comes the sympathetic emotion of the spectators expressed in sighs and tears; . . . then comes the partial activity of the spectators by their deputed chorus; and at last the throng of primitive times, common emotion in common expression, with no spectators, no audience, no reserve or comment of thought, for thought is absorbed in the perception and action of communal consent; and here, by all evidence, rhythm rules supreme.

If, now, the curve of evolution in Aryan verse begins with an absolutely strict rhythm and alternate emphasis of syllables, often, as in Iranian, to the neglect of logical considerations; if the course of poetry is to admit logical considerations more and more, forcing in at least one case the abandoning of movable accent and the agreement of verse-emphasis with syllabic-emphasis, an undisputed fact; if poetry, too, first shakes off the steps of dancing, then the notes of song, finally the strict scanning of the verse, until now recited poetry is triumphantly logical, with rhythm as a subconscious element; if, finally, this process exactly agrees with the gradual increase of thought over emotion, with the analogous increase of solitary poetry over gregarious poetry, then, surely, one has but to trace back this curve of evolution, and to project it into prehistoric conditions, in order to infer with something very close to certitude that rhythm is the primal fact in the beginnings of the poetic art. . . .

The hold of rhythm upon modern poetry, even under conditions of analytic and intellectual development which have unquestionably worked for the increased importance of prose, is a hold not to be relaxed, and for good reason. The reason is this. In rhythm, in sounds of the human voice, timed to movements of the human body, mankind first discovered that social consent which brought the great joys and the great pains of life into a The mere fact of utterance is social; however solitary his thought, a poet's utterance must voice this consent of man with man, and his emotion must fall into rhythm, the one and eternal expression of consent. This, then, is why rhythm will not be banished from poetry so long as poetry shall remain emotional utterance; for rhythm is not only sign and

common utterance.

warrant of a social contract stronger, deeper, vaster, than any fancied by Rousseau, but it is the expression of a human sense more keen even than the fear of devils and the love of gods — the sense and sympathy of kind.*

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(Francis B. GUMMERE: The Beginnings of Poetry, chap. ii, Rhythm as the Essential Fact of Poetry." Pp. 30, 31, 82-85, 114, 115.)

*Professor Gummere also gives this analysis of Karl Bücher's essay on "Labor and Rhythm" (Arbeit und Rhythmus, Leipzig, 1896): "Fatigue, which besets all work felt as work by reason of its continued application of purpose, vanished for primitive man, as it vanishes now for children, if the work was once freed from this stress of application and so turned to a kind of play. The dance itself is really hard work, exacting and violent; what makes it the favorite it is with savages as with children? Simply its automatic, regular, rhythmic character, the due repetition of a familiar movement which allows the mind to relax its attitude of constant purpose. The purpose and plan of work involve external sources and external ends; rhythm is instinctive, and springs from the organic nature of man; it is no invention. The song that one sings while at work is not something fitted to the work, but comes from movements of the body in the specific acts of labor; and this applies not only to the rhythm, but even to the words. So it was in the festal dance. That poetry and music were always combined by early man, and, along with labor, made up the primitive three-inone, an organic whole, labor being the basal fact, with rhythm as an element common to the three; and that not harmony or pitch, but this overmastering and pervasive rhythm, exact, definite, was the main factor of early song, - these are conclusions for which Bücher offers ample and convincing evidence." (Ib. pp. 108, 109.)

...

APPENDIX

TABLE ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF THE

HEROIC COUPLET

THE following table is designed, in the first place, to illustrate the history of the decasyllabic couplet in English verse, by making possible a comparison of the characteristic details of its form in different periods; and, in the second place, to suggest a method by which, through the careful tabulation of facts, one may substantiate or correct general statements as to the qualities of verse.

