measures in medieval Romance poetry. The earliest specimen of all, however, a mere refrain excepted, is the fragment of the Provencal " Boethius," and this is decasyllabic, like all See also:French poems of the See also:Charlemagne See also:cycle. The typical French heroic verse, the alexandrine of six feet, is not found in the old epic poetry. In Provencal and early French the position of the caesura in each line was fixed by strict rules; in Italian these were relaxed. Dante gives very See also:minute, although somewhat obscure, accounts of the essence and invention of stanzaic form (cobla in Provencal), in which But see the See also:article PROVENCCAL LITERATURE.the Romance poetries excelled from the first. The stanza was a See also:group of lines formed an a regular and recurrent arrangement of rhymes. It was natural that the poets of Provence should carry to an extreme the invention of stanzaic forms, for their See also:language was extravagantly See also:rich in rhymes. They invented complicated poetic structures of stanza within stanza, and the canzo as written by the great troubadours is a marvel of ingenuity such as could scarcely be repeated in any other language. The extreme fulness and elaboration of the Provencal poets, however, has been serviceable as placing a very high ideal of structural skill before the poets of all succeeding times, and it was of immense value in directing the experiments of the earliest poet-artists of Italy and France. In French poetry, successive masters corrected the national versification and See also:drew closer See also:round it the network of rules and principles. The alexandrine was invented in the 12th century, as a counterpart to the hexameter of the ancients, by Alexander de See also:Bernay. A great part is played in French metre by masculine and feminine verse: the former is a verse which closes with a See also:letter which is not e See also:mute; the latter a verse which closes with e mute, or with e mute followed by s, or by the consonants nt. Masculine rhyme is that which combines two masculine verses, and feminine that which unites two feminine verses; and in regular verse such couplets must be alternated. Elision is the rule by which, in the scansion of a verse, the letter e at the end of a word is suppressed when it immediately precedes e mute or a non-aspirated h. These and other immutable rules were laid down by See also:Malherbe, and by Boileau in his Art Poetique (1674), and for more than a century they were implicitly followed by all writers of verse. It was the genius of Victor Hugo which first enfranchised the prosody of France, not by rebelling against the rules, but by widening their See also:scope in all directions, and by asserting that, in spite of its limitations, French verse was a living thing. The richness of Hugo's rhymes is proverbial, and the boldness and flow of his alexandrines exceeded everything which had been so much as dreamed of before his time. The revolution he brought about proved universal, and disciples like See also:Theophile See also:Gautier could. say, in the See also:face of the critics and grammarians of the classic school, " If we suspected that Victor Hugo had written a single bad verse, we should not dare to admit it to ourselves, in a cellar, without a See also:candle." Boileau and Hugo, therefore, have been the two lawgivers of the French See also:Parnassus. The rules of French verse being, in fact, very severe, and weakness, excess of audacity and negligences of all sorts being very harshly repressed, it is not surprising that, as the See also:personal authority of Hugo declined, various projects were started for lightening the See also:burden of prosodical discipline. Since 188o those projects have been numerous, and a great many poets of genuine inspiration have written in different forms of what is called " free verse." See also:Teutonic.—In very early times the inhabitants of the Germanic countries developed a prosodical system which owed nothing whatever to classical See also:sources. The finest examples of this Teutonic verse are found in Icelandic and in Anglo-Saxon. The line consisted of two sections, each containing two strongly stressed syllables, and of these four long syllables three were alliterated. It is See also:plain that there can be detected in ancient Teutonic verse but three severe and consistent rules, viz. that the See also:section, the strong accentuation, and above all the See also:alliteration must be preserved. We find this to be the case in High and See also:Low German, Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, and in the revived alliterative English poetry of the 14th century, such as " Piers Plowman." There are See also:differences, however, which depend on such facts as that the Icelandic poems are mainly lyrical and the Anglo-Saxon epics are narrative. As time went on, under the pressure of See also:south European practice, alliteration ceased to be regarded as the sole and sufficient ornament of Teutonic verse, and rhyme was occasionally used, but this was a concession which proved fatal to the type. With this use of rhyme, the High German poetry begins to cease, while See also:England becomes the centre of Teutonic metrical composition. In Icelandic poetry there was a highly artificial verse-system known as See also:court-verse (dr6llkvaett), which consisted of alliterative See also:groups of two lines each, arranged in staves of eight lines. When we consider primitive Teutonic verse closely, we see that it did not begin with any conscious art, but, as Vigfussen has said, " was simply excited and emphatic prose " uttered with the repetition of catchwords and letters. The use of these was presently regulated. Alliteration of stressed ropt-syllables formed the basis of Teutonic verse, as quantity had formed the basis of Greek verse. A study of the " Helfand " and the " See also:Lay of See also:Hildebrand " in Old German, of the " Atli " and " Harbard " See also:lays in Icelandic, and of the writings attributed to See also:Beowulf, Cmdmon and See also:Cynewulf in Anglo-Saxon, will show the general unity and the See also:local divergences of this class of verse. English Metre.