speak of English blank verse we usually mean, unless the phrase is further qualified, pentameter blank verse.

Among the Greeks and Romans the effects produced by our blank pentameter verse were produced by an hexameter invariably containing two different kinds of measures-one the spondee composed of two syllables. long in quantity; and the other the dactyl, composed of one long syllable followed by two short ones. As stated in "Poetry as a Representative Art," most of the English imitators of this metre fail to reproduce its easy flow of movement. One reason for this is that our language, largely because it lacks the grammatical terminations of the classic tongues, contains fewer short syllables then they; and, in the place of the only foot of three syllables allowed in their hexameter-the dactyl, containing one long and two short syllables—our poets often used more than one long syllable. Another reason is that notwithstanding the poverty of our language in short syllables, many seem to think that the hexameter necessarily requires a large number of dactyls. But Greek and Latin lines are frequent, containing few of them, e. g.:

ἀρνύμενος ἦν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νοότου ἑταίρων.—Homer.

Both the causes mentioned serve to make our English hexameters slow and heavy. Besides this, most of those who write them, misled by the notion that they must crowd as many syllables as possible into their lines, are tempted to use too many words, and thus to violate another principle not of poetry only, but of rhetoric.

Take the following, for instance, from Longfellow's "Children of the Lord's Supper":

Weeping he spake in these words: and now at the beck of the old man,
Knee against knee, they knitted a wreath round the altar's enclosure.
Kneeling he read them the prayers of the consecration, and softly,
With him the children read; at the close, with tremulous accents,
Asked he the peace of heaven, a benediction upon them.

An English verse representing accurately--what is all that is worth representing the movement of the classic hexameter, would read more like this, which, itself, too, would read better, did it contain fewer dactyls; but to show the possibilities of our verse these have been intentionally crowded into it:

Weeping he told them this, and they, at the villager's bidding,
Knitting with knee to knee a wreath at the altar's railing,
Knelt as he softly led in the prayer of the consecration.

In it the children joined, until in a tremulous accent

Closing the prayer he had asked for the Lord's benediction upon them.

This passage from Longfellow is a typical specimen of what is called English hexameter. Here is another (not so good), from Frothingham's translation-in many respects an admirable one-of Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea."

Thitherward up the new street as I hasted, a stout-timbered wagon
Drawn by two oxen I saw, of that region the largest and strongest,
While with vigorous step a maiden was walking beside them;
And, a long staff in her hand, the two powerful creatures was guiding,
Urging them now, now holding them back, with skill did she drive them.

Not until such lines have been reduced to a form more like the following, can we be prepared to debate whether or not the effects of the classic hexameter can be repro

1

duced in English. Those, too, who choose to compare these lines with the original, will find this translation more literal than the last.

Now my eyes, as I made my way along the new street there,
Happened to light on a wagon, built of the heaviest cedar,
Drawn by a pair of steers of the stoutest stock and largest,
By their side a maid with vigorous step was walking.
Holding a long staff up and guiding the strong pair onward,
Starting them now, then stopping them, deftly did she drive them.

In these last lines, there are more spondaic versesverses, that is, in which the fifth foot contains two syllables-than were often used in the classic hexameters. But this fact does not change the general effect of the movement. Matthew Arnold says of the following, that, "it is the one version of any part of the Iliad which in some degree reproduces for me the original effect of Homer." It is a translation from the third book made by Dr. Hawtrey of Eton College:

Clearly the rest I beheld of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia,
Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember.
Two, two only remain, whom I see not among the commanders,—
Castor fleet in the car,-Polydeukes brave with the cestus,—
Own dear brethren of mine,-one parent loved us as infants.

Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lacedæmon?
Or though they came with the rest in ships that bound through the waters,
Dare they not enter the fight, or stand in the council of heroes,

All for fear of the shame, and the taunts my crime has awakened?

The line of six terminal measures, or the iambic hextermeter, is called the Alexandrine from a poem on Alexander the Great in which it is said to have been used. As a rule, it is only employed in odes in alternation with two lines which are trimeters (see page 56) and at the ends of the Spenserian stanzas (see page 69), but in

order to impart additional importance or dignity, it is occasionally introduced into other poems, most of the lines of which, like those of the Spenserian stanza are iambic pentameters, e. g.:

measures.

Their fury falls; he skims the liquid plains,
High on his chariot, and with loosened reins,
Majestic moves along, and awful peace maintains.

-Translation of the Eneid: Dryden.

In this chapter we have noticed how the general principles underlying rhythm develop into formal systems of metre and versification,-into measures containing just so many syllables, and into lines containing just so many In the remaining chapters devoted to this subject, we shall find nature and the variety characterizing it gradually asserting themselves, more and more, until these formal systems are made, through artistic methods, to produce effects corresponding to those which were shown in Chapter II. to be due to merely natural methods of applying the underlying rhythmic principles. In other words, we shall find here a noteworthy illustration of the fact, often exemplified, that the last result reached! through artistic methods is not essentially different from that which in certain circumstances antedates any study of art whatever.

REE

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER IV.

ART-METHODS AS DEVELOPING VARIETY IN MEASURE

AND LINE.

Natural Conditions Necessitating Variety-Two Ways of Introducing this into Measures By Changing the Number of Syllables in the Measures and Lines-Examples-By Omitting Syllables Necessary to a Complete Foot-Necessity of Reading Poetry in a Way Analogous to Rendering Words in Music-Unused Possibility in English Blank Verse -Suggestions of it-An Example of it and a Criticism-Omitting Syllables at the Ends of Lines-Adding them in Rhymed Lines-In Blank Verse-Feminine and Double, Endings of Lines-Examples of Regularly Metrical Lines with Syllables Omitted and Added-Changing the Numbers or the Places of Accents in the Lines-In Rhyming Verses— In Blank Verse-Example of Greater Regularity-Accent and its Absence in the Final Foot: End-stopped Lines-Run-on Lines: Weak and Light Endings-Forms of Broken Blank Verse-Shakespeare's Use of Run-on Lines.

THE

HE conditions of natural speech are such that it is not possible, even if desirable, to arrange words so as to produce effects of unity without those of variety; or of comparison by the way of exact repetition (see page 3) without those of alteration, and even of more alteration than is needed to secure that form of counteraction, complement, and balance which we find, as has been intimated, in the alternation between the accented and unaccented syllables of the measure, or between lines of different lengths, or rhymes, as in the following, e. g.: