BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1891 A,j.s\u/^. %%JM/.mL. Cornell University Library PA 411.G64 Chapters on Greek metric. 3 1924 021 604 388 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021604388 pale 'Bicentennial i^nlJlication^ CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC ^ale ^Bicentennial l^ulilication^ With the approval of the President and Fellows of Tale University, a series of volumes has been prepared by a number of the Professors and In- structors.^ to be issued in connection with the Bicentennial Anniversary, as a partial indica- tion of the character of the studies in which the University teachers are engaged. This series of volumes is respectfully dedicated to W^z &smxm& of tlie mntfjcrstits CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC BY THOMAS DWIGHT GOODELL Professor of Greek in Yale University NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD " 1901 K Copyright, 1901, By Yale University PuUished, August, iqoi UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON AND SON ■ CAMBRIDGE, U.S. A. TEXNQN TE MHTPI THS T EHISTHMHS KAAHI KEISeO TEXNON AE XOI NOMOI KAAQN KAAOI CONTENTS Page I. Scope and Method '...•.. 1 n. Ehtthmicus or Meteicus? 6 III. Rhythm and Language 58 IV. Rhythm in Greek 99 V. Foot, Ictus, "Cyclic" Feet 131 VI. Compound and Mixed Meters 184 INDEX 247 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC I SCOPE AND METHOD It is a mark of a living and growing civilization, in contrast with a stagnant or declining one, that in the former men are ever renewing the critical examination of the fundamental notions. This is true also of every separate art or science. From each new vantage ground attained the question is put anew about one principle and behef after another, supposed to be firmly estab- lished : But after all, is it well-founded, is it true, is it fundamental? To some people this is disturbing; they fancy that the very framework is dissolving and founda- tions disappearing. Yet aU the while out of the con- fusion of decay, in which the outworn vanishes, there is growing up a new and sounder life. The questioning attitude toward the old is an essential condition of such growth ; all of the old that is worth preserving finds its place in a newly organized and higher type. The science of classical philology is in every branch of it undergoing that experience. Greek metric is a peculiarly difficult branch, because the forms of verse are nothing except as spoken, and the ancients can no longer speak their verses to us ; there is always an unknown quantity in our reconstruction of the series of sounds which their lines represent. True, a consider- able degree of uncertainty or of known error in details is 1 2 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC consistent with substantial truth to the more important facts of rhythmical movement in the poetry of a past age. Our pronunciation of Shakspere's lines would have sounded barbarous to him ; yet we are certain that with few exceptions we reproduce his rhythm with sub- stantial truth, although we have changed the quality of the vowels. Yet where the basis of rhythmical structure is so different as in ancient Greek when compared with modern Enghsh or German, it is always possible that the unknown element affects the very essence. Widely different views have been held, and are now held, about the nature of some common rhythms of Greek verse, controversies are rife and lusty. The onlooker may be pardoned for believing that all is uncertain and knowl- edge unattainable. Yet on the whole the past century has seen substantial progress toward the recovery of the ancient meters. It is not my purpose to recount the history of this progress, or to discuss with anything like completeness the opinions now current; but rather to offer, if possible, a modest contribution toward farther advance. The following chapters wiU be devoted prim- arily to discussion of fundamental principles. But they will include also applications of those principles to par- ticular forms of verse, in sufficient niunber to keep the discussion as concrete as possible, and at the same time leave no doubt as to my notion of the practical bearing of the conclusions here defended. Such a discussion, to be of any use, must of course rest upon adequate acquaintance with what others have done ; but it need not necessarily be accompanied at every step by detailed refutation, or even enumeration, of views defended by others, whether at variance or in more or less close agreement with those of the author. The reader will meet here only the minimum of refer- SCOPE AND METHOD 3 ence to previous writers on the subject. To avoid mis- understanding, therefore, a word of explanation is called for. It should be said at the outset that my motive for such omission of references is not in the least a desire to conceal my dependence on predecessors or to detract from their merits. Closer study of so thorny a subject tends rather to raise one's estimate of earlier work, in some cases even of those with whom one can least agree. But in the first place every new presentation must stand or fall on its own merits; and those most competent to judge it, whose appraisal wiU ultimately determine its place, do not need to be informed either where I have learned from others or whose view it is that I am endeavoring to replace with a sounder one. And again, the subject appears to me peculiarly difficult to present with sufficient clearness to avert misunder- standing. The constant citation of others' views, whether to controvert them in toto or to explain a par- tial failure to agree with them, or even to state that I have followed them, would have added much to the bulk of these chapters, something to their obscurity, and noth- ing to their real value. There are then three classes of cases, ruTiTiing together more or less, in which I shall not always feel bound to give precise references. First, the volumes of Rossbach and Westphal, Christ's Metrik, and the section by Gleditsch in Miiller's Handbuch are