—The first writer in whom there has been discovered a distinct See also:rebellion against the methods of Anglo-Saxon versification is St Godric, who died in 1170. Only three brief fragments of his poetry have been preserved, but there is no doubt that they show, for the first time, a regular composition in feet. A See also:quotation will show the value of St Godric's invention: " Sainte I Nicholaes, I Godes I druth, Tymbre us I faire 1 See also:scone I hus, At thy ( See also:berth, I at thy I See also:bare, Sainte I Nicholaes, I bring uswel thare." From this difficult stanza down to the metres of modern English the transition seems See also:gradual and See also:direct, while the tradition of Anglo-Saxon alliterative prosody is abruptly broken. The fragments of St Godric appear to be independent of one another, .and therefore indicate that the See also:division of lines into feet is not accidental. They are much less dubious, and more See also:firm as the basis of an See also:hypothesis, than the famous See also:quatrain' about the singing of the monks of See also:Ely, which is perhaps a little earlier in date than the fragments of St Godric. This has much picturesque beauty, but if it is carefully examined the actual See also:scheme of it as metre seems to evade detection. The Ely See also:singer warbled, not knowing what he sang, but St Godric knew perfectly well, and must have been a deliberate innovator. There is still more See also:definition of feet in the Poema Morale, printed by Dr See also:Morris, which is supposed to date from about r 200. In longer pieces, and particularly in the Ormulum, and in the See also:Brut of See also:Layamon, which belong to the early part of the 13th century, we find, on the whole, less definite See also:abandonment of the Anglo-Saxon system of prosody, but nevertheless a prominence given both to rhyme and to rhythm. In Layamon, particularly, the recognition of a recurrent verse of four accents is unquestionable. The place of this poet in the See also:history of prosody is very carefully noted by See also:Guest, who remarks that in Anglo-Saxon verse, the syllables which take the alliteration are always accented, while in the later metres, where alliteration was combined with rhyme, the former is often thrown upon an unaccented syllable. " Layamon appears to take a middle course. It would seem he gave accents both to his rhyming and his alliterative syllables; but the former were often obliged to content themselves with a false accent." An advance was made about fifty years later in See also:Genesis and See also:Exodus, a poem published by Professor Skeat, which has such great value in the See also:proof it gives of the See also:extension of verbal melody, that See also:Saintsbury has said that " it contains more of the See also:kernel of English prosody, properly so called, than any [other] single poem before See also:Spenser." The phenomenon which we meet with in all these earliest attempts at purely English verse is the unconscious determination of writers, who had no views about prosody, to follow their national See also:instinct in the direction of grouped feet and rhymes. This is further emphasized in See also:Horn and Havelok, and in the smoother octosyllabics of the 14th-century metrical romances, where the rhymes become very frequent, with an Merle sungen 8e muneches binnen Ely, 8a Cnut ch[in]See also:ing reu 8er by; " Rowe$, cnilh]tes, noer the See also:land and here we Iles munches sang." occasional short line or bob, to prevent monotony of effect. Few of these romances have much literary value, but their prosodical value is very great, for we see in them the normal movement of English verse becoming fixed to certain principles beyond any possibility of escape:
" So See also:fair ( he spak- ~ e him withal,
He light- I ed down- I e in 1 the See also: The metres of See also:Lydgate and his successors were discordant and feeble; their ears had learned but very incorrectly the See also:lesson of the master. Lydgate, in particular, went back to an earlier type, and showed himself more skilful in the old eight-syllable measure than in the new decasyllable. More interesting to the prosodical student than the work of these or later Chaucerians is the influence exercised throughout the 15th and early 16th centuries by the popular See also:ballads, of which " Chevy See also:Chase " is believed to be the oldest surviving example, while " The See also:Tale of Gamelyn " is the longest. The introduction of the loose, elastic ballad-quatrain, with its melodious tendency to refrain, was a matter of great importance in the See also:metamorphosis of See also:British verse. The degenerate forms employed by the English 15th-century poets in attempting more regular prosody were in some measure connected by the greater exactitude of the Scotch writers, particularly of See also:Dunbar, who was by far the most accomplished metrist between Chaucer and Spenser. But See also:Wyatt (1503-1542) was long considered the See also:father of modern English verse, and though we now plainly enough perceive that before his day all the essential