VI. IMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES While English verse is generally admitted to be based on a different system from that of Greek and Latin poetry (the element of accent obscuring that of quantity in English prosody, as the element of quantity obscures that of accent in classical prosody), there have been repeated attempts to introduce the more familiar classical measures into English. Most of these attempts have been academic and have attracted the attention only of critics and scholars; a few have interested the reading public. Imitations of classical verse in English may conveniently be divided into two classes: imitations of lyrical measures, and imitations of the dactylic hexameter. The latter group is of course much the larger, especially in modern poetry. It will appear that the classical measures might also be divided into two groups according to another distinction: those attempting to observe the quantitative prosody of the original language, and those in which the original measure is transmuted into frankly accentual verse. The original impulse toward this classical or pseudo-classical verse was a product of the Renaissance, when all forms of art not based on Greek and Latin models were suspected. Rime, not being found in the poetry of the classical languages, was treated as a product of the dark ages, the invention of "Goths and Huns." See Roger Ascham's Schoolmaster (1570) for the most characteristic representative of this phase of thought in England. The new forms of verse were, naturally enough, first tried in Italy. Schipper traces the beginning of the movement to Alberti (1404-1484). A century later Trissino wrote his Sophonisbe and Italia Liberata in unrimed verse, in professed imitation of Homer, and was looked upon as the inventor of versi sciolti, that is, verses "freed" from rime (compare the remarks of Milton in the prefatory note to Paradise Lost). In 1539 Claudio Tolomei wrote Versi e Regole della Poesia Nuova, a systematic attempt to introduce the classical versification. He also wrote hexameters and sapphics. In France there were similar efforts in the sixteenth century. Mousset translated Homer into hexameters in 1530, and A. de Baïf, a member of the “Pleiade” (1532–1589), devised some French hexameters which he called vers baïfins. The English experiments were worked out independently, and yet under the same neo-classical influences. On this subject, see Schipper, vol. ii. pp. 2-12, 439–464. A. LYRICAL MEASURES Reason, tell me thy mind, if here be reason In this strange violence, to make resistance Where sweet graces erect the stately banner Of Virtue's regiment, shining in harness Of Fortune's diadems, by Beauty mustered: Say, then, Reason, I say, what is thy counsel? (SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: Phaleuciakes, from the Arcadia. ab. 1580.) This is the measure commonly called “Phalæcian." Compare Tennyson's imitation of it, in his Hendecasyllabics quoted below. O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness! Where senses do behold the order of heavenly host, (SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: Asclepiadics, from the Arcadia. ab. 1580.) This is the measure now called "Lesser Asclepiadean.” My Muse, what ails this ardor To sing my own decay'd state. Alas, it is no comfort To speak without an answer; Alas, it is no wisdom To show the wound without cure. (SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: Anacreontics, Sidney was a member of the little group of classical students who called themselves the "Areopagus," and who were interested in introducing classical measures into English verse. Others of the group were Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser, from whose correspondence most of our information regarding the movement is derived. (See the letters in Grosart's edition of Harvey's Works, vol. i. pp. 7–9, 20-24, 35-37, 75-76, 99–107.) Spenser's only known efforts in the same direction are also preserved in this correspondence; a poem in twenty-one iambic trimeters, and this "tetrasticon": "See yee the blindfoulded pretie god, that feathered archer, It would seem that Spenser was attempting, more conscientiously than Sidney did, to follow the classical rules of quantity in making his verses; hence they are more difficult to read according to English rhythm. Sidney's experiments in the classical versification are perhaps the most successful, to modern taste, of all those made in the Elizabethan period. Among the other songs in the Arcadia will be found sapphics and hexameters. See especially Spenser's letter of April, 1580, and Harvey's reply (op. cit., vol. i. pp. 35, 99), for notable passages indicating the seriousness with which the members of the "Areopagus" were trying to reform English verse so as to bring it under the rules of classical prosody. The relations of quantity and accent were not understood, as indeed they may be said still not to be understood for the English language. Spenser suggests, in a frequently quoted passage, that in the word carpenter the middle syllable is "short in speech, when it shall be read long in verse,”—that is, because the vowel is followed by two consonants; hence it "seemeth like a lame gosling that draweth one legge after her. . . . But it is to be wonne with custome, and rough words must be subdued with use." Harvey resented the idea that the common pronunciation of words could be departed from in order to conform them to arbitrary metrical rules, and in his reply said: "You shall never have my subscription or consent . . . to make your Carpenter our Carpenter, an inche longer or bigger, than God and his Englishe people have made him. . . . Else never heard I any that durst presume so much over the Englishe . . . as to alter the quantitie of any one sillable, otherwise than oure common speache and generall receyved custome woulde beare them oute." But while all English verse must be consistent with "the vulgare and naturall mother prosodye," Harvey does not despair of finding a system that shall be at the same time "countervaileable to the best tongues" in making possible quantitative verse. The whole passage is well worth reading. The best account of the movement toward classical versification in the days of the "Areopagus " will be found in Professor Schelling's Poetic and Verse Criticism in the Reign of Elizabeth (Publications of the University of Pennsylvania). ... O ye Nymphes most fine who resort to this brooke, And ye Virgins trymme who resort to Parnass, mounteth above farre. (WILLIAM WEBBE: Sapphic Verse, in A Discourse of English Poetrie. 1586.) Webbe was another of those who believed "that if the true kind of versifying in immitation of Greekes and Latines, had been practised in the English tongue, it would long ere this have aspyred to as full perfection, as in anie other tongue whatsoever." So he added to his Discourse (see Arber Reprint, pp. 67–84) a discussion of the principles of quantitative prosody, and some specimens of what might be done by way of experiment.* The Sapphics from which the present specimen is taken are a paraphrase of Spenser's praise of Elizabeth in the fourth eclogue of the Shepherd's Calendar. (For a specimen of Webbe's hexameters, see p. 334, below.) Greatest in thy wars, But should now this age * Puttenham's treatise on English poetry, which followed Webbe's (1589), and was the most thorough treatment of the subject written in the Elizabethan period, also discussed the "reformed versifying," but with less respect. The chapter is entitled: "How if all maner of sodaine innovations were not very scandalous, specially in the lawes of any langage or arte, the use of the Greeke and Latine feete might be brought into our vulgar Poesie, and with good grace inough." (Arber Reprint of The Arte of English Poesie, p. 126.) Puttenham seems to see the relations of quantity and accent somewhat more clearly than most of his contemporaries, and while he gives rules for adapting English words to quantitative prosody, he is disposed to think that “peradventure with us Englishmen it be somewhat too late to admit a new invention of feete and times that our forefathers never used nor never observed till this day" (p. 132). |