Chapter III: Origins of Lines and Stanzas

(It has seemed desirable to give some account (to an extent which would in most cases be disproportionate for the Glossary) of the ascertained, probable, or supposed origin of the principal lines and line-combinations in English poetry. The arrangement is logical rather than alphabetical. Slight repetition, on some points, of matter previously given is unavoidable.)

A. LINES

I. ALLITERATIVE.--Enough has probably been said above of the old alliterative line and its generic character; while the later variations, which came upon it after its revival, have also been noticed and exemplified. Its origin is quite unknown; but the presence of closely allied forms, in the different Scandinavian and Teutonic languages, assures, beyond doubt, a natural rise from some speech-rhythm or tune-rhythm proper to the race and tongue. It is also probable that the remarkable difference of lengths--short, normal, and extended--which is observable in O.E. poetry is of the highest antiquity. It has at any rate persevered to the present day in the metrical successors of this line; and there is probably no other poetry which has--at a majority of its periods, if not throughout--indulged in such variety of line-length as English. Nor, perhaps, is there any which contains, even in its oldest and roughest forms, a metrical or quasi-metrical arrangement more close to the naturally increased, but not denaturalised, emphasis of impassioned utterance, more thoroughly born from the primeval oak and rock.

II. "SHORT" LINES.--Despite the tendency to variation of lines above noted, A.S. poetry did not favour _very_ short ones; and its faithful disciple and champion, Guest, accordingly condemns them in modern English poetry. This is quite wrong. In the "bobs" and other examples in Middle English we find the line shortened almost, if not actually, to the monosyllable, and this liberty has persisted through all the best periods of English verse since, though frequently frowned upon by pedantry. Its origin is, beyond all reasonable doubt, to be traced to French and Provençal influence, especially to that of the short refrain; but it is so congenial to the general tendency noted above that very little suggestion must have been needed. It must, however, be said that very short lines, in combination with long ones, almost necessitate rhyme to punctuate and illumine the divisions of symphonic effect; and, consequently, it was not till rhyme came in that they could be safely and successfully used. But when this was mastered there was no further difficulty. In all the best periods of English lyric writing--in that of _Alison_ and its fellows, in the carols of the fifteenth century, in late Elizabethan and Caroline lyric, and in nineteenth-century poetry--the admixture of very short lines has been a main secret of lyrical success; and in most cases it has probably been hardly at all a matter of deliberate imitation, but due to an instinctive sense of the beauty and convenience of the adjustment.

III. OCTOSYLLABLE.--The historical origin of the octosyllabic (or, as the accentual people call it, the four-beat or four-stress line) is one of the most typical in the whole range of prosody, though the lesson of the type may be differently interpreted. Taking it altogether, there is perhaps no metre in which so large a body of modern, including mediæval, poetry has been composed. But, although it is simply dimeter iambic, acatalectic or catalectic as the case may be, it is quite vain to try to discover frequent and continuous patterns of origin for it in strictly classical prosody.[162] Odd lines, rarely exact, in choric odes prove nothing, and the really tempting

Αμμων Ολυμπου δεσποτα

of Pindar is an uncompleted fragment which might have gone off into any varieties of Pindaric. There are a few fragments of Alcman--

Ὡρας δ' εσηκε τρεις, θερος

and of the genuine Anacreon--

Μηδ' ὡστε κυμα ποντιον,

in the metre, while the spurious verse of the "Anacreontea," a catalectic form with trisyllabic equivalence, seems to have been actually practised by the real poet. _Alternately_ used, it is, of course, frequent in the epodes of Horace, in Martial, etc. But the fact remains that, as has been said, it is not a classical metre to any but a very small extent, though those who attach no value to anything but the "beats" may find it in bulk in the _anapæstic_ dimeter of Greek and Latin choruses. It is in the Latin hymns--that is to say, in Latin after it had undergone a distinct foreign admixture--that the metre first appears firmly and distinctly established. In the fourth century, St. Ambrose without rhyme, and Hilary with it, employ the iambic dimeter, and it soon becomes almost the staple, though Prudentius, contemporary with both of them and more of a regular poet, while he does use it, seems to prefer other metres. By the time, however, when the modern prosodies began to take form, it was thoroughly well settled; and every Christian nation in Europe knew examples of it by heart.