assumed to be well known; they must in great part furnish the basis for any new-comer. Not the slightest originality can be supposed to be claimed for anything that is contained in any of these. This broad acknowl- edgment of my great indebtedness to them will I hope be deemed sufficient. Secondly, my presentation vidll sometimes closely parallel that of the scholars just named 4 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC or of some one else, but with more or less deviation on essential points. While no credit is claimed where such repetition occurs, omission of such parts repeated from others would leave my page obscure, particularly to one who is not already quite at home in this field. Simply to make my own conception plain at the points where it diverges, it will not infrequently be necessary, then, to go over agaia in detail some topic or portion of a topic that another has already clearly elucidated. Comparison wiH generally show, I trust, that the deviations justify the repetition. But constant reference to the points of like- ness and of divergence, as was just said, would greatly lengthen the argument and introduce another and most annoying source of obscurity. Naturally the more famil- iar the reader is with metrical studies the more of such repetition wiU he find. Thirdly, in some cases of funda- mental disagreement, which wiU at once be recognized as such, the polemic tone will on principle be avoided as much as possible, even to the omission of names of scholars who are deservedly honored in the whole philo- logical world. Considerable space wiU. be given to quotations from our ancient sources. To judge from my own experience, nearly aU readers will be grateful for this. Even if one has the books at hand, one grudges the time required for looking out the passages. Care will be taken also to cite the original with sufficient fulness. Nothing more quickly destroys confidence in a writer's singleness of aiaa than to discover that the fuU context materially changes the aspect of a citation on which his argument depends. It may be only his judgment that is at fault, not his sincerity; but the effect on our estimate of his reasoning is the same. It is better to waste a little space by citing at unnecessary length than to commit SCOPE AND METHOD b even unintentionally the mistake of garbling. It is good policy as -well as a duty to put before the reader every facility for testing the argument for MmseK at every step. Similar considerations render some repetition of my own argument unavoidable, as the same topic or the same statement of an ancient author may require exami- nation from more than one side. The whole subject has been so obscured by misunderstanding that whoever writes upon it at all is bound to do his utmost for per- spicuity ; the repetition involved need not lead to dif- fuseness. Finally let no one imagine from what has preceded that my program includes anything so large as revolu- tion or re-creation of this branch of philological science. To not a few my conclusions will appear antiquated rather than specially new. The whole aim of these chap- ters wiU be attained, if by steadier adherence to certain sound principles, that have been too little observed, our conception of Greek verse-forms is brought a little nearer to the reality. It will be my constant endeavor to see things as th^y are, to avoid polemic so far as possible, and to keep an open mind. II RHYTHMICUS OR METKICUS? In our ancient sources on metric there is frequent mention of certain differences of opinion between the pvO/MLKoi (rhythmici) or jjmvo-lkoC (musici) and the IxerpiKoi (metrici) or ypa/ifiaTiKoi (grammatici). These differences are well known and have been often dis- cussed ; yet it will be worth while to examine again the more important passages referring to them. The exact chronological order, even if this could be always made out, is of little consequence for our present purpose. We may take first a brief and very clear one from the scholia to Hephaistion. 'Icrreov Be on aWw? Xafi^dvovcn Tot)? j^p6vov fiUKpov r/iiiixpovov Sk to <7 • "jrav ycip crvfiv CKpdvcov ypa/i/idTcov to t, kol yevecrdta TpoTTCi • /iiei^iov avTT] tS)v irpoTepcov ecTai avWa^Siv, icaX eTL Ppa')(ela /tevet. TpiTOV y en ypd/j,/ia Ty avTy avX- \a^Ti irpotTTeO'^TCo to v vcnv, ftexP'' ypafi/idTav ItttA p,r)Kv- vofievav fiaKpav, ovk avayxacov iv rm irapovTi a-KOireiv. apicel yap, oerov ets ttjv irapovaav inrodecnv ijp- fLorrev, elpija-dai on SiaXXaTrei, Kal ^payela vov' SrjXov Se e/e rov rijv ^paj(elav ^ SnrXov crvfi(f>d)vov •KaparedevrO'i rj evoa}vov, aopv irpStrov ray BwdfteK BieiXovTO, eireira t&v avXXa^&v Kal ovt(ova Kal d(f>6oyya — ovrcoa-l ydp TTov Xeyovariv ol Beivol irepl tovtcov — Kal to, a5 t^covr)- evTa fiev ov, ov fievToi ye do)v^^'), brings with it a closer observance of time- ratios in the rhythm ; that is the only rhythmical change made when one passes from the recitation to the singing of those lines. The naturalness of the process and the slightness of the change are neatly illustrated by the way in which children tend to read simple verse in "sing-song." An example of the extreme limit of the change is seen iq Schubert's music to Goethe's Heiden- rSslein. The natural rhythm of the words is observed throughout ; but in certain places the time is filled out by prolonging the notes in place of the pause which one more naturally makes in simple reading. The first stanza runs: Sah ein Knab' ein RSslein stehn, Roslein auf der Heiden, War so jung imd morgenschon, Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn, Sah's mit vielen Freuden. In the melody, in | time, each syllable has an eighth note or its equivalent, except that schnell is held a little and es correspondingly shortened (as one would naturally read it), and except farther at the end of each line. There the words stehn, schon, and sehn receive each a quarter note, so that the time which in. reading is occu- pied by the syllable and a pause is filled out in singing with a musical tone. Finally at the end of Unes two and five (which as