ALLITERATION.

ALLITERATION is the frequent recurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words in a verse, forming a kind of initial rhyme, e.g. :

Carking care,

Green-eyed grief, and dull despair.

Kirke White.

It was an essential element in Anglo-Saxon and Old English poetry, which, for the most part, consists of short couplets containing three or four accented syllables, linked together by alliterative consonance.* Here is a specimen from the opening lines of Piers the Plowman's Vision, written by Willam Langlande about 1362:

In a somer seson,

When softe was the sonne,

I shope me in shrubbes

As I a shepe were ;

In habit as an hermit,
Unholy of workes.

Again, from the same poem:

There preached a pardoner,
As he a prieste were ;
Brought forth a bull

With many bishops' seals.

* See Development of Versification, p. 256.

When Chaucer began to reform our versification, and introduced the regular rhythmic flow of accented syllables and the new element of rhyme, alliteration ceased to be an essential to English verse, but it has always retained its hold as an aid and embellishment to its melody. The Elizabethan poets evinced a marked fondness for its "artful aid," and used it with great taste and skill, as for example:

In the fashionable craze called Euphuism* of. Queen Elizabeth's reign, alliteration was carried to a ridiculous excess, which furnished occasion for

*

Ephuism takes its name from Euphies, or the Anatomy of Wit by John Lily, a minor dramatist of Elizabeth's reign (1554-1600). It was written in a ridiculously ornate style, abounding in conceits, classical allusions, forced antitheses, and alliterations. It took the popular fancy of the time, and became much in vogue with the wits and dandies of Elizabeth's Court. Sir Walter Scott parodies its use in the Monastery in the person of Sir Percie Shafton; here is an example:

"And now having wished to my fairest Discretion those pleasant dreams which wave their pinions around the couch of sleeping beauty, and to this comely damsel the beauties of Morpheus, and to all others the common good night, I will crave your leave to depart to my place of rest."

Euphuism should not be confounded with Euphemism, which is an expression in which the offensiveness of a thought is somewhat hidden: "He has gone to that other world which is not heaven."

e.g.,

Shakspere's mock imitation of it in Love's Labour's Lost. Holofernes, the pedantic pedagogue, writes some verses which he calls "An Extemporal Epitaph on the Death of the Deer:" they run :

The praiseful princess pierced and pricked a pretty
Pleasing pricket;

Some say, a sore; but not a sore till now made

Sore with shooting.

He ridicules the excessive use of it again in the bombastic words of Bottom:

Whereat, with blade, with bloody, blameful blade,
He bravely broached his boiling, bloody breast.

"Midsummer Night's Dream.”

Nevertheless he avails himself of this simple ornament with rare felicity throughout his entire works.

This precious stone set in a silver sea.

66 'Richard II.

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

66 Richard III.”

He capers nimbly in his lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

"Richard III."

Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown.

“King Lear.”

Whose influence, like a wreath of radiant fire,

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm.

King Lear."

Will plead, like angels, trumpet-tongued, against

The deep damnation of his taking off.

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:

She swore-in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.

"Othello."

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail,
Unwillingly to school.

"As You Like It."

They are not a pipe for Fortune's finger

To sound what stop she please.

Hamlet."

Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres.
66 "Hamlet."

Milton's use of alliteration is not so marked in

his epics as in the minor poems. He also employs various devices to tone down the alliterative effect by (1) employing it with unaccented syllables; (2) with syllables other than the initial one; and (3) by the use of consonants similar but not identical in sound, as b, p, t, &c. His exquisite skill in the choice of words for all the purposes of picturesque and melodic effect is unsurpassed by any of our poets. The very sound of many of his verses, even apart from the sense, has a distinct pleasurable effect.

Deep on his front engraven

Deliberation sat, and public care.

The rising wind of waters, dark and deep.

Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm.

"Comus."