It still, however, remains a problem exactly why this particular metre should, as a matter of direct literary imitation, have commended itself so widely to the northern nations. They had nearly or quite as many examples in the same class of the _trochaic_ dimeter

Gaude, plaude, Magdalena

and they paid no attention to this, though their southern neighbours did. They had, from the time of Pope Damasus[163] downwards, and in almost all the hymn-writers, mixed dactylic metres to choose from; but for a staple they went to this. It seems impossible that there should not have been some additional and natural reasons for the adoption--reasons which, if they had not actually brought it about without any literary patterns at all, directed poets to those patterns irresistibly. Nor, as it seems to the present writer, is it at all difficult to discover, as far at least as English is concerned, what these reasons were.

The discovery might be made "out of one's own head"; but here as elsewhere Layamon is a most important assistant and safeguard. A mere glance at any edition of alliterative verse, printed in half lines, will show that it has a rough resemblance on the page to octosyllabics, though the outline is more irregular. A moderately careful study of Layamon shows, as has been indicated, that, in writing this verse with new influences at work upon him, he substitutes octosyllabic couplet for it constantly. And the history in the same way shows that this occasional substitution became a habitual one with others. Not that there is any mystical virtue in four feet, despite their frequency in the actual creation: but that, as an equivalent of the old half line, the choice lies practically between three and four. Now a three-foot line, though actually tried as in the _Bestiary_ and in parts of _Horn_, is, as a general norm, too short, is ineffective and jingly, brings the rhyme too quick, and hampers the exhibition of the sense by a too staccato and piecemeal presentment. The abundant adoption of the octosyllable in French no doubt assisted the spread in English. But it is not unimportant to observe that English translators and adapters of French octosyllabic poems by no means always preserve the metre, and that English octosyllables often represent French poems which are differently metred in the original.

IV. DECASYLLABLE.--A connected literary origin for this great line--the ancient staple of French poetry, the modern staple of English, and (in still greater modernity) of German to some extent, as well as (with the extension of one syllable necessitated by the prevailing rhythm of the language) of Italian throughout its history--has always been found extraordinarily difficult to assign. That some have even been driven to the line which furnishes the opening couplet of the Alcaic

Quam si clientum longa negotia,

or

Vides ut alta stet nive candidum,

an invariably _hen_decasyllabic line of the most opposite rhythm, constitution, and division, will show the straits which must have oppressed them. The fact is that there is nothing, either in Greek or Latin prosody, in the least resembling it or suggestive of it. To connect it with these prosodies at all reasonably, it would be necessary to content ourselves with the supposition, not illogical or impossible, but not very explanatory, that somebody found the iambic dimeter too short, and the iambic trimeter too long, and split the difference.

In another way, and abandoning the attempt to find parents or sponsors in antiquity for this remarkable foundling, a not wholly dissimilar conjecture becomes really illuminative--that the line of ten syllables (or eleven with "weak ending") proved itself the most useful in the modern languages. As a matter of fact it appears in the very earliest French poem we possess--the tenth- or perhaps even ninth-century _Hymn of St. Eulalia_:

Bel auret corps, bellezour anima,

and in the (at youngest) tenth-century Provençal _Boethius_:

No credet Deu lo nostre creator.

If it still seem pusillanimous to be content with such an explanation, one can share one's pusillanimity with Dante, who contents himself with saying that the line of eleven syllables "seems the stateliest and most excellent, as well by reason of the length of time it occupies as of the extent of subject, construction and language of which it is capable." And in English, with which we are specially, if not indeed wholly, concerned, history brings us the reinforcement of showing that the decasyllable literally forced itself, in practice, upon the English poet.

This all-important fact has been constantly obscured by the habit of saying that Chaucer "invented" the heroic couplet in English--that he, at any rate, borrowed it first from the French. Whether he did so as a personal fact we cannot say, for he is not here to tell us. That he need not have done so there is ample and irrefragable evidence. In the process of providing substitutes for the old unmetrical line, it is not only obvious that the decasyllable--which, from a period certainly anterior to the rise of Middle English, had been the staple metre, in long assonanced _tirades_ or batches, of the French _Chansons de geste_--must have suggested itself. It is still more certain that it did. It is found in an unpolished and haphazard condition, but unmistakable, in the _Orison of our Lady_ (early thirteenth century); it occurs in _Genesis and Exodus_, varying the octosyllable itself, in the middle of that age; it is scattered about the Romances, in the same company, at what must have been early fourteenth century at latest; it occurs constantly in Hampole's _Prick of Conscience_ at the middle of this century; and there are solid blocks of it in the Vernon MS., which was written (_i.e._ copied from earlier work), at latest, before Chaucer is likely to have started the _Legend of Good Women_ or the _Canterbury Tales_. That his practice settled and established it--though for long the octosyllable still outbid it in couplet, and it was written chiefly in the stanza form of "rhyme-royal"--is true. But by degrees the qualities which Dante had alleged made it prevail, and prepared it as _the_ line-length for blank verse as well as for the heroic couplet, and for the bulk of narrative stanza-writing. No doubt Chaucer was assisted by the practice of Machault and other French poets. But there should be still less doubt that, without that practice, he might, and probably would, have taken it up. For the first real master of versification--whether he were Chaucer, or (in unhappy default of him) somebody else, who must have turned up sooner or later--could not but have seen, for his own language, what Dante saw for his.