words and syllables have only the length of Sah ein Knab' ein Boslein, without stehn"), a reader waits, until the Hne and pause together equal in time the other Hues. It is as if the second line were Rdslein auf der Heideiv-flur, and the reader substituted a pause for -flur. In the melody, however, this pause, like the one at the end of the other lines, is filled out RHYTHMICUS OR METRICUSf 23 with musical sound, in this case by prolongation of the next to the last syllable ; so that Hei- and Freu- receive each a quarter note, while -den also receives a quarter note, or an eighth note and eighth rest. Thus among other things illustrated by the stanza are two forms of the Greek catalexis. And to make the example all the more significant, the same words were set to music by another composer. Job. F. Reichardt,^ who employed the same time and preserved the natural rhythm of the words in the same way as Schubert, except in one mere trifle. That is, he wrote two eighth notes instead of a dotted eighth and a sixteenth for the words schnell es ; and here the singer might very likely make no difference what- ever in the rendering. I have ventured to dweU on these details in order to make clear the following fact. In cases like this, if poet and musical composer had been one and the same, he would have needed for composing this and other tunes on the same principle, melodies only, without harmony or accompaniment of differing rhythm, no system of notation for the rhythm, and no detailed theory as to the ratios between the various syllables or notes. To place over the syllables signs indicating the place which each note had in the scale, leaving the time unmarked, except as the words in their ordinary spelling indicate the reading, would be sufficient for any singer who understood the system. If substantially aU song were of this character, the poet-musician would feel no need of a detailed scientific theory so far as that concerns a statement of exact ratios between syllables, any more than at present the poet feels the need of such a theory for writing verse. The supposed modern poet-musician might, as the poet now may, either be quite uninterested ^ In Feters's Liederscbatz. 24 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC in the scientific theory on those points or hold an errone- ous theory, and stOl write good poetry in exquisite ' rhythm, to which, if he possessed the required skill in the other departments of music, he could add exquisite melody. Nor do I see that the addition of a dance, itself also conforming in rhythm to the words, would alter the requirement in the least as regards rhythmical theory. That would be implicitly contained, sufficiently for all his artistic needs, in the doctrine of sounds and syllables, and of feet and larger units as made up of com- binations of syllables, — a doctrine leaving room for a considerable amount of uncertainty as to some of the exact ratios within the foot. Now this was precisely the case with the Greeks. Before Aristoxenos students of verse-forms were content to take their start from syllables, studying sounds in order to explain the constitution of the syllables, treating feet as made up of syllables, and larger units as made up of feet. It was also clear that the normal feet — all com- binations of syllables to which they gave the name Tro'Se? — contained, when sung, a part marked and accompanied by the down-beat and also a part that was sung while the beatiag hand or foot was returning to the starting- point. These were the portions known as thesis and arsis, standing to each other in the ratio of 1 : 1, 2 : 1, or 3:2. So much it was needful to know in order to beat time or to keep the time in singiag. Farther, in regular dactylic or anapsestic verse, and in the vast majority of cases in iambic, trochaic, and paionic verse, it was clearly brought out in the process of beating time that the long syllable had twice the length of the short. That ratio was therefore naturally given as the general rule, in all the normal feet as presented in the theory. But precisely what ratios resulted when in pv9 noiroiCa RHYTHMICUS OR METRICUSf 25 (i. e., in the actual production of rhythm in poetry) an arsis was not represented by a separate syllable, or when a line was treated as the line Roslein auf der Heiden is in Goethe's stanza and Schubert's or Reichardt's music, or when feet of different r^ivr} were mingled in one group, — on such points they might easily be somewhat in- different, or might hold views that withiu certaiu limi ts were not in agreement. In practice, in reading and sing- ing, there would still be agreement, though people who agreed in practice might differ in their explanation of what they did, as is frequently the case with readers of modem verse.^ At any rate we get no distiuct indication of interest ia such points until Aristoxenos took them up. He was neither poet nor musical composer, but a scholar and man of science, the pupil of Aristotle. He was also a man of taste, fonder of the great classical poets and musicians than of the productions of his con- temporaries. The scientific aspects of the arts interested him, and he hoped that a better statement of theory would be an influence on the side of. better taste. He treated all rhythms as primarily combinations of time ratios, starting from the %jOoVo? Tr/jwro? instead of the syllable as the unit. This new point of view, once in- troduced into the science of metric, was never again whoUy lost. But neither did the new method penetrate and master the science completely. And the reasons are not hard to understand. To begin with, for practical purposes 1 Tennyson is quoted by his son, in his Life of the poet, as saying that "few educated men really understand the structure of blank verse," and as remarking on the way in which Englishmen " confound accent and quantity." If nothing else, this illustrates the differences of theory referred to. And it is notorious that scholars are widely at variance in their description of common English meters, which all agree substantially in reading. 