discoveries and inventions had been made, he nevertheless deserves great honour as a See also:pioneer. He introduced, from France and Italy, the prosodical principles of the Renaissance—order and coherency, concentration and definition of sound—and that although his own See also:powers in metre were far from being highly developed. He and his more gifted disciple See also:Surrey introduced into English verse the See also:sonnet (not of the pure Italian type, but as a See also:quatorzain with a final couplet) as well as other short lyric forms. To Surrey, moreover, we owe the introduction from Italian of See also:blank verse, the rhymeless metre of five accents, which has taken so prominent a place in subsequent English poetry. With the heroic couplet, with blank verse, and with a variety of short lyric stanzaic measures, the equipment of British verse might now be said to be complete. For the moment, however, towards the middle of the 16th century, all these excellent metres seemed to be abandoned in favour of an awkward couplet of fourteen feet, which may have had some relation with the French alexandrine. It was always, as Saintsbury says, " a very uncertain and risky metre, settling down with a dangerous acquiescence into doggerel and sing-song." It was to break up this nerveless measure that the remarkable reforms of the close of the century were made, and the discoveries of Wyatt and Surrey were brought, long after their deaths, into general practice. In drama, the doggerel of an earlier age retired before a blank verse, which was at first entirely pedestrian and See also:mechanical, but struck out variety and music in the hands of See also:Marlowe and See also:Shakespeare. But the central magician was Spenser, in whom there arose a master of pure verse whose range and skill were greater than those of any previous writer of English, and before whom Chaucer himself must withdraw. It is not too much to say that Spenser took all the elements of English verse, as they had existed in more or less timid and undeveloped shape for four centuries, and that he moulded them together into an instrument capable, for the first time, of expressing, or accompanying, every passion, every emotion, every variety of sentiment or instinct, which stirs the human See also:breast. His great work was that of solidification and emancipation, but he also created a See also:noble form which bears his name, that Spenserian stanza of nine lines closing with an alexandrine, which lends itself in the hands of great poets, and great poets only, to magnificent narrative effects. It was at this moment that a final See also:attempt was made to disestablish the whole scheme of English metre, and to substitute for it unrhymed classic measures. In the See also:year 1579 this See also:heresy was powerful at Cambridge, and a vigorous attempt was made to include Spenser himself among its votaries. It failed, and with this failure it may be said-that all the essential questions connected with English poetry were settled. There is enough to fill a See also:score of volumes in the mode in which the poets from Spenser downwards have employed the laws of English verse, but he was the latest of the legislators who laid down the framework of those laws. It is not possible in this place to enter into such themes as the rise and fall of Elizabethan dramatic blank verse; the perfection of the song and the development of the sonnet; the extraordinary virtuosity of Milton; the contest between enjambement (which permits the extension of the sentence beyond the limits of the distich) and the couplet as introduced by See also:Waller; the victory of that couplet, and its use from 167o to 1800; the slow growth of ode, which had been one of Spenser's inventions; the revivals of prosodical See also:taste in the loth century; the extraordinary advance in freedom of anapaestic movement. It may generally be remarked in connexion with the very various, copious and often chaotic criticism of English verse, that it has been a misfortune, from the earliest times, that pedantic and chimerical theories have too often invaded the study of metre. They had tended, from the times of the Alexandrian grammarians down to our own, to treat as a dead thing that vivid and elastic art of poetry whose very essence is its life. In modern times not a few theorists have allowed themselves to diverge into - the most extraordinary chains of musical and even of mathematical conjecture and have been easily led, in the practice of their ingenious learning, to forget that what they are talking about is- the vehicle in which tremulous and ardent thoughts are conveyed to the See also:hearts of men. The poet knows the See also:law by instinct, but he treats it as a living See also:guide; he varies the pause, he manipulates the accent, he gives the vital element of freedom to the verse which he has founded upon discipline. It is extremely doubtful whether any youthful poet was even helped by prosodical instruction;; his earliest measures are imitative; he does not compose consciously in " tribrachs" and " iambs "; he would gape in astonishment if asked. to define the " pyrrhichian hypothesis "; his bursts of enthusiasm are not modified by a theory of " trisyllabic equivalence." The old See also:formula of verse, " variety in unity," holds good in all languages, countries and times; the delicate rapture involved in a brilliant combination of rhyme and metre is a matter which is regulated, indeed, on a consideration of the laws of prosody, but depends on other and wider qualities of a moral and an aesthetic order. 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