Chapter XII: Appendix: 19 (2)

All of these specimens of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, and many of a kindred order, have been often made to tell exquisitely in our national poetry. The same averment may be made regarding hosts of other words, differently begun and formed; but we must so far content ourselves with having shown the principle, and go over what is to come more quickly. However, the aspirate _h_ must not be lightly overpassed, having a striking value in verse. Being pronounced with an _aspiration_, it gives a certain energy to almost all words which it begins, as _hack_, _harsh_, _hawl_, _haste_, _hit_, _hunt_, and the like. To some terms it imparts a sort of laboriously _elevative_ force. Pope composed the following line purposely to exemplify this property:—

Up the high hill, he heaves a huge round stone."

The merely expiratory force of the _h_ is felt equally in naming the "heights of heaven" and the "hollows of hell." Though but half a letter, it is thus potent in poetry, and is often beautifully turned to account by Milton, as in the passage, "Him the Almighty power _hurled headlong_," and so on.

The letter _j_ gives the initiative to many expressive words, though their expressiveness rests mainly on the terminations. Such is the case with _jar_, _jerk_, _jig_, _jilt_, _jog_, _jostle_, _jumble_, _jump_. Our comic writers have used the most of these to good purpose. It is worth while specially to notice _jeer_. It would seem as if the _eer_ was an ending peculiarly fitted to express the meaning which _jeer_ bears, since it gives a pretty similar force to _sneer_, _fleer_, _leer_, _peer_, _queer_, and some others. Sound and sense concur in all these terms. The _k_ merely gives to words the same power as the hard _c_. _L_ has no great force as the initial letter of words, though it yet possesses so far its own peculiar expressiveness. That the whole members of the alphabet do so, indeed, may be very simply proved. Of the following twelve monosyllables closing in _ash_, the different opening letters give a different force, in respect of sound, to each word, and such as perfectly accords with the actual and several meanings. The words are, _clash_, _crash_, _dash_, _flash_, _gnash_, _lash_, _mash_, _quash_, _plash_, _slash_, _smash_, and _thrash_. The distinction here may not be great in some instances, but it certainly is so in the grating _crash_, the rapid _flash_, and the ponderous _smash_! These points are well worthy the attention of the student of English Versification—in truth, of English literature generally.

Many expressive words, opening with _l_, are formed by apt closes, as _lift_, _lisp_, _limp_, _loathe_, _log_, _lull_, and _lurk_. How fine the _loll_ in Shakspeare's line:—

"The large Achilles, on his press'd bed _lolling_,
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause!"

_M_ and _n_, opening words isolatedly, have little peculiarity of power, but gain it by continuations and terminations:—

"Hell is _murky_."

"To pluck the _mangled_ Tybalt from his shroud."

"Thrice the brinded cat hath _mew'd_."

"The _matted_ woods."

"Thou detestable womb, thou _maw_ of death."

"So the two brothers and their _murder'd_ man."

"This hand is _moist_, my lady."

"The _muffled_ drum."

And so on. _Neigh_, _nod_, _nip_, _nick_ and so forth, exemplify the _n_ sufficiently. There are fewer words of a very expressive kind opened by _p_, than by any other letter which may be followed by other consonants, as _l_and _r_. Nor need _q_ delay our progress. _R_, however, as already observed, is one of the most emphatic letters in the alphabet; and, whether at the beginning, in the middle, or at the close of words, it gives them a striking and specific force in enunciation. Rude and rough power lies in its sound. The monosyllabic verbs which it commences show well what its original effect was felt to be. _Race_, _rage_, _rack_, _rail_, _rain_, _rake_, _ramp_, _range_, _rant_, _rate_, _rave_, _rash_, _raze_—all these words have an affinity of meaning, derived from the _ra_, though modified by the endings. Followed by other vowels, the _r_ softens somewhat, as in _reach_, _reap_, _ride_, _rise_, and the like; but still there is force of action implied in the sound. _Ring_, _rip_, and _rift_, may be styled _ear-pictures_. It is impossible, by citations, to give any conception of the extent to which the _r_ has been used in imparting fitting emphasis to poetry. Nearly all words, implying terror or horror, rest mainly on it for their picturesque force. This point, however, has been already illustrated sufficiently for the present purpose.