26 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC tlie older method seemed good enough so long as the language still lived, with quantities and intonations sub- stantially unchanged, and poetic production, even though not of the greatest, still going on. And then the method of Aristoxenos had the disadvantage, for popularity, that always inheres in the abstract over the concrete. I mean this. Syllables, words, verses, are something audible, visible, significant; every one felt he knew pretty well what these were. But time is abstract, impalpable, an empty something that accompanies the sounds and is not easily conceived alongside them. A )(^p6vav Ta^if is not easily described or grasped, even by musicians. Ancient musical notation gave far less help than ours does. But the rhythmic of Aristoxenos required one to fix his attention on time, time-intervals, and time-ratios, apart from the syllables, notes, or steps in which those time-relations were embodied, — to separate from the various familiar pvOfu^ofieva a system of pvOfioC in the abstract. We ourselves, trained as we all are in geometry and algebra, find that not easy ; most students of modern verse have absolutely refused to make an effort which appears to them so useless and so fallacious. Aristoxenos found no little difficulty in making people see precisely what he meant by his Tr/awro? jjj/doVo? even (280, 282, Mb.). These pvO/noC, which had no concrete existence except in one or another pvdfii^ofievov, the student was expected first to contemplate in an abstract system and then watch them, as it were, reembodying themselves in words, steps, and notes, with more or less variation between the theoretical form and the concrete. Aristoxenos felt obliged to warn his readers repeatedly of this variation, reminding them to distinguish carefully pvOjjioi and pvOfioiroda? Not merely is this doctrine of * See the passages below, p. 104 fE. RHYTHMICUS OR METRICUS? 27 an abstract system, which is varied greatly in practical application, diffictilt for us to grasp and keep clearly before us in reading our fragments of Aristoxenos ; it is evident also that the author of it felt himself to be making a considerable demand on the understanding of his contemporaries. AU things considered, it is no way surprising that his method failed of universal, or even very general, acceptance. All the more natural is it that in the later period students of poetry and writers on metric should pretty generally approach the subject from the "metrical" standpoint, that is, should deal with syllables, feet, and meters directly, with little or no reference to abstract rhythmic. In so doing they simply adhered to the older way of looking at the matter, and to a method that was practically sufficient for readers to whom Greek and Latin were living tongues, modern still if also ancient. I would go a step farther in recognition of the metrici, early and late alike. At bottom, if we take their terms in their sense, they were right. We gain nothing, and are certainly mistaken, if we Hghtly assume that Hephaistion and the rest, together with the earlier writers whom they copied or followed, were ignorant of what they wrote about. First we must understand them ; next, if a doctrine still seems clearly quite untenable, we should try to trace the error, with the presumption that the error wiU be found intelligible and not unreasonable, perhaps even instructive, if we can only discover where and how it came in. At the risk of some repetition — for the point is a fundamental one — let us make a little farther attempt to put ourselves in their place and see the matter with their eyes for the moment. I hope it has been shown that the syllable was a natural starting-point for a systematic exposition of the 28 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC formal side of Tersification. In the vast majority of cases, in all meters, the long syllable was seen to be twice as long as the short syllable. In every foot, that is, in every small combination of syllables to which they originally gave the name ttou?, such that a verse might regularly consist of a succession of like feet (as dactyl, anapaest, spondee, trochee, iambus, ionic, cretic), that ratio always holds. If anything at aU was said about the matter — and in connection with song the matter could not be passed over — that ratio was the one to give ; it was the normal and ordinary ratio. True, in practice the normal feet were sometimes varied by the omission of a syllable or two, so that various other ratios appeared. But viewed from their starting-point these ratios, though by no means rare, were rather abnormal ; and they did not require to be described in detail for the reader or speaker with a vernacular knowledge of the language. Absence of the arsis syllable or syllables, and the adjustment required — whatever it was — when spondees or dactyls or anapaests were mixed with tro- chees or iambi, caused no practical difficulty to the native. For conductor and singer alike we must remember that the natural pronunciation of the words, famihar to aU, constituted the basis ; the situation was not what it is when a modem conductor leads an orches- tra or chorus, rendering music that employs far more complicated ratios, all of necessity marked with pre- cision in our notation. If the Greek composer in a com- plicated lyric rhythm made combinations to which the ordinary pronunciation of the words was not a sufficient guide, that was his special affair, to be indicated in his notes by additional signs and then taught to the singer ; the general writer on metric did not need to consider it. The ear could recognize easily the normal ratio of 2 : 1, RHYTHMICUS OR METRICUSf 29 and could always distinguish easily the long from the short ; but it was often not easy, it was in some cases impossible, to state exactly the ratio between adjacent long and short in the combinations not included in the normal feet, although, be it always remembered, there was no practical difficulty at aU in rendering them, because the innate rhythmical sense — the " unconscious automatic mathematician," — was the same in all.