V. ALEXANDRINE.--The Alexandrine or verse of twelve syllables, iambically divided, does not resemble its relation, the octosyllable, in having a doubtful classical ancestry; or its other relation, the decasyllable, in having none. It is, from a certain point of view, the exact representative of the great iambic trimeter which was the staple metre of Greek tragedy, and was largely used in Greek and Roman verse. The identity of the two was recognised in English as early as the _Mirror for Magistrates_, and indeed could escape no one who had the knowledge and used it in the most obvious way.

At the same time it is necessary frankly to say that this resemblance--at least, as giving the key to origin--is, in all probability, wholly delusive. There are twelve syllables in each line, and there are iambics in both. But to any one who has acquired--as it is the purpose of this book to help its readers to acquire or develop--a "prosodic" sense, like the much-talked-of historic sense, it will seem to be a matter of no small weight, that while the cæsura (central pause) of the ancient trimeter is penthemimeral (at the fifth syllable), or hepthemimeral (at the seventh), that of the modern "Alexandrine" is, save by rare, and not often justified, license, invariably at the sixth or middle--a thing which actually alters the whole rhythmical constitution and effect of the line.[164] Nor, is the _name_ to be neglected. Despite the strenuous effort of modern times to upset traditional notions, it remains a not seriously disputed fact that the name "Alexandrine" comes from the French _Roman d'Alexandre_, not earlier than the late twelfth century, and itself following upon at least one _decasyllabic_ Alexandreid. The metre, however, suited French, and, as it had done on this particular subject, ousted the decasyllable in the _Chansons de geste_ generally; while, with some intervals and revolts, it has remained the "dress-clothes" of French poetry ever since, and even imposed itself as such upon German for a considerable time.

In English, however, though, by accident and in special and partial use, it has occupied a remarkable place, it has never been anything like a staple. One of the most singular statements in Guest's _English Rhythms_ is that the "verse of six accents" (as he calls it) was "formerly the one most commonly used in our language." The present writer is entirely unable to identify this "formerly": and the examples which Guest produces, of single and occasional occurrence in O.E. and early M.E., seem to him for the most part to have nothing to do with the form. But it was inevitable that on the one hand the large use of the metre in French, and on the other its nearness as a metrical adjustment to the old long line or stave, should make it appear sometimes. The six-syllable lines of the _Bestiary_ and _Horn_ are attempts to reproduce it in halves, and Robert of Brunne reproduces it as a whole.[165] It appears not seldom in the great metrical miscellany of the Vernon MS., and many of Langland's accentual-alliterative lines reduce themselves to, or close to it; while it very often makes a fugitive and unkempt appearance in fifteenth-century doggerel. Not a few of the poems of the _Mirror for Magistrates_ are composed in it, and as an alternative to the fourteener (this was possibly what Guest was thinking of) it figures in the "poulter's measure" of the early and middle sixteenth century. Sidney used it for the sonnet. But it was not till Drayton's _Polyolbion_ that it obtained the position of continuous metre for a long poem: and this has never been repeated since, except in Browning's _Fifine at the Fair_.

So, the most important appearances by far of the Alexandrine in English are _not_ continuous; but as employed to vary and complete other lines. There are two of these in especial: the first among the greatest metrical devices in English, the other (though variously judged and not very widely employed) a great improvement. The first is the addition, to an eight-line arrangement in decasyllables, of a ninth in Alexandrine which constitutes the Spenserian stanza and will be spoken of below. The other is the employment of the Alexandrine as a variation of decasyllable in couplet, in triplet and singly, which is, according to some, including the present writer, visible in the "riding-rhyme" of Chaucer; which is often present in the blank verse of Shakespeare; not absent from that of Milton in his earlier attempts; employed in decasyllabic couplet by Cowley, and (with far greater success) by Dryden; gradually abandoned and unfavourably spoken of by Pope; but revived with magnificent effect by Keats in _Lamia_.

