THE TIME-ELEMENT IN ENGLISH VERSE *

NEARLY all modern writers on the theory of verse have admitted that English words have no fixed syllabic quantities such as are postulated for the classical languages, but that English quantities, so far as they exist, are variable and (in part at least) subjective in character. To this it is true there are exceptions, chiefly among the poets, like some of those considered in the preceding section on Imitations of Classical Metres.

Writers who have agreed that English words have no fixed quantities, are still at variance as to the relation of the element of syllabic time to the element of accent in English verse. Two extremes may at once be distinguished: that represented by the familiar statement that our rhythms differ from those of classical poetry in being based wholly on accent, and that represented most notably by the late Sidney Lanier, who held that syllabic time-values in English verse are as exact and regular (hence as accurately measurable) as the notes of music. Lanier applied his theory with admirable consistency, and represented all sorts of English verse, even that of the Anglo-Saxon period, in musical notation. He is almost universally regarded, however, as having been led by the analogy between music and poetry to carry his method to quite impossible lengths. The most characteristic example of this is his representation of the familiar "blank verse measure in "three-four" time, each accented syllable being given a time-value twice as long as that of the adjacent

* This discussion is in part a reproduction of an article with the same title originally published in Modern Language Notes, December, 1899.

unaccented syllable - a method of reading which can easily be shown to be contrary to all common practice. It should not be forgotten, however, that a debt of gratitude is owed Mr. Lanier for having been one of the first to emphasize adequately the fact that verse, like music, is rhythmical sound.

Besides those who make English verse to depend wholly on accent, and those who give it time-values equally regular and measurable with those of music, there is a third class disposed to confuse the two elements of quantity and accent. Of this class was Edgar Poe, who in his essay on The Rationale of Verse constantly spoke of accented and unaccented syllables as "long" and "short," respectively, and was even disposed to carry the identification into Latin verse itself. This essay of Poe's has lately been defended by Mr. John M. Robertson, in the interesting Appendix to his New Essays toward a Critical Method (1897). Unfortunately Mr. Robertson seems to have perpetuated deliberately the confusion which he found in Poe in the use of the terms "accent" and "quantity." He even says that the attempt to distinguish them is ill-founded, "that quantity in speaking must amount substantially to the same thing as stress," and, again, that "Poe's identification of stress with length is perfectly sound." Whatever be the fundamental fact here, the use of terms cannot be commended. If quantity is swallowed up in accent, so that accent alone dominates our verse, that is one thing; if the conditions are such that a heavy stress and a long quantity nearly always coincide, that is also a possible doctrine; but that is not to say that the two things should be identified. If all tall men wear long coats, or if all men - tall and short-wear long coats, it follows in neither case that tallness and long-coatedness are the same thing. It is a mere matter of physics that duration of sound and intensity of sound are perfectly distinguishable, and that they have no necessary connection with each other. The problem is how are they related in practice?

It has already been observed that Mr. Lanier did good service in emphasizing the analogy between music and poetry, but that he carried the analogy too far. It may, therefore, be worth

while to consider at just this point the elements of likeness and of difference in the two forms of art. Both are forms of rhythmical art: music and verse are alike rhythmical sound. Lanier showed with sufficient certainty that rhythm is dependent upon both time and accent. He said, to be sure, that "time is the essential" element; * but this does not seem to have been altogether what he meant, for he himself pointed out that the ear insistently marks off time-elements by the sense of variation of stress, even when there is no real variation, as in the tick-tack of the clock. He also pointed out that accent marks the rhythm of music quite as truly as that of verse, the rule being that ordinarily the first note of each measure shall receive a special stress. It seems, then, that the rhythm of music is based on the recurrence of accented sounds at equal time-intervals. The same thing is true of the rhythm of verse. For every kind of metre there is a normal verse-rhythm which is present in the mind as the basis on which the verse is built up, no matter how many variations may constantly occur. This normal rhythm is formed by a succession of accents at exactly equal time-intervals, † such as can be marked off by a metronome, or by the mechanical beating of the foot on the floor. We realize that the verse as commonly read frequently departs from this regularity of intervals; but without the regularity as a norm to which to refer it, we should not recognize it as verse. The normal accentinterval we call a "foot."

Exception must therefore be taken, it seems to me, to another contention of Mr. Robertson's; namely, that "there is no timeunit." "Our feet," he says, “are a pure convention, and the sole rhythmic fact is the fluctuant relativity of long and short, or

* Science of English Verse, p. 65.

† On the nature of our sense of rhythm, see Mr. T. L. Bolton's account of his experiments relating to the subject, given in the American Journal of Psychology, vol. vi. p. 145. He reaches the conclusion that, in order to awaken the sense of rhythm, it is necessary that "the accents in a line shall recur at regular intervals."

stress and slur." I am glad to be able to believe that the fundamental rhythmic fact is something more definite than this.* But the latest writer on the subject, Mr. Mark Liddell, in his Introduction to the Scientific Study of Poetry, joins Mr. Robertson in finding no feet in English verse. Nay, he represents the metrist who makes use of the old conventions of rhythmical measurement as one who will "flounder ceaselessly amid the scattered timbers of iambuses, spondees, dactyls, tribrachs, never reaching the firm ground of truth"! Mr. Liddell points out that we do not pronounce English words, even in verse, with mechanically regular alternations of stress; and he rejects the explanation that there is nevertheless a typical form in the poet's and the reader's mind, on the ground that it is "a strange state of affairs that the æsthetically imperfect should produce a greater pleasure than the æsthetically perfect." Strange, perhaps, but as familiar as sunrise, if by "æsthetically perfect" we mean absolutely regular. Here we need to recur to the analogy of music, where the phenomenon in question is so obvious. Let any one attempt to follow a symphony with a metronome in his hand, and he will soon discover that if the metronome represents the æsthetically perfect rhythm, the orchestra represents a more pleasurable imperfection. Its accelerations and retardations carry on a continual conflict with the typical time of the music, yet that typical time is not only printed on every sheet, but is in the mind of every player. It is precisely so with verse.

It is true, of course, that the variations from regularity of rhythm are more numerous and conspicuous in verse than in music. The reason is obvious: the sounds of verse have constantly to effect a compromise between the typical rhythm to which they are set and the irregular stress- and time-variations

* Similarly, so distinguished a scholar as Professor Skeat has lately opposed the scansion of English verse by feet, in the Transactions of the Philological Society for 1897-1898. For an ample examination of his views the reader must be referred to the new edition of Mr. Mayor's Chapters on English Metre, chap. vii.