^ In view of all these considerations it is not surprising, and does not imply stupidity or ignorance, that the metrici took no account of any other than the common ratio, that they applied the term dactyl to any long followed by any two shorts, that they called any two adjacent longs a spondee, and otherwise applied terms in a way that is misleading, unless one bears in mind their point of "view, and for what manner of people they were writ- ing. Especially after the ancient music was partly lost, and the ancient dance wholly lost ; when the more com- plicated measures of the old lyric compositions were not often sung, if at all, but were commonly read, and read, of course, without that fuller and more perfect rhythmic swing which comes of itself in passing from the speak- ing voice to the singing voice, but which may sound affected in reading ; and when, finally, the old pronun- ciation was changing and the quantitative system was breaking up, — then, I say, it was fairly inevitable that writers on versification should adhere pretty closely to the " metrical " method of presentation. Of course it 1 "There is in each competent artist a sort of imconscioiis auto- matic mathematician, who, like the harmonist in music, the colorist in painting, resolves in his way the problem of sight or sound which the scientist puts into an equation." (La Farge, Considerations on Painting, p. 130.) The rhythmic sense that is in every reader of verse is the same kind of a mathematician, though not necessarily in so high a degree of development as in the creative artist. 30 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC does not follow that they made no mistakes. They were compilers, they sometimes included inconsistent doc- trines, their rare attempts at originality were not likely to be successful; in the latest period the affair is com- plicated by the fact that they sometimes had in mind more or less the accentual principle, which was gradually gaining on the quantitative ; their theories as to the development of meters from one another are generally worthless, because their authors had and could have no conception of true historical method in investigating such problems. StiU it is true that not a few of their statements which at first appear ignorant and worthless are in fact sensible, and not inconsistent with Aristox- enos, when seen through their eyes. To illustrate the point before going farther, let us look briefly at the elegiac pentameter. Hephaistion's account of this Hne is as follows : ToO Se haKTvXiKov irevBrj/Mi/jLepov'; Slf Xa/i^avofievov ylyverai to iXejelov aWA to fiev Sevrepov avrov fJ.epoVKev aperf) to ttjv fiev rrj's irporepwi av^vyia^ avKKa^rjv irepiTTrjv i^ avdyKrj^ jiaKpibv €%eti', rijV Be Sevrepav cv^vyiav avafi(f)i^6\.yw — I This view has been lately defended as the only sound one. In the article before quoted (Hermes, 35, p. 308 ff.) 32 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC G. Schultz brings forward in favor of that yiew, (1) the antiquity of the name pentameter, (2) passages ia the grammarians which call the third foot a spondee and the last two feet anapaests, (3) the impossibility that the ancients, while they still sang elegiac verses, beating time, could have erred by an entire half-foot in the middle of the line. In farther support of this manner of scanning he maintains that ictus in the sense of increased stress accompanying the down-beat was not present at all in ancient verse. This last question, on the meaning of ictus and the presence or absence of stress, had been pretty well threshed out, shortly before Schultz's article appeared, by Bennett (Am. Journ. Phil., XIX, 861-383), who took substantially Schultz's view, and on the other • side by Hendrickson (A. J. P., XX, 198-210. The dis- cussion was continued in the same journal, XX, 412-434). This part of Schultz's argument, though important for his view, I therefore pass by, and go at once to the heart of the question. The antiquity of the name pentameter must be con- ceded ; also that no less an authority than Quintilian speaks of the ' pentametri medius spondius,' which seems to carry with it the treatment of the last six syllables as two anapaests. But let us look more closely. We wiU. take first the passage on which Schultz especially relies, Quintilian IX, 4, 97 f., which reads : Non nihil est quod supra dixi multiun referre, unone verbo sint duo pedes comprehensi an uterque Uber. sic enim fit forte ' criminis causa,' moUe ' archipiratae,' mol- lius si tribrachys praeeedat, ' facilitates,' ' temeritates.' est enim quoddam ipsa divisione verborum latens tem- pus, ut in pentametri medio spondio, qui nisi alteiius verbi fine alterius initio constat versum non efficit. •From this the inference of Schultz is: Durch den RHYTHMICUS OR METRICUS? 33 Ausdruek 'latens tempus,' sowohl wie durch das erste Beispiel ' criminis causa,' wird uns bezeugt, dass die Pause in der Mitte des Pentameters ebenso Terschwand, wie die zwischen zwei gewohnlichen Worten in fortlauf- ender Rede. But this is palpable misinterpretation. The point of Quintilian's comparison, it is true, lies evidently in that ' latens tempus,' which exists in ' criminis causa ' as in ' pentametri medio spondio.' But it does not follow that the likeness lay in the fact that in both cases the ' latens tempus ' vanished, was imperceptible. ' Latens tempus ' can only mean a time-interval not marked by or filled with a distinct speech-sound, — that is, a pause, or per- haps prolongation of the preceding syllable. It exists 'ipsa divisione verborum,' and in the phrase 'criminis causa,' employed by an orator at the close of a sentence, as in the middle spondee of the pentameter. If the sen- tence stopped here, as it is made to in Schultz's quota- tion, one might perhaps maintain that there is no such pause in either place, and that (in spite of the word- order) ' latens tempus ' means no pause at all ; in which case one could not but wonder