GENERAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION

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GENERAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION

ARBER, E., The Term Catalogues, 1668—1709.

CATALOGUE of Original and Early Editions of some of the Poetical and Prose Works of English Writers from Wither to Prior. New York, Grolier Club, 1905.

General Catalogue of books in all languages, arts, and sciences, Printed in Great Britain, and published in London. From the year 1700 to 1786. Printed for W. Bent. 1786.

GENTLEMAN'S Magazine Library, Edited by G. S. Gomme. London, 1888-89.

GOOD, J. W., Studies in the Milton Tradition. Urbana, 1915. Chapter II.

History of bookselling in England. Quarterly Review. Vol. CLXXIV 1892.

JACOB, G., The Poetical Register, or, the Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets, with an account of their writings. London 1719, 1720.

JACOB, G., An Historical Account of the Lives and Writings of our most considerable English Poets, etc. London, 1720. JAGGARD, W., Shakespeare Bibliography. Stratford-on-Avon,

1911.

LEE, J., Memorial for the Bible Societies in Scotland. Edinburgh, 1824. Additional memorial. Edinburgh 1826.

MASSON, D., The Life of John Milton. 6 vols. 1859-80. MUMBY, F. A., The romance of bookselling: a history from the earliest times to the twentieth century. 1910. (Contains a full bibliography of the subject by Peet, W. H.).

SHERZER, J., American Editions of Shakespeare. Pub. of the Mod. Lang. Ass. of America, Vol. XXII, 1907.

CHAPTER III

THE SPENSERIAN STANZA IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND

EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Versification itself becomes part of the sentiment of a poem.

Leigh Hunt.

In examining the history of the Spenserian stanza in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is necessary to distinguish between prosodic theory and prosodic practice. Though critical analysis of English prosody can hardly be said to have begun before the appearance of Bysshe's "Art of Poetry" (1702), this stanza was criticised a good deal before, and abundantly during the course of the eighteenth century. But actual experimentation in prosody was on the whole in abeyance. The imitations were mostly too diffident to give the poets much scope for metrical originality. The very numerous critical comments on Spenser occasionally contain observations on the prosodic technique of the Spenserian stanza. But the evidence is extremely miscellaneous and as it is desirable to see the historical cumulation of the criticisms, the various passages of prosodic theory may be chronologically detailed.

Probably the first written comment on the Spenserian stanza was made by Gabriel Harvey, (d. 1630), the man who exercised over Spenser an influence from which the poet shook himself free only with difficulty. In his copy of George Gascoigne's "Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse", (1575) 1), in which Gas

1) This copy is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

L'ISLE; DRUMMOND; MORE; DAVENANT

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coigne deprecates the sacrifice of reason to rhyme or the use of obsolete words, Harvey added the following note to Gascoigne's advice to "hold the just measure wherewith you begin your verse":"The difference of the last verse from the rest in everie stanza, a grace of the Faerie Queen."

1625. The first printed comment on Spenser's stanza is found in William L'Isle's Prefatory words to the reader, before his translation of Du Bartas. L'Isle insists on the necessity of a caesura in the middle of the alexandrine.

"The Bartasian verse (not unlike herein to the Latin Pentameter) hath ever this propertie, to part in the mids betwixt two wordes: so much doe French prints signifie with a stroke interposed.... The neglect of this hath caused many a brave stanza of the Faerie Queene to end but harshly, which might have been prevented at the first; but now the fault may be sooner found than amended."

1628. In Drummond's account of Ben Jonson's "Conversations" we find Ben's opinion that "Spenser's stanzaes pleased him not, nor his matter."

1647. Henry More refers to the musical power of the stanza. In the dedication to his "dear father, Alexander More Esquire", prefixed to his "Philosophical Poems", (1647), he says:

"But to speak modestly you deserve the patronage of better Poems than these, though you may lay a more proper claim to these than any. You having from my childhood tuned mine ears to Spenser's rhymes, entertaining us on winter nights, with that incomparable piece of his, The Fairy Queen, a Poem as richly fraught with divine Morality as Phansy." 1651. Sir William Davenant in the Preface to "Gondi- X bert":

"The unlucky choice of his stanza hath by repe

tition of Rime brought him to the necessity of many exploded words."

1667. Woodford in the Preface to "A Paraphrase upon the Psalms of David":

"Mr. Sandys.... has us'd greater variety of measures, and such as have by experience been found to be very agreeable to Musick, -the life and spirit of Poesy. In mine will yet appear a greater liberty, both as to the expression and the different sort of stanzas which I have us'd".

Though Woodford tried different variations of the Spenserian stanza in this volume, the Spenserian stanza was not used.

1674. In Rymer's Preface to his translation of Rapin's "Reflections" we find for the first time the idea that Spenser's stanza is "nowise proper for our language”. The mistake is due to Ariosto, says Rymer. This theory that the stanza on account of its repetition of rhymes is unfit for the English language, though it may be suitable for Italian, led a vigorous existence for over a century. It is the keynote of eighteenth century criticism of the stanza. The anonymous writer of "Clifton, A Poem, In Imitation of Spenser" (Bristol, 1775) repeats what Rymer had said a century before. In the preface to "Clifton" the author says:

"The quaintness of his expression, the obsoleteness of his terms and the frequent occurrence of his rhymes are very general objections to one of the finest poets that ever lived. But I should pay very little attention to any objections which might be made to this stanza if I had but one ray of his genius to illuminate it, I am only afraid, that having adopted the one without being in possession of the other, I may be giving a false idea of my original; and that they who are accustomed to the correct and polished verse of these

PHILLIPS; WOODFORD; DRYDEN

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days may, from my imperfect imitation, be discouraged from looking into that mine of poetry, that fruitful garden of the imagination the Fairy Queen of

Spenser."

Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew, in his "Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum", shows a better appreciation of the stanza:

"How much more stately and majestic in epic poems, especially of heroic argument, Spenser's stanza (which I take to be but an improvement upon Tasso's Ottava Rima, or the Ottava Rima itself, used by many of our once esteemed poets), is above the way, either of couplet, or alteration of four verses only, I am persuaded were it revived, would soon be acknowledged."

This attitude is exceptional for the days of Dryden, but it was common in the time of Pope.

1679. Samuel Woodford in the preface to his "Paraphrase upon the Canticles", says:

"If therefore Ourselves or the French will use Blank Verse, either in an Heroick Poem, where they should be, I think, Couplets, as in Mr. Cowley's Davideis (for the Quatrains of Sir William Davenant, and the Stanza of Nine in Spenser's "Faery Queen", which are but an improvement of the Ottava Rima, to instance in no more, seem not to me so proper), .... let us give it the Character, as to its Form, which it anciently had...."

1693. Dryden made his most elaborate criticism of Spenser in his “Essay on Satire" (1693). Of the diction X and stanza he says:

'.... for the rest his obsolete language and ill choice of his stanzas, are faults but of the second magnitude; for, notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice: and for