VI. FOURTEENER.--On this, as indeed on most of these heads, it will be well to compare the continuous survey of scanned examples and the remarks there. This line (or its practical equivalent under the final _e_ system, the _fif_teener) is probably the oldest attempt to get a single metrical equivalent for the old divided stave. Its own equivalents exist, of course, both in Greek and Latin, but it is rather doubtful whether these had much or anything to do with its genesis. A more probable source, if any source of the kind is wanted, has been suggested in the peculiar Latin _thir_teener so popular in the Middle Ages, and best known by the lines attributed to Mapes--

Meum est propositum in taberna mori.

With a "catch" syllable at each half[166] you get the full accentual iambic _fif_teener, and the _four_teener follows.

Perhaps, though it is difficult to recognise the fourteener-rhythm attributed by Guest and others to Cædmon and later A.S. writers, it is not necessary to look for any foreign sources as other than auxiliary to the development of the metre in English. So soon as a definite iambic mould, with or without trochaic and anapæstic substitution, began to be impressed on the language, the amount of stuff usual in a full line would naturally fall into fourteener shape. It did so, we know, as early as the _Moral Ode_ at least; and barely a century later, it showed its popularity by the abundant use of Robert of Gloucester and the _Saints' Lives_ writers. Nor, although the inevitable and fortunate break-up into ballad eight-and-six encroached on its rights to a large extent, and the alliterative revival still more, did it lose its attraction, as _Gamelyn_ and other things show, till it got half drowned in the doggerel welter of the fifteenth century. From this the earlier Elizabethans fished it out, cleaned and mended it for practice both independently and as part of the "poulter's measure," while the finest example existing was given by Chapman's _Iliad_ in the early seventeenth century. More recently, except in the _Sigurd_ variety, it has been seldom used for long poems, but has served as the vehicle of many of the finest short pieces in the poetry of the nineteenth century.

VII. DOGGEREL.--In the sense (see Glossary) in which this ambiguous word applies to _line_, it is very important to acquire some notion of its meaning, but rather difficult to put that notion except very hypothetically. It is, in this use, conveniently applied to an enormous mass of verse--sometimes hardly deserving that name, but principally produced in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries--which refuses, except occasionally, to adjust itself to any standard, even liberally equivalenced, of iambic octosyllable, decasyllable, Alexandrine, and fourteener, or of the trochaic and anapæstic metres corresponding to some of these, though it comes nearest to the anapæstic division. The pure accentualist may dismiss it as lines of so many irregular beats, and trouble himself no farther. But that, on the principles of this book, will not do. An exceedingly interesting parallel between it (as well as one of its regularised forms, the anapæstic dimeter) and the Spanish long line, or "Arte Mayor," has been drawn by Professor Ker. (See Bibliography.) But, without either taking or opposing his view, there is no doubt of the existence of this _mare magnum_ of imperfect versification. It seems to have been fed by various streams. In the first place, as we see from the _Gamelyn_ metre, and from some nursery songs (which, though they cannot be older than formed Middle English, may be nearly as old), like "The Queen was in the Parlour," the fourteener had a tendency to break itself into roughly balanced halves of sometimes different rhythm. The Alexandrine, never quite at home in English, would naturally bulge and straddle in the same way. On the regular and continuous anapæstic swing nobody had yet hit for long, though it probably arose in part from this very chaos. But perhaps the most abundant source of all was the attempt to write Chaucerian decasyllables with a constantly altering pronunciation, and the break-down in it. Examples of various forms of doggerel, with their corresponding metres, are given below.[167]

VIII. "LONG" LINES.--Beyond the fourteener or fifteener English verse has, until quite modern times, rarely gone. There are _six_teeners to be found in fourteenth-century verse, in the disorderly welter of the fifteenth, and (no doubt deliberately used) in the experiments of the _Mirror for Magistrates_; but neither they, nor any longer still, commended themselves much to any English poet before Mr. Swinburne. His experiments are famous, and some examples of them are given elsewhere. Their spirit and sweep has made not a few readers look on them with favour; but it may be questioned whether any lines beyond seven feet--and whether even six- and seven-foot lines when trisyllabic feet are allowed--do not tend to break themselves up in English. In Mr. Swinburne's own case certainly, and perhaps in some others, the seven-foot anapæstic line of Aristophanes gave the suggestion, while the abundant practice in so-called English hexameters may also have had not a little to do with it.