why Quintilian used the illustration. But the sentence does not stop here. Quintilian adds, to make clear what he means by ' latens tempus ' and wherein the likeness lies, the clause above given: "which [namely, the 'medius spondius'] does not make the verse unless it consists of the end of one word and the beginning of another." Even if this clause were not farther elucidated by similar explana^ tions in other authors, it would show that Quintilian felt in that middle spondee a ' latens tempus ' produced by the very division between the words, — a pause or break of some kind, not felt at aU between successive syllables of the same word, and distinctly longer than 34 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC tliat imperceptible one, often non-existent, between two successive and closely connected words in continuous discourse. And then turning to the preceding context, reflecting that Quintilian is speaking of the rhythmical close of the sentence, we may recall that precisely at the close of a sentence of serious character, where rhythm becomes of special importance, any public speaker nowadays will often avail himself of the break between words, even closely connected words, to make the rhythm more pleasing by such a slight prolongar tion or pause as would not be natural between similar words in a different situation. Thus Quintilian's illus- tration becomes intelligible; but it is no longer quot- able as evidence that the 'medius spondius' of the pentameter was identical with the spondee at the end of a hexameter. And then that last clause must be viewed in the hght of other accounts of the same phenomenon. In Scholia B. to Hephaistion (p. 171 f. W., p. 19 f. H.) we find the statement that some say the iXeyelov is really irevrdfieT- pov, the third foot being a spondee, the fourth and fifth anapsests. But, the author adds, " it is better to measure it in this way : Since it is in fact divided ek Svo -n-ev- 0T)fiifji,epr} (and the penthemimeres consists of two feet and a syllable) it admits in the first two places dactyl or spondee indifferently, then a long syllable ending a word, and after this again a second penthemimeres of two dactyls and a syllable." Why, one asks, should this more complicated division survive, why particularly should it be considered better, even in Byzantine hand- books, if that middle spondee was in reading and singing always no other than a common spondee ? Indeed, why should a woM always end in the middle of that spondee ? The hexameter, nearest relative of the pentameter, has RHYTHMICUS OR METRICUSf 35 no one such fixed division. Terentianus Maurus also (1753-1800) recounts at some length the two different measurements, and describes that strange way of scanning whereby, in the practice of some, the syllable that ended the first half-line was saved out and put with the syllable that ended the second half, to make a spondee at the end. Those who did this evidently were led to such a queer procedure by the feehng that there was something unusual about that middle spondee. Marius Vict, also (p. 107-110 K.) goes pretty fully over the same ground with Terentianus. But a later paragraph of Marius Vict, throws farther light on the matter, as follows : Hoc quoque notandiun in enuntiatione pentametri ele- giac!: nam plerumque aurem fallit, ut in illo graeco versu, ^fie2<} S' ek"^X\r]epet pvOfiov to fierpov y to fiev fieTpov Treirr)- has been widely adopted for that purpose ; it is better to use it than either to invent a/nother or to go without any. In all these matters the utmost precision in recording and describing rhythms is none too great. Yet one more point. In the study and teaching of the other aspects of language we have taken what the Greeks taught us, and after mastering their facts and their system of statement we have gone beneath and beyond the ancient system, not hesitating to recast it completely, bringing to bear on the subject not only many new phenomena but also an improved method which the Greeks could not know. All departments of grammar are still undergoing that recasting process. The same process — though perhaps in less degree — is naturally to be expected in the study of this aspect also of the Greek language. I have sufficiently emphasized the point that the first step in that process must be the more complete mastery of the ancient learning. But we RHYTHMICUS OR METRICUS? 57 should no more expect to stop with that than we expect to stop with the ancient learning in morphology or syntax. And the Une of advance toward this desidera- tum, a better and fuller knowledge of the rhythms of Greek poetry, and a knowledge arranged in a better system, lies along the path opened by Aristoxenos. m RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE No better definition of rhythm has been given, or need be sought, than that of Aristoxenos, xpovcov rd^i^ a(f)a)piafji,evr], temporum inter se ordo quidam, a definite arrangement of times. This is probably the earliest, certainly the most widely current, technical sense of -~^ pvO/jLO'i among the Greeks. When they called a statue ^jT, evpv6/jio<}, or said that a person walked evpid/imi, and the hke,^ these were probably figurative applications of the technical term; though it is true such uses may have been independently developed from the early meaning, order, or law, which the word has in the line of Archilochos, _^ yiyvcocTKe S" oZo? pva-iio^ avOpmirou^ ^X^'" The essential identity and the specific characteristics of rhythm in many activities of life, nature, and art were accurately noted and described by Aristoxenos. It is the more to be regretted that many people — more especially in English-speakiag countries — whose studies have not familiarized them with this department of Greek science, still use the term, and even define it, in a loose, confused, and utterly unscientific way. Partic- ularly on the subject of modem verse we too often hear and read statements which their authors could not pos- sibly have made, had their minds been clear as to what rhythm is. In all such technical