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same name, which is simply a bad climax. With the infinite blunders and bad uses of figurative poetry we are not concerned, as the aim of our study is to find out all that is peculiar to the style of good poets.

PART III.

METRE.

CHAPTER VI.

THE science of verse is the most difficult part of Poetics, and yet it is the most important; for metrical form is "the sole condition . . . absolutely demanded by poetry." The chief difficulty lies in the great confusion of opinion about the essential laws and tests of verse. There is no fixed use of terms, no full agreement even on some of the simplest elements of the science. We must therefore proceed carefully, accepting only the more generally admitted facts, and refusing to follow those sweeping changes of recent writers, which are in so many cases merely destructive of old theory without offering solid basis for new rules.

§ I. RHYTHM.

A Syllable is a body of sound brought out with an independent, single, and unbroken breath (Sievers). This syllable may be long or short, according to the time it fills: compare the syllables in merrily with the syllables in corkscrew. Further, a syllable may be heavy or light (also called accented or unaccented) according as it receives more or less force or stress of

tone: compare the two syllables of streamer. Lastly, a syllable may have increased or diminished height of tone, -pitch: cf. the so-called "rising inflection" at the end of a question. Now, in spoken language, there are infinite degrees of length, of stress, of pitch. If phonetic spelling come to be firmly established, we shall also have a phonetic versification to note these degrees. But while some new systems have been advocated (e.g., Ellis's plan for a new metrical terminology; or see a report, in the Academy, Jan. 10, 1885, of a paper read before the Philological Society in London: it advocates a "phonetic notation, providing signs for all the significant sounds, as well as for at least three degrees of stress and five of length") none has been established. Our conventional versification recognizes only accented and unaccented, long and short syllables.

It is a well-known property of human speech that it keeps up a ceaseless change between accented and unaccented syllables. A long succession of accented syllables becomes unbearably monotonous; a long succession of unaccented syllables is, in effect, impossible. Now when the ear detects at regular intervals a recurrence of accented syllables, varying with unaccented, it perceives Rhythm. Measured intervals of time are the basis of all verse, and their regularity marks off poetry from prose; so that Time is thus the chief element in Poetry, as it is in Music and in Dancing. From the idea of measuring these time-intervals, we derive the name Metre; Rhythm means pretty much the same thing, "a flowing," an even, measured motion. This rhythm is found everywhere in nature: the beat of the

heart, the ebb and flow of the sea, the alternation of day and night. Rhythm is not artificial, not an invention;1 it lies at the heart of things, and in rhythm the noblest emotions find their noblest expression. Rhythm, or metre, made itself known very early in the history of our race. Just as one who walks briskly in a cheerful mood, involuntarily marks his steps with a song, whistling, humming, or the like, so at the primitive religious rites of our ancestors the usual solemn dance 2 was accompanied by a song. As the dancing lines swayed back and forth, they marked their steps by chanted words,—a syllable for each step: the words were rude enough at first, but little by little gained in precision and meaning (cf. p. 9). Two steps, right and left, made a unit; for with the third, the first motion was repeated. We may thus assume the double beat of left-right as metrical unit: cf. the term "foot." Westphal has shown that the original Indo-European metre consisted of a measured chant accompanying a dance of eight steps forward and eight backward; the whole making one verse, divided into halves (cf. the classic Casura) by the pause and return. We shall see below that in Germanic poetry these half-verses were firmly bound together by Rime. The alternation of

1 Hence much of the talk about "barbarous metre " and "apt numbers" is absurd so far as it assumes to treat rhythm as a constantly increasing accomplishment of civilized man. "Any Volkslied," writes in a private letter one of our leading English scholars, "any Volkslied shows as good an ear as any Pindaric ode by Gray or whomever else."

2 This dance was regular; it was developed from the march and consisted of steps, not of irregular leaps.

3 It is perhaps necessary to insist on the meaning of this term: it includes High and Low German, Gothic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, etc.

stronger right and weaker left gave the accented and the unaccented beat (= syllable) of the foot. With the end of the verse (verto), the dancers turned again to repeat their forward-and-back. [For further particulars, see Westphal, Metrik der Griechen, Vol. II. ; or Scherer, Zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, 2d ed. p. 623.]

Or, we could imagine a quicker rhythm, in which there should be two syllables to each step: one syllable light, with the lifting of the foot; the other heavy, as the foot struck the ground again: cf. the classic terms (inconsistently used) arsis and thesis. One thing is

certain: in this combination of song and dance we see the origin of rhythm as applied to connected words. Thus, rhythm is the harmonious repetition of certain fixed sound-relations: time being the basis, just as in dancing or music.

This brings another question: what relation is there between the rhythm of music and the rhythm of poetry? The further back we go, the more closely music and poetry are connected. For modern times, we may state the difference thus: Music has for distinctive characteristic, melody, the variations of pitch, of "high" and "low" notes, but speech has, in effect, no such fixed variations; that is, they furnish no special, definite mark to speech, except in questions, surprise, etc. But speech has quality, what the Germans call tone-color. Infinite variety is imparted to speech by the combinations of different vocal effects, the full or thin vowels, the diphthongs, the consonants. This tone-tint is to poetry what melody is to music: common to both poetry and music is rhythm.

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Our business, therefore, is to consider verse in its

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