_S_, by itself, opens many words of mild action, as _sail_, _sew_, _sit_, _soar_, and _suck_. With an additional consonant; _sc_, _sh_, _sk_, _sl_, _sm_, _sn_, _sp_, _sq_, _st_, and _su_ it gives rise to most potent verbs of action; and still stronger ones are formed when another consonant is added, as in the cases of _scr_, _spr_, and _str_. What is chiefly to the point here, sense and sound are strikingly congruous in terms of this formation. The initials give force whatever the endings may be, though these may modify it largely. Let the reader look well at the following list. _Scald_, _scalp_, _scare_, _scamper_, _scatter_, _scoff_, _scorn_, _scowl_, _scour_, _scourge_, _scrape_, _scrawl_, _scratch_, _scream_, _screw_, _scrub_, _scramble_, _scraggy_, _scud_; _shake_, _shape_, _shave_, _shift_, _shine_, _shirk_, _shiver_, _shock_, _shoot_, _shout_, _shriek_, _shrill_, _shrink_, _shrug_, _shuffle_, _shudder_, _skate_, _skim_, _skiff_, _skirr_; _slap_, _slay_, _sleep_, _slumber_, _slip_, _slit_, _slink_, _sling_, _slow_, _slough_, _sluggish_, _slur_, _slut_, _sly_; _smash_, _smite_, _smile_, _smooth_, _smug_, _smuggle_, _smother_; _snap_, _snarl_, _snare_, _snatch_, _snib_, _snip_, _snub_, _sneap_, _snack_, _snort_, _snivel_, _snell_; _speed_, _spit_, _split_, _splash_, _spout_, _spring_, _spur_, _spurt_, _spurn_, _sputter_, _spy_, _sprinkle_; _squeeze_, _squall_, _squeak_, _squat_, _squash_, _squabble_, _squib_; _stab_, _stamp_, _stare_, _start_, _steal_, _steam_, _steep_, _steer_, _step_, _stem_, _stick_, _sting_, _stir_, _stoop_, _storm_, _stow_; _strain_, _strap_, _streak_, _stress_, _stretch_, _strew_, _stride_, _strike_, _string_, _strip_, strive, stroll, strut, stuff, stump, stun, stagger, stammer, _startle_, _strangle_, _stutter_, _struggle_, _stumble_; _sway_, _sweep_, _swell_, _swing_, _swoop_, _swirl_.

This is truly a long roll; but it is one deserving of all attention from those who are studying the euphony, or the happy cacophony, of the English vocabulary, with an eye to poetic composition. Each word here is, to repeat a somewhat dubious phrase, a positive auricular picture. There is variety in sense, but it is still accompanied by fit variety of sound. And yet a general similarity of significations exists among the words formed by _s_ with one or more additional consonants: while still more akin are the sets of words begun alike. The whole, collectively, express force, and for the most part strong force. _Scare_ and _scream_ imply (in sound and sense) sharp action; _shake_ and _shrink_, soft and moderate; _skate_ and _skim_, quick and smooth; _slip_ and _sling_, rapid and easy; _smash_ and _smite_, strong and suppressive; _snarl_ and _snap_, snarling and snappish; _spit_ and _split_, slight but decisive; _squeeze_ and _squeak_, forcible but petty; _stab_ and _stamp_, direct and powerful; _strain_ and _strike_, full of _straining strength_, and with their congeners, the most energetic of words, in sound and sense, in the language. In verbs opened by _sw_, as in _sweep_ and _swirl_, the _s_ gives an onward impulse, as it were, and the _w_ renders it so far rotatory. Leigh Hunt applies the word swirl finely to ships:—

"They chase the whistling brine, and swirl into the bay."