B. STANZAS, ETC.

I. BALLAD VERSE.--A good deal has been said incidentally about this at several points in the preceding text; but summary, and a little repetition, will not be out of place here. There has been an idea with some that it is a shortened form of the Romance-six (see next article) or _rime couée_; but this does not seem to the present writer nearly so probable as the supposition of a break-up of the certainly earlier fourteener couplet, which gives it at once.[168] It is, however, not improbable that the crystallising of this was assisted by the hesitation, also noticed in text, between octosyllabic and hexasyllabic couplet. The indecision and vacillation, noticeable in such a piece as _Horn_, between the four- and three-foot line, would easily settle to alternation more or less regular, and then, with the assistance of the broken fourteener, into quite regular use. We do not, however, find decided examples much before "Judas" and the _Gospel of Nicodemus_ in the late thirteenth century; it is not common in the early mysteries, though there are approaches to it; and it seems first to have secured the popular ear in the much-discussed compositions which give it its name, and which, in English, are very doubtfully to be traced before the late fourteenth century. These, however, "estated" it once for all; though for a long time it was treated with the usual mediæval freedom--wisely restored by Coleridge in the _Ancient Mariner_--and the exact number of four lines, 8, 6, 8, 6, was not adhered to. The further fixed variations, familiar from Psalm- and Hymn-books, of "L.M." (long measure) or octosyllabic quatrain; "C.M." (common measure), the actual 8 and 6; and "S.M." (short measure) 6, 6, 8, 6, date only from Elizabethan times, the last being a breaking-up of the then favourite "poulter's measure" or alternate Alexandrine and fourteener.

II. ROMANCE-SIX or RIME COUÉE.--As in the case of the ballad-four, much has been said about this earlier. In considering its origin it is particularly desirable to distinguish between the possible source of the principle and the probable derivation of the actual form. The term _couée_ (_caudatus_), which, as has been pointed out, does not apply very obviously or appropriately to our actual romance-stanza, appears to refer originally to the peculiar jingly infusion of rhyme into Latin hexameters which has been traced back at least to the twelfth century, and the most famous example of which is the original of "Jerusalem the Golden," the _De Contemptu Mundi_ of Bernard of Morlaix--

Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus--
Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus,

where the rhyme "in the tail" appears clearly enough. It is also not inappropriate to the form in which Robert of Brunne writes his verse of the kind, as in Guest's example:

When ye have the prize of your enemies, none shall ye save:
Smite with sword in hand; all Northumberland with right shall ye have.

Sometimes, however, he also batches the two first divisions:

For Edward's good deed }
} a wicked bountỳ.
The Balliol did him meed }

But it came generally to be written in short lines straight on after the form now familiar. How or why it became so favourite a measure for romance is not, I believe, known. Direct French influence could certainly have had little to do here; for though the six-line measure appears in Marot (early sixteenth century), it is not common earlier, and I am not even aware of any perfect example[169] of it, in the abundant variety of French and Provençal lyric during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; while it is quite unknown to the longer French romances. But it is nearly as easy to remember--or to extemporise in default of memory--as the couplet itself. And it looks as if it were less monotonous; though--as those who drew down on it the lash of _Sir Thopas_, and _Sir Thopas_ itself, show--nothing can be more monotonous in actuality. Its extensions and variations, and its migration from long narrative to short lyrical use, have been noticed already. _These_ may have been to some extent influenced by the great popularity of Marot's _Psalms_, though the metre had long been naturalised.

III. OCTOSYLLABIC and DECASYLLABIC COUPLET.--Of the two great couplet metres in English, the octosyllabic requires little notice, because it is almost indissolubly connected with the octosyllabic _line_. As soon as rhyme appears, the old iambic dimeter, four-accent line, or whatever you like to call it, _must_ fall into this shape, and does. There remains indeed the problem why we have no period, in French, of octosyllabic _tirade_ or batch-writing as we have (see immediately below) of decasyllabic.[170] But it is certain that the octosyllabic couplet established itself very early in French, and that at the important nick of time, when English prosody was being formed late in the twelfth century, this couplet came to Layamon and others as a great influence in determining the shape which alteration of the old long line or halved stave should take in their hands.

Decasyllabic couplet, on the other hand, has a much more tardy and uncertain history; though, again, much that has to be said about it has been said in reference to the single line. As soon as that line makes its appearance, in the "Saint Eulalia" hymn, it does indeed make its appearance in couplet, rhymed or assonanced.[171] But the attraction of the longer batches in identical rhyme or assonance seems, however surprisingly,[172] to get the better; and this is the form that it takes in the Provençal _Boethius_ and the French _Saint Alexis_. In fact, as has been hinted above, our own scattered decasyllabic couplet rather precedes the French, though Guillaume de Machault has the credit, rightly or wrongly, of teaching it to Chaucer. After Chaucer, at any rate, there needed nobody to teach it to Englishmen; although it underwent various vicissitudes, which are duly traced elsewhere.

