to remedy the rhythmical deficiency of the And by drawing it out, merely aggrevates the offence against natural enunciation by directing attention to the offence.
My main object, however, in quoting these lines is to show that in spite of the Prosodies, the length of a line is entirely an arbitrary matter. We might divide the commencement of Byron’s poem thus:—
Know ye the / land where the /
or thus:
Know ye the / land where the / cypress and /
or thus:
Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle are /
or thus:
Know ye the / land where the / cypress and / myrtle are / emblems of
In short, we may give it any division we please, and the lines will be good, provided we have at least two feet in a line. As in mathematics two units are required to form number, so rhythm (from the Greek arithmos, number) demands for its formation at least two feet. Beyond doubt, we often see such lines as
Know ye the-
Land where the-
lines of one foot, and our Prosodies admit such, but with impropriety, for common sense would dictate that every so obvious division of a poem as is made by a line, should include within itself all that is necessary for its own comprehension, but in a line of one foot we can have no appreciation of rhythm, which depends upon the equality between two or more pulsations. The false lines, consisting sometimes of a single caesura, which are seen in mock Pindaric odes, are, of course, “rhythmical” only in connection with some other line, and it is this want of independent rhythm, which adapts them to the purposes of burlesque alone. Their effect is that of incongruity (the principle of mirth), for they include the blankness of prose amid the harmony of verse.
My second object in quoting Byron’s lines was that of showing how absurd it often is to cite a single line from amid the body of a poem for the purpose of instancing the perfection or imperfection of the lines rhythm. Were we to see by itself
Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle,
we might justly condemn it as defective in the final foot, which is equal to only three, instead of being equal to four short syllables.
In the foot “flowers ever” we shall find a further exemplification of the principle of the bastard iambus, bastard trochee, and quick trochee, as I have been at some pains in describing these feet above. All the Prosodies on English verse would insist upon making elision in “flowers,” thus (flow’rs), but this is nonsense. In the quick trochee (many Are the) occurring in Mr. Cranch’s trochaic line, we had to equalize the time of the three syllables (ny, are, the) to that of the one short syllable whose position they usurp. Accordingly each of these syllables is equal to the third of a short syllable, that is to say, the sixth of a long. But in Byron’s dactylic rhythm, we have to equalize the time of the three syllables (ers, ev, er) to that of the one long syllable whose position they usurp, or (which is the same thing) of the two short. Therefore the value of each of the syllables (ers, ev, and er) is the third of a long. We enunciate them with only half the rapidity we employ in enunciating the three final syllables of the quick trochee — which latter is a rare foot. The “flowers ever,” on the contrary, is as common in the dactylic rhythm as is the bastard trochee in the trochaic, or the bastard iambus in the iambic. We may as well accent it with the curve of the crescent to the right and call it a bastard dactyl. A bastard anapaest, whose nature I now need be at no trouble in explaining, will of course occur now and then in an anapaestic rhythm.
I began the “processes” by a suggestion of the spondee as the first step towards verse. But the innate monotony of the spondee has caused its disappearance as the basis of rhythm from all modern poetry. We may say, indeed, that the French heroic — the most wretchedly monotonous verse in existence — is to all intents and purposes spondaic. But it is not designedly spondaic, and if the French were ever to examine it at all, they would no doubt pronounce it iambic. It must be observed that the French language is strangely peculiar in this point — that it is without accentuation and consequently without verse. The genius of the people, rather than the structure of the tongue, declares that their words are for the most part enunciated with a uniform dwelling on each syllable. For example we say “syllabification.” A Frenchman would say syl-la-bi-fi-ca-ti-on, dwelling on no one of the syllables with any noticeable particularity. Here again I put an extreme case in order to be well understood, but the general fact is as I give it — that, comparatively, the French have no accentuation; and there can be nothing worth the name of verse without. Therefore, the French have no verse worth the name — which is the fact put in sufficiently plain terms. Their iambic rhythm so superabounds in absolute spondees as to warrant me in calling its basis spondaic; but French is the only modern tongue which has any rhythm with such basis, and even in the French it is, as I have said, unintentional.
Admitting, however, the validity of my suggestion, that the spondee was the first approach to verse, we should expect to find, first, natural spondees (words each forming just a spondee) most abundant in the most ancient languages; and, secondly, we should expect to find spondees forming the basis of the most ancient rhythms. These expectations are in both cases confirmed.
Of the Greek hexameter the intentional basis is spondaic. The dactyls are the variation of the theme. It will be observed that there is no absolute certainty about their points of interposition. The penultimate foot, it is true, is usually a dactyl but not uniformly so, while the ultimate, on which the ear lingers, is always a spondee. Even that the penultimate is usually a dactyl may be clearly referred to the necessity of winding up with the distinctive spondee. In corroboration of this idea, again, we should look to find the penultimate spondee most usual in the most ancient verse, and, accordingly, we find it more frequent in the Greek than in the Latin hexameter.
But besides all this, spondees are not only more prevalent in the heroic hexameter than dactyls, but occur to such an extent as is even unpleasant to modern ears, on account of monotony. What the modern chiefly appreciates and admires in the Greek hexameter is the melody of the abundant vowel sounds. The Latin hexameters really please very few moderns — although so many pretend to fall into ecstasies about them. In the hexameters quoted several pages ago, from Silius Italicus, the preponderance of the spondee is strikingly manifest. Besides the natural spondees of the Greek and Latin, numerous artificial ones arise in the verse of these tongues, on account of the tendency which inflection has to throw full accentuation on terminal syllables, and the preponderance of the spondee is further ensured by the comparative infrequency of the small prepositions which we have to serve us instead of case, and also the absence of the diminutive auxiliary verbs with which we have to eke out the expression of our primary ones. These are the monosyllables whose abundance serves to stamp the poetic genius of a language as tripping or dactylic.
Now paying no attention to these facts, Sir Philip Sidney, Professor Longfellow, and innumerable other persons, more or less modern, have busied themselves in constructing what they supposed to be “English hexameters on the model of the Greek.” The only difficulty was that (even leaving out of question the melodious masses of vowel) these gentlemen never could get their English hexameters to sound Greek. Did they look Greek? — that should have been the query, and the reply might have led to a solution of the riddle. In placing a copy of ancient hexameters side by side with a copy (in similar type) of such hexameters as Professor Longfellow, or Professor Felton or the Frogpondian Professors collectively, are in the shameful practice of composing “on the model of the Greek,” it will be seen that the latter (hexameters, not professors) are about one-third longer to the eye, on an average, than the former. The more abundant dactyls make the difference. And it is the greater number of spondees in the Greek than in the English, in the ancient than in the modern tongue, which has caused
