CERM A NW AND ENCILISII.
There has been of late a IeiudEoyyg conspicuous ly represented by Sidney Lanier, to break away from tradition and to found an independent sci ence of English verse. This undertaking may ultimately lead to a new system, which shall be at once simpler and more accurate than the old one, but no such scheme has yet received general adoption.
In this article, therefore, which is concerned rather with an historical account of the prin cipal English verse-forms than with a funda mental theory of poetics, the old terms will be retained. A measure like the following, for ex ample, will be called anapa-stir: Where he stands, the Arch-Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go; and the reverse movement dactylic: Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care.
The term foot will be employed for the metrical unit, and lines of the following type may be termed either iambic pentameters (to denote the measure or the number of feet) or derasyllabie con vlets (to denote the normal number of syl lables and the rhyme-scheme) : In friendship false, implacable in bate, Resolved to ruin or to rule the State.
A fundamental distinction between English and classical versification becomes at once ap parent from these first illustrations. In Greek verse, and the classical Latin verse which arose from its influence, the rhythm was primarily quantitative and was determined by the regular recurrence of long and short syllables. The metrical stress, which accompanied this rhythm, did not coincide necessarily, or even usually, with the regular accent of the separate words. In English verse, on the contrary, as in certain popular and medieval Latin verse, the rhythm is accentual, and quantity, though by no means negligible, is not the determining principle. The metrieal stress coincides in general with the normal word-stress, and in order to preserve this word-aeeent considerable freedom is allowed in the transposition of metrical feet.
Accentual rhythm. accompanied by alliteration, is characteristic of the earliest known Germanic verse. In fact, the type may be still older, and may have been common (as a recent theory maintains) to the Germanie, Celtic, and Italian peoples. A great body of this alliterative verse is preserved in Anglo-Saxon. Old and Old Norse, and a few lines from Anglo-Saxon will illustrate its structure: IIwaff I we Gfir-Dena in Oardagum odcyninga 1)rym gefrfinou luipa it lopelingas ellen fremedon.
The long line consists regularly of two half lines bound together by carefully regulated al literation. The number of accents in the half line is a matter of discussion. According to one theory there are four; and the whole line, with its eight stresses, is made to correspond to a primitive long lino assumed for Indo-Germanic.
Aeeording 10 another theory, which has been most fully worked out by Sievers, each half-line (disregarding, pertain hypermetrical forms) has only two accents, and in the distribution of them it conforms to one of the following, in which the grave accent ( • ) represents secondary stress: general types: Each of the five types admits of several modi fieations, and except in a few situations there is great freedom as to the number of unaccented syllables. End-rhyme is almost unknown: and stanza structure is very rare in Anglo-Saxon, though regular in Old Norse. The "five-type" verse was employed with marked regularity throughout the Anglo-Saxon period for poetry of all kinds. Indeed, alliterative verse, some what freer in structure, continued to he written, alongside of other metrical forms, for several centuries later: and it was handled with mas terly skill by two of the ablest poets of the age of Chaucer, Langland and the unknown author of the romance of "Gawayne and the Green knight." The "Pearl," an elegy by the latter poet. exhibits a very diflieult combination of alliteration with a complicated The Middle English period, however. is marked in general by the adoption and gradual perfec tion of the more regular measures of which mediaeval Latin and Old French verse afforded models. Tln•ee new eharaete•istics, all due to foreign influence. made their appearance in this later verse: (1) end rhyme (see llturmE) took the place of the earlier alliteration; (2) stanza structure, a development closely associated with rhyme, became common; (3) the number of unaccented syllables in a line was more strictly regulated. The change to the new type of versifi cation was gradual, and English poetry long showed traces of the older usages. Yet the Poona Morale, a poem of the twelfth century, in rhymed septenaries, attained a pretty strict regularity in syllable-counting; and the Ormalum. (about 1200, in unrhymed septenaries) is me chanically monotonous. layamon's Brat. on the other hand, a long poem of about the same time, is more various in structure. It employs both rhyme and alliteration. and retains the old free dom of accentual rhythm. The accentual sys tem persisted in many poems throughout the Middle English period. and later still in popular ballads and in the so-called 'tumbling verse' of early modern English writers. In het, the 'new principle' of Coleridge's Christaliel was really a revival of the old, native English method of counting accents.