discussion no other 1 Aristid. Q. 1 13, p. 31 Mb. RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 59 sense of the word rhythm should be for a moment admitted than that so clearly laid down by Aristoxenos. It is an aid toward precision of thought to hold fast an accurate idea of the relations, both of analogy and of contrast, between rhythm in time and symmetry in space. As to the latter, there is little danger of con- fusion. What presents itself to the eye primarily and constantly, and is by nature more abiding, is more easily grasped and more readily becomes in correct form a part of the unconscious mental outfit ; rhythm presents itself most often to the ear, and whether heard or seen, it is by its nature temporary and unstable, a series of phenom- ena in unceasing flight. We may call symmetry a due proportion, in relation to each other, of the parts of something in space. Absolute equality of parts is not essential; but approximate equality or easily discerned simple ratio, of extent or of effect upon the sight in the larger parts, is essential. Starting from this idea we might describe rhythm as due proportion, in relation to each other, of the parts of something in time, — or more abstractly, as due proportion in time-intervals. This description is correct as far as it goes, but is defec- tive, because it omits one element. This element is due to the difference between space and time, and to the limitations of our senses. Due proportion of parts is perceived in space when the parts are few, — is per- ceived best when the object readily divides itself to the sight into halves, as a leaf, or the human figure in a front view, so that the main parts are but two, within which the minor parts may, without confusion and with in- creased pleasure to the spectator, bear to each other proportions very complicated. The parts exist contem- poraneously ; the symmetrical whole commonly remains under observation unchanged for some time ; thus the 60 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC mind is able to grasp, and to analyze in detail if it will, extremely complex relations of space in the parts, pro- vided those main groups of parts are plainly marked, and are but few, preferably two. In time, however, due proportion of numerous parts is not perceived so read- ily, if at all, unless the number of distinctly marked groups is larger, extending to at least three, preferably more. No two groups of times, no two parts of the smallest time group, are contemporaneous, or can remain under contemplation together except in the memory. Hence repetition is necessary. An amount of repetition which in space would seem monotonous, or at best an example of very simple art, does not seem so in time, but aids the memory and gives pleasure. The form of symmetry that is most closely analogous to rhythm is that of a long, narrow and not too intricate pattern consisting of a short pattern many times repeated. Ex- amples are the meanders, the lotos patterns, the egg-and- dart mouldings and other ornamental bands so frequent in Greek art, or our edgings of lace and embroidery, and ornamental bands and borders in general. The rows of figures around a dipylon vase are still within the requi- site limits of regularity ; those of the Francois vase are too free. The alternating triglyphs and metopes of the Parthenon are a fine parallel; the Panathenaic frieze lacks the needful articulation. An arrangement of times that should be analogous to the symmetry of a fine pediment composition, or to any of the painted groups in the Sixtine Chapel or the Stanze of Raphael, would never be recognized as rhythmical, unless at the same time there ran through the whole, comprehending all the parts, a simpler system of grouping, analogous to that of the meander. An ode of Pindar, or a movement of a symphony, is held together and unified by the RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 61 repetition of a small group of times, the measure or foot or the like ; on that substratum, out of that contuiu- ously repeated though varied' small group, are formed, by the aid of recurring variation in time and melody (and in Pindar of the dance), concepts of larger and yet larger groups, untU, by repetition of groups both smaller and larger, the senses are sufficiently impressed to enable the memory to retain and the mind to comprehend a notion of the whole as one. To such a work a good parallel — comparing, of course, only the rhythm of one and the symmetry of the other — is a fine oriental rug of rich pattern and coloring. Yet it has been weU. noted that a complex work of art ia space, particularly in three dimensions — say a temple or a statue — is not wholly unlike a complex piece of rhythm, as regards our method of acquiring an idea of the whole. In both memory has something to do, for the eye does not see all parts at once ; after viewing a statue or temple from all sides, and a temple from the inside as well as from without, the various parts in temporal succession, the unifying must then be done by the aid of memory, as in the case of rhythm. But though this is true, yet ia successive viewing of parts the time element and the consequent agency of memory are so much less funda- mental than with a work of rhythm, that the resemblance has little effect in diminishing the great practical difference. One other factor in the definition of rhythm must be insisted on, though it is tacitly asstmied in the foregoing illustrations. The simple repetition of equal undivided and undifferentiated time-intervals does not produce rhythm. There must be a Ta,^i<;, an arrangement of times inter se. An unchanging single drum-beat recur- ring every two-thirds of a second would produce nothing 62 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC but a succession of equal times, though experiments have shown that the great majority of listeners would invol- untarily imagine some difference between the sounds or the intervals, and so by a purely psychological process would differentiate the times, group them, and imagine a