IV. QUATRAIN.--At a very early period, indeed as soon as they appear, Latin accentual rhythms have a tendency to batch themselves in four; as had, earlier still, Greek and Latin stanzas, Sapphic, Alcaic, and what not. The development of alternate rhyme in the octosyllabic quatrain or (_v. sup._) ballad metre was certain to lead to a similar arrangement of _deca_syllables; and when rhyme-royal became popular the first four lines were so arranged, and might easily be broken off for separate use, as there is little doubt that the final couplet was. "Fours" of various arrangement are also abundant in lyric and in drama from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. But the greatest impulse was probably given to the alternate decasyllabic form by its adoption for the bulk of the English sonnet; and from this to separate use, which became common in the later Elizabethan poetry, there is but a very short step. The metre has always been a popular one since, and, in the hands of Dryden and Gray especially, is very effective. But a certain grave monotony about it has constantly invited modifications, of which the greatest and most successful, without altering the line-length, are those of FitzGerald in _Omar Khayyám_[173] and Mr. Swinburne in _Laus Veneris_;[174] with altered line-lengths, those of Tennyson in "The Poet,"[175] "The Palace of Art," and "A Dream of Fair Women." It was also tried in the seventeenth century as what may be called by anticipation "long _In Memoriam_ measure"--that is to say, with the rhymes arranged _abba_.

V. IN MEMORIAM METRE itself may have been suggested quite casually in the endless rhyme-welter of mediæval experiment. For instance, it occurs in lines 3 to 6 of Chaucer's nine-line stanza[176] in the _Complaint of Mars_, and the last eight of his ten-line in the _Complaint to his Lady_,[177] with decasyllabic lines, of course. It occurs also, with six-syllable lines, in the last halves of the octaves of No. XIX. of the _York Plays_.[178] Sidney has it as a "sport" or chance. But the first person to use it regularly and with octosyllables was Ben Jonson,[179] who was followed by Lord Herbert of Cherbury and George Sandys. Yet it was not widely taken up, though few measures could better have suited the "metaphysical" poets; and after that generation it remained unused till Tennyson, and by unwitting coincidence Rossetti, hit upon it just before the middle of the nineteenth century. Rossetti has also a very effective extension of it to seven lines _abbacca_.[180]

VI. RHYME-ROYAL.--However much doubt there may be about the directly imitative origin of things like couplets, or even quatrains (which might, and almost certainly would, suggest themselves without pattern), the case is different with such a thing as the permutation of rhyme in a fixed order of sevens _ababbcc_. It may, therefore, be very likely that Chaucer took this from Guillaume de Machault, a slightly older French poet (1284?-1377), with whom he was certainly acquainted. If so, it is unlikely that Machault invented it, though he may have done so; for there is almost every possible cross-arrangement of rhymes in the enormous wealth of French and Provençal lyric from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. But it was certainly not a frequent metre before. On the other hand, Chaucer's _Troilus_ made it the most fashionable metre in English throughout the fifteenth century for long narrative poems, and it was splendidly written by Sackville in the mid-sixteenth, but thereafter succumbed to the octave. The last considerable example of it, in the larger Elizabethan period, was the _Leoline and Sydanis_ of Sir Francis Kynaston, a great admirer of Chaucer, who actually also translated part of _Troilus_ into Latin rhyme-royal. But it was revived in the worthiest fashion by the late Mr. William Morris.

VII. OCTAVE.--There are two principal eight-line stanzas of decasyllables used in English. The oldest form, employed by Chaucer, appears to have been derived from the French, as it is certainly used by Deschamps, and may have been by Machault. Here the rhymes are arranged _ababbcbc_. By addition of an Alexandrine this arithmetically makes the Spenserian (_v. inf._). The other--later, but much more largely used--is derived from the Italian _ottava rima_, the rhyme order of which is _abababcc_. This is the kind employed by Fairfax (with great results, though rather in the direction of its final couplet than as a whole) in his translation of Tasso (1600), and (with a comic bent also directly imitated from Italian) by Frere in _The Monks and the Giants_, and (after him) by Byron in _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_. The greatest modern serious employment of it is in Shelley's _Witch of Atlas_.