Most of the words formed with _t_ as the initial derive from it no very marked force, and depend for that quality on the same terminations which have been noticed as giving force to others. The _t_ need not, therefore, occupy our space. The _w_ is also weak alone, but forms terms of some initial pith with the aspirate _h_ as _wheel_, _whiff_, _whelm_, _whip_, _whirl_, _whisk_, and _whoop_. There is a sort of sense of circuitous motion given by the _wh_; and, with their well-discriminated terminations, the verbs of action which it opens are very expressive. When _wr_ was pronounced _uurr_, the words, _wrangle_, _wrestle_, _wreath_, _wring_, _wrench_, and _wrath_ were words of potency, twisting and convulsive. But the _w_ is now mute, and their might has departed.

It is because much, very much, of the power, the majesty, and the beauty of English Poetry, as left to us by our fathers, is traceable to the liberal use of the Anglo-Saxon elements of our national language, that the subject has been treated of here so lengthily. Moreover, there has been evinced of late, it is painful to add, a growing tendency on the part of many writers to cultivate Gallicisms, as words of Roman derivation are rightly named, to a still greater extent than has yet been done amongst us, and to the repression of our true native vocabulary. A gain may be made in this way in respect of general harmony, as before observed, but it is a gain which never can counterbalance the loss in point of pith and picturesqueness. It is not said here, that our greater recent poets have been the chief deserters of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. On the contrary, many of them have shown a full sense of its merits, and have used it finely. It is a remarkable corroboration, indeed, of the present argument, that in all their best passages, they almost uniformly employ the said tongue, whether consciously or unconsciously. Look at the following passage of Burns. It has been pronounced by critics to embody the most powerful picture in modern poetry.

"Coffins stood round like open presses,
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantrip sleight,
Each in its cauld hand held a light,
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table
A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns;
Twa span-lang, wee unchristen'd bairns;
A thief, new cuttit frae a rape—
Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape;
A garter which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son o' life had reft—
The gray hairs yet stack to the heft."

This passage forms a splendid specimen of almost pure Anglo-Saxon; and, among the few words of a different origin, one of the most marked may perhaps be rightly held a blemish—namely _heroic_. Like Burns, Wordsworth, and all those moderns who have studied ear-painting (if this phrase may be again pardoned) as well as eye-painting in their verses, have drawn freely on the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. All young and incipient versifiers should study their works, and "Go and do likewise."

The general construction of English verse, and the various rules by which it is rendered melodious, expressive, and picturesque, having now been explained, it remains but to indicate, in a few words, the principal divisions of Poetry common, among us. Epic verse is held to be the highest description of poetical composition. The "Iliad" of Homer and "Æneid" of Virgil have always formed models in this department; and it is remarkable, but true, that we can scarcely be said to have one English epic that rises to their standard, saving "Paradise Lost." Of the character of an epic, it need but be said here, that the subject, the diction, and the treatment must all be alike lofty and sustained. In English, the decasyllabic is the epic line, sometimes called the Heroic. If we have so few epics, however, we have many poems of high note that are usually styled Didactic, from their _teaching_ great truths. Akenside, Thomson, Cowper, Rogers, and Campbell wrote such poems, some in blank verse, others in rhyme. Where rhymed, they are all written in Couplets, or pairs of lines, rhyming to one another, in regular succession. Narrative, Descriptive, and Satiric poems (the several objects of which may be drawn from these epithets) are important species of composition, and for the most part constructed similarly to the Epic and Didactic pieces. In truth, the ten-syllabled line, in couplets or in blank verse, though best adapted for grave subjects, has been employed on almost all themes by English poets. Nearly the same thing may be said of the octosyllabic verse, also written commonly in couplets, when used in long compositions. Many poems, which may be generally termed Romantic, have likewise been framed in the eight-syllabled line, though not usually in couplets.

The name of Stanzas is bestowed, aggregately, on all assemblages of lines, exceeding two in number, when they are arranged continuously. The following is a stanza of three lines, termed isolatedly a Triplet:—

"Nothing, thou elder brother even to Shade.
Thou hadst a being ere the world was made,
And (well fix'd) art alone of ending not afraid."

