account of the rapid evolutions of sensation) recognise and instantaneously appreciate (more or less intensely as his is cultivated) each and all of the equalizations detailed. The pleasure received or receivable has very much such progressive increase, and in very nearly such mathematical relations as those which I have suggested in the case of the crystal.
It will be observed that I speak of merely a proximate equality between the first syllable of “dutiful” and that of “beautiful,” and it may be asked why we cannot imagine the earliest rhymes to have had absolute instead of proximate equality of sound. But absolute equality would have involved the use of identical words, and it is the duplicate sameness or monotony, that of sense as well as that of sound, which would have caused these rhymes to be rejected in the very first instance.
The narrowness of the limits within which verse composed of natural feet alone must necessarily have been confined would have led, after a very brief interval, to the trial and immediate adoption of artificial feet, that is to say, of feet not constituted each of a single word but two, or even three words, or of parts of words. These feet would be intermingled with natural ones. For example:
A breath / can make / them as / a breath / his made.
This is an iambic line in which each iambus is formed of two words. Again:
The un / ima / gina / ble might / of Jove.
This is an iambic line in which the first foot is formed of a word and a part of a word; the second and third of parts taken from the body or interior of a word; the fourth of a part and a whole; the fifth of two complete words. There are no natural feet in either line. Again:
Can it be / fancied that / Deity / ever vin / dictively
Made in his / image a / mannikin / merely to / madden it?
These are two dactylic lines in which we find natural feet (“Deity,” “mannikin”); feet composed of two words (“fancied that,” “image a,” “merely to,” “madden it”); feet composed of three words, (“can it be,” “made in his”); a foot composed of a part of a word (“dictively”); and a foot composed of a word and a part of a word (“ever vin”).
And now, in our suppositional progress, we have gone so far as to exhaust all the essentialities of verse. What follows may, strictly speaking, be regarded as embellishment merely, but even in this embellishment the rudimental sense of equality would have been the never-ceasing impulse. It would, for example, be simply in seeking further administration to this sense that men would come in time to think of the refrain or burden, where, at the closes of the several stanzas of a poem, one word or phrase is repeated; and of alliteration, in whose simplest form a consonant is repeated in the commencements of various words. This effect would be extended so as to embrace repetitions both of vowels and of consonants in the bodies as well as in the beginnings of words, and at a later period would be made to infringe on the province of rhyme by the introduction of general similarity of sound between whole feet occurring in the body of a line — all of which modifications I have exemplified in the line above.
Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it.
Further cultivation would improve also the refrain by relieving its monotone in slightly varying the phrase at each repetition, or (as I have attempted to do in “The Raven”) in retaining the phrase and varying its application, although this latter point is not strictly a rhythmical effect alone. Finally, poets when fairly wearied with following precedent, following it the more closely the less they perceived it in company with Reason, would adventure so far as to indulge in positive rhyme at other points than the ends of lines. First, they would put it in the middle of the line, then at some point where the multiple would be less obvious, then, alarmed at their own audacity, they would undo all their work by cutting these lines in two. And here is the fruitful source of the infinity of “short metre” by which modern poetry, if not distinguished, is at least disgraced. It would require a high degree, indeed, both of cultivation and of courage on the part of any versifier to enable him to place his rhymes, and let them remain at unquestionably their best position, that of unusual and unanticipated intervals.
On account of the stupidity of some people, or (if talent be a more respectable word), on account of their talent for misconception — I think it necessary to add here, first, that I believe the “processes” above detailed to be nearly, if not accurately, those which did occur in the gradual creation of what we now can verse; secondly, that, although I so believe, I yet urge neither the assumed fact nor my belief in it as a part of the true propositions of this paper, thirdly, that in regard to the aim of this paper, it is of no consequence whether these processes did occur either in the order I have assigned them, or at all; my design being simply, in presenting a general type of what such processes might have been and must have resembled, to help them, the “some people,” to an easy understanding of what I have further to say on the topic of Verse.
There is one point, which, in my summary of the processes, I have purposely forborne to touch; because this point, being the most important of all on account of the immensity of error usually involved in its consideration, would have led me into a series of detail inconsistent with the object of a summary.
Every reader of verse must have observed how seldom it happens that even any one line proceeds uniformly with a succession, such as I have supposed, of absolutely equal feet; that is to say, with a succession of iambuses only, or of trochees only, or of dactyls only, or of anapaests only, or of spondees only. Even in the most musical lines we find the succession interrupted. The iambic pentameters of Pope, for example, will be found on examination, frequently varied by trochees in the beginning, or by (what seem to be) anapaests in the body of the line.
oh thou / whate / ver ti / tle please / thine ear /
Dean Dra / pier Bick / erstaff / or Gull / iver /
Whether / thou choose / Cervan / tes’ / se / rious air /
or laugh / and shake / in Rab / elais’ ea / sy chair /
Were any one weak enough to refer to the Prosodies for the solution of the difficulty here, he would find it solved as usual by a rule, stating the fact (or what it, the rule, supposes to be the fact), but without the slightest attempt at the rationale. “By a synaeresis of the two short syllables,” say the books, “an anapaest may sometimes be employed for an iambus, or dactyl for a trochee. . . . In the beginning of a line a trochee is often used for an iambus.”
Blending is the plain English for synaeresis — but there should be no blending; neither is an anapaest ever employed for an iambus, or a dactyl for a trochee. These feet differ in time, and no feet so differing can ever be legitimately used in the same line. An anapaest is equal to four short syllables — an iambus only to three. Dactyls and trochees hold the same relation. The principle of equality, in verse, admits, it is true, of variation at certain points, for the relief of monotone, as I have already shown, but the point of time is that point which, being the rudimental one, must never be tampered with at all.
To explain:— In further efforts for the relief of monotone than those to which I have alluded in the summary, men soon came to see that there was no absolute necessity for adhering to the precise number of syllables, provided the time required for the whole foot was preserved inviolate. They saw, for instance, that in such a line as
or laugh / and shake / in Rab / elais ea / sy chair /
the equalisation of the three syllables elais ea with the two syllables composing any of the other feet could be readily effected by pronouncing the two syllables elais in double quick time. By pronouncing each of the syllables e and lais twice as rapidly as the syllable sy, or the syllable in, or any other short syllable, they could bring the two of them, taken together, to the length,