VIII. SPENSERIAN.--The Spenserian stanza of nine lines--eight decasyllables and an Alexandrine, rhymed _ababbcbcc_--is entirely the invention of Edmund Spenser. It is false to say that it was "taken from the Italians"; for there is no such stanza in Italian, and the octave-decasyllabic part of it is rhymed differently from the Italian octave. It is irrelevant to say that it is the Chaucerian octave with an Alexandrine added; for it is exactly in the addition of the Alexandrine that the whole essence and the whole beauty of the stanza consist. It is still more irrelevant, though true, to assert that there had been a few attempts (as by More) to add an Alexandrine to other stanzas or to lengthen out their last line into one; for it is of _this_ stanza that we are talking, and not of something else. Therefore it is sufficient to say once more that the Spenserian stanza is the invention of Edmund Spenser, and one of the greatest inventions known in prosody.

IX. BURNS METRE.--This arrangement is found first in the verse of the Provençal prince, William IX. Count of Poitiers (poems about 1090).

Pus oezem de novelh florir
Pratz e vergiers reverderir
Rius e fontanas esclarrir
Auras e vens
Beu deu quas des lo joy jourir
Dou es jauzens.

He has it also in a seven-line form, with four instead of three eights to start with; while the shorter variety is repeated in Northern France, as in the beautiful song of "Bele Aeliz." It appears in one English romance, _Octovian Imperator_, and largely in the Miracle plays; but later seems to have been preserved only in Scotland, where Burns gave it once more world-wide vogue.

X. OTHER STANZAS.--Of the numerous other forms of what some improperly call "irregular verse"--what King James the Sixth (First) showed himself much more of a Solomon in calling "broken and cuttit," and adding, "quhairof new formes are daylie inventit according to the Poëtes Pleasour"--it is impossible to give an exhaustive account, or even to supply a mere list with examples of the "formes."[181] It is sufficient to say that when the new English prosody was in making there were already extensive patterns of such verse in French and Provençal poetry; that these were freely imitated and improved upon. In the present writer's larger _History_ the passages dealing with the contents of MS. Harl. 2253, with the Vernon MS., and with the Miracle plays will be found to contain specifications of almost every form, and examples of not a few. This liberty continued in the lyrics of the Elizabethan period in the larger sense, being especially manifested in the later Elizabethan miscellanies of the time proper, and in the Caroline poets; but was discontinued in practice, and frowned upon in principle, during the eighteenth century. It was revived in the nineteenth by the great poets of the first Romantic period to some extent, but to a much greater degree by some of their "intermediate" successors, like Beddoes and Darley; while, from Tennyson and Browning onward, it has been the delight of almost every poet worthy of the name to add to the variety.

FOOTNOTES:

[162] The longest passage that my memory (assisted in this case by the kindness of my friend and colleague Professor Hardie) supplies is in Aristophanes, _Eq._ 911-940. And it is not insignificant that this not only becomes (and seems actually to be started by) a burlesque repetition--

Α. εμου μεν ουν.
Κ. εμου μεν ουν,

but can only be made out by constantly breaking words, as in

εις ἡν αναλων ουκ εφε-
ξεις ουδε ναυπηγουμενος.

[163]

Stirpe decens, elegans specie,
Sed magis actibus atque fide,
Terrea prospera nil reputans
Jussa Dei sibi corde ligans.

This, which is still fourth century, is important as showing _couplet_ rhyme. Hilary had rhymed in _fours_.

[164] It may be added that while the ancient trimeter is very largely patient of substitution, the French Alexandrine positively refuses any, and the English is, for an English line, distinctly intolerant of it.

[165]

And somewhat of that tree, they bond until his hands.

[166] As thus:

[_Et_] me|um est | propo|situm | [_hac_] in | taber|na mori.

[167] (_a_) From Heywood:--

(1) Octosyllabic principally:

And I to every soul again
Did give a beck them to retain,
And axèd them this question than,
If that the soul of such a womàn
Did late among them there appear?

(_Four P's._)

But in close proximity such lines as

But Lord! how low the Souls made curtesy,

and

'Christ, help,' quoth a soul that lay for his fees,

make their appearance.

(2) Hawesian or Barclayan decasyllables staggering into Alexandrine or anapæstic doggerel:

How can he have pain by imagination,
That lacketh all kinds of consideration?
And in all senses is so insufficient
That nought can he think in ought that may be meant
By any means to devise any self thing,
Nor devise in thing past, present, or coming?

(_Wit and Folly._)

(For other passages from Heywood see Scanned Conspectus, § XVIII.)

(_b_) Longer examples:--

(1) With Alexandrine norm:

Therefore see that all shine as bright as Saint George,
Or as doth a key newly come from the smith's forge.

(_Ralph Roister Doister._)

(2) With fourteener ditto:

_D._ I know not what a devil thou meanest, thou bringest me mere in
doubt.
_H._ Knowest not on what tom-tailor's man sits broaching through a
clout?