Stanzas in four lines, called specially Quatrains, are exemplified in Gray's "Churchyard Elegy." Indeed, that stanza has long been denominated the Elegiac. Tennyson's "In Memoriam" is composed in octosyllabic quatrains. In stanzas of four lines, also, half the minor poetry in the language is composed. The general name of "Lyrical" is given to such poetry, and implies the subjects to be occasional and detached, and the pieces usually brief. "Songs" come within the Lyric category. It would be needless to exemplify a stanza so well known, either in its frequent form of alternate rhyming lines of eight and eight syllables, or its yet more common one of eight and six. No continuous poems of any length or moment have been written in five-line stanzas, and few in those of six lines. The latest piece in the latter shape has been Sir E. L. Bulwer's "King Arthur;" but the stanza is too like the very famous one called in Italy the _ottava rima_, with two lines lopped off and not beneficially. The "Don Juan" of Byron is composed in this _ottava rima_, or eight-lined stanza; but it was borrowed from the Italians (the real inventors) by William Tennant, and used in his "Anster Fair," long before Frere or Byron thought of its appropriation—a circumstance of which many critics have shown a discreditable ignorance. It is the best of all stanzas for a light or burlesque epic, the principle of its construction being—seriousness in the first six lines, and in the last two a mockery of that seriousness. The great poet, however, can make any stanza great. Shakspeare used the six-line stanza in his "Venus and Adonis," and that of seven lines in his "Lucrece."

The only other regular English stanza, of high note, and calling for mention here, is the Spenserian, consisting of nine lines, the first eight decasyllabic, and the last an Alexandrine of twelve feet. Many noble poems have been written in this stanza, from Spenser's "Fairy Queen" to Byron's "Childe Harold," which may be viewed as romantic and narrative epics respectively. It is calculated to convey aptly the loftiest poetry, though Thomson and Shenstone have employed it for lighter purposes, in the "Castle of Indolence" and "Schoolmistress."

The sonnet is, in its highest moods, an epic in fourteen lines; and, as regards its normal structure, should present but four different rhymes in all. So Milton wrote it, and so often Wordsworth, _facile principes_ in this walk of poetic composition; but six or more rhymes are commonly admitted. The rhymes of the successive lines stand thus, in the Miltonic sonnet:—"arms, seize, please, harms, charms, these, seas, warms, bower, spare, tower, air, power, bare." In a sonnet, Wordsworth splendidly exemplifies the sonnet, and tells its uses and its history. ("Scorn not," &c. Wordsworth's Miscellaneous Sonnets.)

The Ode is a poem of irregular construction, or rather was so constructed by the Greek bard Pindar, and after him by Dryden and Collins, his best English imitators. Wordsworth and Coleridge also wrote fine odes of late years, and they followed the same irregularities of composition. Shelley and Keats, however, produced noble pieces, of the same kind, as those on "Liberty" and "Melancholy," in which they used a very free measure, but in orderly stanzas. It would be out of place to describe at length the plan of the Pindaric ode—for it had a general plan, though fantastic in details. The wildest forms of it were styled the dithyrambic; and impassioned grandeur of sentiment and diction were its characteristics. Horace, in his best odes, contented himself with aiming at dignity and justness of thoughts, and pointedness of expression. Dryden and Collins, as well as Coleridge and Shelley, copied and approached the dithyrambic fervour; while Keats sought but after beauty, and left us masterpieces in that kind—"alas, too few!"

