The Poems and Fragments of Catullus | Page 3

grasp as a principle a regularity which they sometimes secured by chance; nor, so far as I am aware, have the various revivals of ancient metre in this country or Germany in any case consistently carried out the _whole_ theory, without which the reproduction is partial, and cannot look for a more than partial success. Even the four specimens given in the posthumous edition of Clough's poems, two of them elegiac, one alcaic, one in hexameters, though professedly constructed on a quantitative basis, and, in one instance (_Trunks the forest yielded, with gums ambrosial oozing, &c._) combining legitimate quantity (in which accent and position are alike observed) with illegitimate (in which position is observed, but accent disregarded) into a not unpleasing rhythm, cannot be considered as more than imperfect realizations of the true positional principle. Tennyson's three specimens are, at least in English, still unique. It is to be hoped that he will not suffer them to remain so. Systems of Glyconics and Asclepiads are, if I mistake not, easily manageable, and are only thought foreign to the genius of our language because they have never been written on strict principles of art by a really great master.
What, then, are the rules on which such rhythms become possible? They are, briefly, these:--(1) accented syllables, _as a general rule_, are long, though some syllables which count as long need not be accented, as in
_All that on earth's leas blooms, what blossoms Thessaly nursing,_
_blossoms_, though only accented on the first syllable, counts for a spondee, the shortness of the second _o_ being partly helped out by the two consonants which follow it; partly by the fact that the syllable is _in thesi_; (2) the laws of position are to be observed, according to the general rules of classical prosody: (_a_) dactyls terminating in a consonant like _beautiful_, _bounteous_, or ending in a double vowel or a diphthong like _all of you, surely may, come to thee_, must be followed by a word beginning with a vowel or _y_ or _h_; dactyls terminating in a vowel or _y_, like _slippery_, should be followed, except in rare cases, by words beginning with a consonant; trochees, whether composed of one word or more, should, if ending in a consonant, be followed by a vowel, if ending in the vowel _a_, by a consonant, thus, _planted around_ not _planted beneath_, _Aurora the sun's_ not _Aurora a sun's_ (see however, lxiv. 253), but _unto a wood, any again, sorry at all, you be amused_. (_b_) Syllables made up of a vowel followed by two or more consonants, each of which is distinctly heard in pronunciation, as _long_, _sins_, _part_, _band_, _waits_, _souls_, _ears_, _must_, _heart_, _bright_, _strength_, _end_, _and_, _rapt_, _hers_, _dealt_, mo_ment_, bo_soms_, _answers_, moun_tains_, bear_est_, tum_bling_, gi_ving_, com_ing_, harbour_ing_, diffi_cult_, immi_nent_, strata_gems_, utter_ance_, happi_est_, trem_bling_ly, can never rank as short, even if unaccented and followed by a vowel, _h_ or _y_. Thus, to go back to Longfellow's line,
_This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,_
_for(e)st_, _murmur(i)ng_, _pines (a)nd the_, are all inadmissible. But where a vowel is followed by two consonants, one of which is unheard or only heard slightly, as in _acc_use, sh_all_, _ass_emble, _diss_emble, kind_ness_, com_pass_, _aff_ect, _app_ear, _ann_oy, or when the second or third consonant is a liquid, as in _betray_, _beslime_, _besmear_, _depress_, _dethrone_, _agree_, the vowel preceding is so much more short than long as to be regularly admissible as short, rarely admissible as long. On this principle I have allowed _dis[o]rd(e)rl(y)_, _t[e]n(a)ntl(e)ss_, _heav(e)nl(y)_, to rank as dactyls.
These rules are after all only an outline, and perhaps can never be made more. It will be observed that they are more negative than positive. The reason of this is not far to seek. The main difference between my verses and those of other contemporary writers--the one point on which I claim for myself the merit of novelty--is the strict observance throughout of the rules of position. But the strict observance of position is in effect the strict avoidance of unclassical collocations of syllables: it is almost wholly negative. To illustrate my meaning I will instance the poems written in pure iambics, the _Phaselus ille_ and _Quis hoc potest uidere_. Heyse translates the first line of the former of these poems by
_Die Galeotte, die ihr schauet, liebe Herrn,_
and this would be a fair representation of a pure iambic line, according to the views of most German and most English writers. Yet not only is _Die_ no short syllable, but _ihr_, itself long, is made more hopelessly long by preceding three consonants in _schauet_, just as the last syllable of _schauet_, although in itself short, loses its right to stand for a true short in being followed by the first consonant of _liebe_. My own translation,
_The puny pinnace yonder you,