Historical Manual of English Prosody. Saintsbury George

often, if not as a rule in the best examples, uses particular sleights of fingering and execution parallel to those of the musical composer and performer. The results of this may appear to constitute verse-sections different from the feet. But these, however, never supersede feet, and are always resolvable into them; nor do they ever supply criteria for anything except the individual line or passage. They stand to prosody proper very much as delivery or elocution does to rhetoric. The conveniences of this "fingering," or poetic elocution, as well as sense and other things, may sometimes bring about alternative scansions, but all these connect themselves with and are obedient to the general foot system.[30]

      Confusion of rhythms intolerable.

      42. Despite this possibility of alternative scansion, and the other and commoner possibility of substitution of individual feet, iambic and trochaic, dactylic and anapæstic, metre or rhythm remain entirely distinct. Any system which regards these as merely different names for the same thing is self-condemned as disregarding the evidence, or rather verdict, of the ear.

      FOOTNOTES:

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      [25] See above, Rule 2. It should be hardly necessary to remark that the explanations and exemplifications of these rules are to be furnished by the whole book, and that the Glossary in particular should be in constant use.

      [26] E.g. "fāte" or "fāst" as opposed to "făt"; "mēet" to "dĕter"; "rīte" to "fĭt"; "ōmen" to "ŏtter"; "dūpe" to "bŭt."

[27] The combination of dactyl and trochee in English, however, will not produce the same effect as the combination of dactyl and spondee in Latin or Greek.

[28] Rules 26 and 27 do not apply to unmetrical verse, such as the old alliterative couplet-line, or the rhythmed prose-verse of Ossian, Blake, and Whitman.

[29] Thus Dryden rhymes "traveller" to "star," giving the er the value it has in "clerk."

[30] For elucidation and example see below, in Glossary, as above noted, p. 8. The "sections" referred to are not those of Guest.

CHAPTER VI

       CONTINUOUS ILLUSTRATIONS OF ENGLISH SCANSION ACCORDING TO THE FOOT SYSTEM

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I. Old English Period

       Scansion only dimly visible.

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      No better examples can be taken for this than two already used by Dr. Sievers—the close of the Phœnix with its illuminative Latin admixture, and a bit of Beowulf (205 ff.)(dotted foot division added in first case):

      Háfað ¦ us alýfed ¦ lucis | auctor Þœt we mó¦tun hér ¦ meru |eri ȝóddædum be¦ȝiétan ¦ gaudia in | coelo Pǽr we ¦ mótun ¦ maxima | regna.

      Hǽfde se ȝoda || Géata téoda

       cémpan ȝecórene || þara þe ne cénóste

       findan míhte || fíftener súm

       súndwudu sóhte || sécȝ wísade

       láȝucræftig món || lándȝemýrcu.

      In these the general trochaic run and the corresponding tendency to dactylic substitution, which are so evident in the Latin, as it were muffle themselves in the English; and the contrast, so strikingly brought out in the mixed passage, is not really less evident in the pure Anglo-Saxon one. The muffling is the result, partly of the imperfect substitution, or rather the actual presence of syllables not digested into the metre; partly of the overbearing middle pause, which, suggesting another in each section, chops the whole up into disconnected grunts or spasmodic phrases.

II. Late Old English with Nisus towards Metre ("Grave" Poem. Guest's text, spelling, and accentuation; the usual marks for the latter being substituted for his dividing bars, and foot division added in dots.)

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      Thé wes ¦ bóld ge¦býld || er ¦ thú i¦bóren ¦ wére,

       Thé wes ¦ mólde i¦mynt || er ¦ thú of ¦ móder ¦ cóme,

       Ác hit ¦ nés no i¦díht ¦|| né theo ¦ deópnes i¦méten,

       Nés gyt i¦lóced || hu ¦ lóng hit the ¦ wére.

      Here an immense advance is made. The rhythm is still trochaic, though it is by no means certain that it does not show symptoms of iambicisation. It is far more well marked; and one of the means of the marking is that the "ditch in the middle"—the formal pause—though no doubt technically and even rhetorically existing, is overrun by the suggested feet as long as the trochee is kept. But if this pause holds its place it suggests iambic scansion—

      The | wes bold | gebyld;

      and something like the whole future of English poetry lies in the suggestion. Do not omit to notice the metrical assistance given by the epanaphora, or repetition of the same word and phrases in the same place, and by the imperfect and irregular assonances emphasising the divisions.

III. Transition Period

       Metre struggling to assert itself in a New Way. Part of the verses of St. Godric.

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      Sainte ¦ Mari¦e Vir¦gine

       Moder Je¦su Cris¦tes Na¦zarene

       Onfang ¦ schild ¦ help thin ¦ Godric,

       Onfang ¦ bring he ¦ gelich ¦ mit the ¦ in God¦es ric.

      A distinct effort at iambic stanza, such as that of the great Ambrosian hymn, Veni Redemptor gentium.

      It is not surprising if the experimenter stumbles, if the old trochaic rhythm is sometimes in his head, and if, in the last verse, he either overruns or divides and makes a quintet. The struggle towards feet—and new feet—is there, and rhyme, if imperfect, is there also.

IV. Early Middle English Period

       Attempt at merely Syllabic Uniformity with Unbroken Iambic Run and no Rhyme. Orm.

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      And nu | icc wil|le shæ|wenn yuw

       summ-del | withth God|ess hellp|e

       Off thatt | Judiss|kenn