(_Gammer Gurton's Needle._)

It is curious how closely this unreverend metre sometimes comes to the heroic model of _Sigurd_.

(3) With decasyllabic ditto:

Housed to say that as servants are obedient,
To their bodily masters being in subjection,
Even so evil men that are not content
Are subject and slave to their lust and affection,

where, once more, the norm may be shifted to the anapæst.

[168]

̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄||̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄
̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄||̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄

= ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄
̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄
̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄
̆ ̄ ̆ ̄ ̆ ̄

(Substitution of individual feet in each case immaterial.)

[169] The nearest is probably No. 28 in Bartsch, _Romanzen und Pastourellen_, "Volez vos que je vos chante," with its famous verse about the nightingale and the mermaid. But there is a perpetual tendency to cut the eights to sevens and the sixes to fives, as thus:

Li rosignox est mon pere
Qui chante sur la ramee
El plus haut boscage.
La seraine ele est ma mere
Qui chante en la mer salee
El plus haut rivage.

[170] There are examples, as in the _Vie de Saint Léger_ and in Alberic of Besançon's fragmentary poem on Alexander, but few of them, and the couplet soon conquers.

[171]

Buona pulcella fut Eulali_a_, } _rhyme._
Bel auret corps, bellezour anim_a_. }
Voldrent la veintre li deo inim_i_ } _assonance._
Voldrent la faire diaule serv_ir_. }

[172] Not to the present writer, nor, he thinks, to any one who is really familiar with the _Chansons de geste_.

[173]

A book of verses underneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread--and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness--
Oh! wilderness were Paradise enow!

[174]

I seal myself upon thee with my might,
Abiding always out of all men's sight,
Until God loosen over sea and land
The thunder of the trumpets of the night--

The only difference of these is that FitzGerald, following, I believe, his Persian original, left the third lines quite blank, while Mr. Swinburne rhymed these in adjacent stanzas.

[175] For examples see above, Book II. Chap. VI. pp. 209, 210.

[176]

To whom shal I then pleyne of my distresse?
Who may me helpe? Who may my harm redresse?
_Shall I compleyne unto my lady fre? }
Nay, certes! for she hath such hevynesse, }
For fere, and eek for wo, that, as I gesse,}
In litil tyme it wol her bane be._ }
But were she sauf, it were no fors of me!
Alas! that ever lovers mote endure,
For love, | so ma|ny a pe|rilous a|venture!

(ll. 191-199.)

[177]

My dere herte and best beloved fo,
Why liketh yow to do me al this wo,
_What have I doon that greveth yow, or sayd,
But for I serve and love yow and no mo?
And whilst I lyve I wol ever do so;
And therefor, swete, ne beth nat yvel apayd.
For so good and so fair as [that] ye be }
Hit were right grete wonder but ye hadde }
Of alle servantes, bothe of goode and badde;}
And leest worthy of alle hem, I am he._ }

Not dissimilar suggestions may be found in Dunbar's _Golden Targe_.

[178]

We heard how they you hight,
If they might find that child,
For to have told you right,
But certes they are beguiled.
{_Swilk tales are not to trow,
{ Full well wot ilka wight,
{ Thou shall never more have might
{Ne maistery unto you._

[179]

Who, as an offering at your shrine,
Have sung this hymn and here entreat
One spark of your diviner heat
To light upon a love of mine.

[180]

Consider the sea's listless chime,
Time's self it is, made audible:
The murmur of the earth's own shell--
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea's end; our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

(_The Sea Limits._)

[181] For instance, Coleridge has shown, in the _Ancient Mariner_, that the ballad or common measure of four lines, 8, 6, 8, 6, _abab_, can be extended to any number of lines up to _nine_ (_v. sup._ p. 97), with the number and order of each rhyme-end varied to suit, and yet without overrunning, or loosening the general grip and character of the stanza. Now the smallest knowledge of mathematics will show the enormous number of combinations--five-, six-, seven-, eight-, and nine-lined, with the _a_ and _b_ rhymes variously grouped--that would require tabulation even up to this limit. And it would argue utter insensibility to the qualities and capacities of English poetry to deny that, on the morrow of this classification, a poet might arise who would give the same solid effect to _ten_ or more lines with still more endlessly varied rhyme-permutation. Instead, therefore, of attempting a hopeless and even mischievous task (for these classifications always generate the idea that whatsoever is outside of them is bad), it has seemed better to lay down, and to illustrate largely and variously, the principles on which all such legitimate combinations have been formed hitherto, but on which they may legitimately be formed anew _ad infinitum_. And this, it is hoped, has been done sufficiently here.