listen to the sound of the sea" in the line from Enoch Arden":

"The league-long roller thundering on the reef."

Of Tennyson's own reading of poetry Miss Emily Ritchie writes:

Tennyson's

reading of poetry

Amongst the experiences of intercourse with him, nothing was more memorable than to hear him read his poetry. The roll of his great voice acted sometimes almost like an incantation, so that when it was a new poem he was reading, the power of realising its actual nature was subordinated to the wonder at the sound of the tones. Sometimes, as in 'The Passing of Arthur,' it was a long chant, in which the expression lay chiefly in the value given to each syllable, sometimes a swell of sound like an organ's; often came tones of infinite pathos, delicate and tender, then others of mighty volume and passionate strength." 1

When thus interpreted, we easily perceive that each syllable of verse is really a separate note of music; not the dry symbol of an arbitrary system of measure

ment.

The analogy between music and

The analogy between music and poetry has always been more or less consciously recognised. Not only are musical terms and tropes so constantly used by the poets that they may be considered an integral part of verse, but the critics themselves are continually driven to have recourse to them

poetry part. ly recog. nised

to elucidate their own meaning.

Dryden says of Chaucer's verse that "there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it."

"Years," says Symonds, writing of Shelley, "filled with music that will sound as long as English lasts." 'HALLAM, LORD TENNYSON: "Life of Tennyson," vol. ii., chap. iii.

"This was a vocal year," comments Gosse in his "Life of Gray."

Saintsbury, in an analysis of Dryden's " Ode to Anne Killigrew," remarks, "As a piece of concerted music in verse it [the first stanza] has not a superior.'

Instances might be indefinitely multiplied, but these suffice to evidence the real thought-current-a current so strong, so instinctive, so really incontrovertible, that the only marvel is that scholars have not long since abandoned themselves to it, instead of endeavouring to punt up-stream in the cumbersome bateaux of a past civilisation.

The Gothic genius derived its primary inspiration from classic culture, but in no sense formulated itself technically upon the classics. The modern poet

The Gothic genius

and under this term we may include everything post-mediæval-incontinently discarded quantity, and, with an instinct truer and stronger than tradition or theory, trusted himself boldly to his ear. For, in the end, the ear is sole arbiter. Even among those languages developed directly from the Latin we do not find any imitation. The " Divina Commedia" of Dante and the "Sonnets" of Petrarch are not derived from classic prototypes, but are individual evolutions, while nothing could be freer than the early Spanish dramatists.

Early discarding

of quantity

The sense of quantity was lost or discarded very early in the Christian era. "We are told by Christ ( Metrik der Griechen und Römer') that Ritschl considered the mill-song of the Lesbian women to be an early example of accentual metre in Greek. In Latin the Instructiones' of the barbarous Commodianus (about the middle of the third century) is usually named as the first specimen of accentual verse. Whatever may be the date of the earliest exist

ing specimen, there can be no doubt that the feeling for quantity had long before died out among all but the learned few."1

Music developed with poetry in mediæval Europe

We may account for this substitution of accentual for quantitative standards partly by the decline of learning; but it seems to me even better accounted for by the fact that, at the same time that the art of poetry was emerging once more from mediæval night, music was also undergoing a transformation of its own, and emerging, through the Gregorian chant and the early monastic composers, into an independent art. In the cloister were being laid the scientific corner stones, while, outside, the minnesänger, the trouvères, and the troubadours were pouring into the ears of the people their wild and passionate lays. Imbued with this new and vital sense of rhythm, the poets unconsciously transferred the same to their verse. It was this which imparted to the movement of the Renaissance its splendour. It was not any reproduction of the old, but literally a new birth.

English verse acknowledged not to be quantitative

2

Considering the fact that English verse is acknowledgedly not quantitative, the efforts of scholars of all time to prove it so appear, to say the least, herculean. Each man has a system of scansion of his own, opposed to every other man's; each

'JOSEPH B. MAYOR: "English Metre" (Preface, p. 8).

'Guido of Arezzo (1020) and Franco of Cologne (about 1200-some writers place him much earlier) are the only names worth mentioning at this period. The labours of the first culminated in the rise of descant, i.e., the combination of sounds of unequal length; or music in which two or more sounds succeed each other while one equal to them in length was sustained. The labours of Franco may be connected with a better system of musical notation, the introduction of sharps and flats, and the cantus mensurabilis, or division of music into bars." -HAWEIS: "Music and Morals " (book ii., sec. i.).

demolishing the authority before him, to have his own in turn overthrown. It reminds one of nothing so much as the contests of chivalry, when no errant knight might meet another without putting lance in rest to try which was the better man.

English

One English metrist, Dr. Guest, holds such stringent ideals of metrical perfection-all based upon quantitythat he would seem to condemn as illegitimate metrists a great part of English verse. Another, Dr. Abbott, would get over the "difficulty of extra syllables" by "effects of slurring." Mayor disposes summarily of a number of his fellow metrists, but has only a fresh pabulum of routine scansion to offer. Some of the scholars have misgivings; but the fetters of tradition are hard to break. Mr. A. J. Ellis asserts that "the whole subject of English metres requires investigation on the basis of accent." Yet he appears still to scan his verse, and superimposes upon this a system of metrical analysis upon "force, length, pitch, weight, silence," subdivided into forty-five different expressionmarks for each syllable to be considered! This system, he tells us, he has not yet attempted to work out! Professor Sylvester goes so far as to recommend the use of "musical nomenclature in verse," but at the same time does not use it, and offers us a Dædalian maze of lockjaw terminology which is anything but musical. John Addington Symonds tells us that "scansion by time takes the place of scansion by metrical feet; the bars of the musical composer, where different values from the breve to the semi-quaver find their place, suggest a truer measure than the longs and shorts of classic feet."

When we turn to American teachers we find them much more radical; yet, though they discard the old,

American

they have not found their way to the new, and seem to wander, as it were, in fog-lands and without solid ground under their feet-or at least they place none metrists under those of the student. Professor Gummere has no better way to measure verse than by "a succession of stresses." Professor Hiram Corson also discards classic traditions and uses for analysis of verse the symbols XA, AX, XXA, AXX, XAX, etc., a colourless method which conveys no rhythmic impression to the mind.

It seems admitted by all authorities that English verse is accentual and not quantitative; by the most advanced, that English verse will not scan; furthermore that we moderns have lost the feeling for quantity. Whether we have lost anything which was worth the keeping I leave others to decide;1 but if we have lost it, "a God's name," as Spenser says, let us let it go. Let us not try to mete the culture of one age by the measuring-tape of another. Let us not put new wine into old bottles.

Yet, if we discard the old, what shall be substituted? For there must indubitably be a science, a constructive. principle, of verse. The laws exist whether we recognise them or not. The earth revolved around the sun before Galileo's momentous discovery. The law of gravitation flung apples to the ground before Newton arose to give that law a name. So, through the centuries, the poets

1" The distinctive feature of these poets (Melic poets: a term given to the lyric poets of Greece) was the necessary combination of music, and very frequently of rhythmical movement or orchestic with their text. When this dancing came into use, as in the choral poetry of the early Dorian bards, and of the Attic dramatists, the metre of the words became so complex and divided into subordinated rhythmical periods, that Cicero tells us such poems appeared to him like prose, since the necessary music and figured dancing were indispensable to explain the metrical plan of the poet. I have no doubt many modern readers of Pindar will recognise the pertinence of this remark."-MAHAFFY: "History of Greek Literature," vol. i., chap. x.