With yet a word on the art of Song-Writing, this essay may be closed. It well merits a word, and chiefly because it is an art the most easy in seeming, and the most difficult in reality, in the entire range of literary composition. People might easily discern this truth, if they would but take note how few really great song-writers have ever flourished among men, at any time, or in any country. Without forgetting Ramsay, Hogg, and Cunningham, it may be justly asserted that Scotland has seen but one such bard, Robert Burns. Ireland has likewise produced but one, Thomas Moore. England has given birth to—not one song-writer of the same high order! Such is the fact; for to such parties as the Dibdins, Charles Morris, or Haynes Bayly, the rank of great song-writers cannot be assigned. However, it is but fair to admit that Moore should be reckoned as in the main a song-writer of England, his music only, and occasionally his subjects, being Irish. His pieces are wholly in the English tongue, and by the English nation he may so far be claimed. That numberless individuals have written one or two good songs, is unquestionable, but the circumstance only strengthens the present argument. It shows the difficulty of fitly carrying out and sustaining the practice of song-writing.

Notwithstanding these glaring truths, the young, on feeling the first prompting of the muse, fly to this species of composition almost invariably. Now, whether they do or do not possess the requisite poetical powers (which is not the point under consideration here), they certainly take up the said task, almost always, in total ignorance of the rules of construction necessary to be observed in song-writing. These are few, but all-important. After simplicity and concentration of thought and diction—the first elements in such compositions—simplicity of grammatical arrangement stands next in consequence. An inverted expression is most injurious, and a parenthetic clause almost uniformly fatal. All forms of complication are indeed alike hurtful; and even epithets, and adjectives of every kind, can be employed but sparingly, and must be most direct and simple. That mode of poetic diction, which introduces its similitudes by "as the," "so the," and "like the," is ruinous in songs. Scarcely less so are interjections, especially when of some length. Look how sadly even Wordsworth failed, when he thought to improve on the old ballad of Helen of Kirkconnel!

"Fair Ellen Irvine, _when, she sate_
_Upon the braes of Kirtle_,
Was lovely _as a Grecian maid_,
_Adorn'd with wreaths of myrtle_."

Compare the effect of this stanza with its parenthetic clause and its tale-tagged similitude, to that of the old ballad, so remarkable for its simplicity:—

"I wish I were where Helen lies;
Night and day on me she cries;
Oh! that I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirkconnel lea."

* * * * * *

"Curst be the head that thought the thought,
Curst be the hand that shot the shot,
When in my arms burd Helen dropt,
And died to succour me."

Even on a reading, the effect of these pieces is widely different, and would be felt ten times more were they sung. The best music is ever cast away on involved phraseology; and herein lies, in fact, the main reason for simplicity of construction in songs.

With these hints on the Art of composing Songs, most of the suggestions before given respecting the selection of words of peculiar sounds, may also be kept in mind. Burns forgot them not. Observe his Wandering Willie:—

"Rest, ye wild winds, in the caves of your slumbers,
How your dread howling a lover alarms."

But let all the most admired songs of Burns, and of Moore also, be examined attentively, and the skilful adaptation of the words to the sentiment, the position and the purpose will appear clearly. What language, for example, could be more artistically suited to an exquisitely soft air than the following by Moore?—

"'Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone,
All its lovely companions
Are faded and gone."

If these lines were written in a dialect utterly strange to the hearer, he still could not but feel their admirable melodiousness, so appropriate to the melodious music. In the case, therefore, of song-writing generally—whether to known or unknown music—the purpose of the composition must ever be kept in mind. A song, if not satisfactorily fitted for vocal utterance, and intelligible on the hearing of a moment, neither deserves, nor will receive, popular appreciation and acceptance. Where true poetry is interfused, as in the productions of Burns and Moore, then, indeed, is mastership in the art of song-writing really shown. Of all classes of writers, the song-writer is perhaps the most truly an artist.

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Rules for Making English Verse.

BY EDWARD BYSSHE.

These rules I have, according to the best of my judgment, endeavoured to extract from the practice, and to frame after the examples, of the poets that are most celebrated for a fluent and numerous turn of verse.

In the English versification there are two things chiefly to be considered:

1. The verses.

2. The several sorts of poems, or composition in verse.

But because in the verses there are also two things to be
observed, the structure of the verse and the rhyme, this
treatise shall be divided into three chapters;

I. Of the structure of English verses.

II. Of rhyme.

III. Of the several sorts of poems, or composition in verse.