Any such statistics as are here presented must be accepted, if at all, with no little caution. The table is based on passages of one hundred lines each, believed to be fairly representative of the verse of the several authors. No passage of this length, however, can be known to be perfectly typical. A still greater difficulty is found in the necessarily subjective character of any such tabulation. Most lines of English decasyllabic verse can be read - with reference to the distribution of accents and pauses - in more than one way. It is unlikely, therefore, that any two readers would reach the same results in trying to form a table of this kind. The absolute validity of the figures is therefore doubtful; but on condition that they all have been computed by the same person, consistently with a single standard of judgment, their relative validity, for purposes of comparison, may be fairly assumed.

The facts here set down for each specimen of verse group themselves in four divisions. In the first place, each line of verse is either "run-on" "or (6 end-stopped"; and, in riming couplets, it is also of interest to know whether the second line of the couplet is run-on into the following couplet. In

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the second place, the cesural pause occurs either near the middle of the line or elsewhere, or it may be- is omitted altogether. In the third place, the line may have a feminine ending. In the fourth place, it may contain some other foot than the regular iambus.

There is some room for difference of judgment as to whether a given line is "end-stopped" or run-on"; but with occasional exceptions the presence or want of a mark of punctuation may be made the determining element. Obviously one may find such clear phrase-pauses, without punctuation, as will justify the caption "end-stopped."

There is far more divergence of judgment in the recognition of the cesura. Some writers on prosody treat practically every line of ten syllables as having a cesural pause, and certainly some slight phrase-pause may almost always be found. In the following table, however, the cesura has been recognized only when there is a grammatical or rhetorical pause so considerable as - in most cases. to require a mark of punctuation. Such a verse, then, as

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"Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky

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is counted as having "no cesura." The cesura is counted as 'medial" when occurring after the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable; elsewhere it is regarded as variant." The significance of this distinction is very clear in the comparison of the heroic couplet of the "classical" with that of the "romantic" school of poets.*

It is in the last group of facts, those relating to substituted feet, that the subjective element is most embarrassing. There can be no very general agreement among readers as to the degree of accent necessary to change a pair of syllables from an 66 iambus" to a "pyrrhic" or a "spondee."

*Here a word of caution is needed. It will be observed that the regularly balanced line of the classical couplet requires not only a medial pause, but also a pause at the end. Hence where we find, as in the verse of Keats, a large number of medial cesuras but at the same time a very large number of "run-on lines, the characteristic effect of the medial pause is almost entirely lost, and the number of medial pauses is not significant.

The other two forms of substitution (inverted accent, giving "trochees," and trisyllabic feet, giving "anapests") are somewhat more definitely determinable. In the following table the naming of all these feet is based on what is believed to be the natural reading of the verse, with a due regard for both rhetorical and metrical accent. In the verse

"By these the springs of property were bent"

the fourth foot is counted a pyrrhic; so also in this
"Their busy teachers mingled with the Jews," .

-

although here a certain secondary accent on the eighth syllable is possible. In such a verse as —

"There is a path on the sea's azure floor"

the third foot is counted a pyrrhic and the fourth a spondee.*` One may get, then, from a table of this sort, a general view of the character of any particular piece of verse, in respect to the poet's preference for run-on lines, for feminine endings, for breaking the verse into two equal parts, for varying the cesura, or for substituting exceptional feet. The description would be more nearly complete if there were also indicated the places in the verse where substituted feet occur; a trochee in the second foot is a very different thing from one in the first; but it is difficult to tabulate facts of this order without complicating one's results beyond the point of serviceable clearness.

Some students of verse are doubtless offended by the use of statistics in connection with a subject of this kind; and it is easy to ridicule the obvious incongruity of mathematical methods and poetry. A recent magazine critic makes merry over certain statistical studies in rhythm, carried on in a

* This combination (of pyrrhic and spondee) is of course very frequent; and where both substitutions occur together, the general average of accents is maintained, only with exchange of position. On the other hand, where there appears a large number of pyrrhics with almost no spondees (as in the case of Dryden), a different sort of verse is indicated, one where the lines gain a certain lightness and rapidity from the lack of the full number of fully accented syllables.