rhythm where objectively there was none. But if in that succession of unchanging drum-beats, beginning an3rwhere, you omit the second, fourth, and eighth, you will make a grouping of times ; that series repeated is our simplest drum-rhythm for marching. The action of walking, in which the feet alternately are lifted, moved forward, and placed, with endlessly various play of muscles, produces another grouping, extremely complex to the eye and to the muscular sense of the walker, though to the ear, when audible at all, a rather simple one. This necessity of a ra^ts in rhythm is the more to be insisted on because many writers on modem verse- rhythm ignore it. In recent years rhythm has been, and continues to be, the subject of many-sided investigation. Physicists and naturalists of every sort have been compelled to take large account of this factor in the phenomena of nature. Periodicity, always obvious to man in the procession of the seasons, in the lunar phases, in the alternation of day and night, is discovered to characterize about every kind of motion and change that the student of physics can measure. The periodicity of astronomical and inor- ganic forces is reflected in the hfe of plants and animals of every grade, in health and in disease. The physio- logical rhythms of respiration and the heart's beating are but types; in all vital processes biologists find similar laws. The simplest cell, whose growth can be followed only under the microscope, is subject to them, no less than the highest animal organism. Psychologists, too, RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 63 find that all the actmties of the human mind exhibit rhythm in great variety ; there is a constantly lengthen- ing series of special investigations along this liae. This is not the place to recapitulate these studies of rhythm,^ so numerous and so various, nor even to sinnmarize their results. But without some realization of the ex- tent to which rhythm pervades the kosmos, including the unconscious hfe of man, one is hable to approach the subject of rhythm in. language with prepossessions so deep-rooted that argument on some poiats will be wasted. In harmony with the unconscious, involuntary rhythms of the human organism, iu part certainly and perhaps wholly the consequence of them, is the fact that rhythm in the broad sense pervades also all of man's conscious and voluntary action. Alternating exertion and repose, tension and relaxation, is a law of the life that is regu- lated by will, from the larger tasks and recreations to the movement of the smallest muscle. But for our purposes this broader sense of the term must be narrowed. We are concerned only with forms of rhythm in which the lesser time-iutervals that make the larger pattern are comparatively short. Absolute hmits can hardly be given ; but experiments appear to show that if the short- est unit is as long as two seconds, the mind does not coordinate the intervals and group them distinctly enough to be conscious of a rhythm. On the other hand, if the intervals are too short the mind does not separate them ; they run together instead of forming groups; but of course continuous tones that vary regularly ia pitch or intensity, or continuous movements that regularly change their direction, may by those regular variations divide 1 See Bolton, Rhythm, in Am. J. Psych., VI, pp. 145-238 ; Wundt, Volkerpsychologie, Ch. VII; Studies from Yale Paych. Lab., IX. 64 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC time into intervals that fall within the necessary limits and are perceived as a rhythm. Now the fundamental fact, for our present purpose, is this. AU activities of man that are regulated by his will he puts into a perceptible rhythm, so far as they admit such treatment without violating requirements that to his mind take precedence. Man is not merely a rhythmical animal, as all animals are ; he is a rhythmiz- ing animal, as truly as he is a political animal. As men tend to unite into political communities, so the individual tends to rhythmize everjrthing that he comfort- ably can. This tendency is not simply a matter of musi- cal endowment, possessed by some and not by others ; it controls more or less fully every human being, generally without his beiug aware of it. The individual merely acts in the way that he finds easiest or most natural; and he acts in rhythm. There are- said to be people who cannot keep step to a drum, or with a companion ; if so, the defect is in the power of coordinating their action with something external, with a rhythm set by some- thing from without. But even one who has that de- fect makes no end of perfect rhythms of his own. He makes his own steps equal, or if unequal then regu- larly unequal; if he drives a nail or curries a horse or rows a boat or chews his food or drinks a glass of water, he makes as good rhythms as any one else. The ten- dency appears to be absolutely universal ; the only differ- ence between people in this regard lies in the degree of consciousness of the rhythm one is producing, and the consequent power of controlling and consciously varying the rhythmic movement. There, it is true, people differ very much, and still more in the power of isolating and describing rhythms which they make or see or hear. But that does not affect the truth of the statement just RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 65 made. It is a universal law that man is a creature who rhythmizes, in the strictest sense given to the term, every kind of action that admits of it. Men differ a good deal in capacity for acquiring languages, much more in capacity for teaching them ; but all men not physically defective are endowed with speech, and speak the lan- guage they have heard from infancy. The rhythmizing impulse is no less universal than speech. Plato recognizes, putting it in his mythological way, the inborn character of the rhythmic sense, and the wide separation in this matter — even though it should prove to be a differenee'in degree only — between man and the other animals. " Young creatures cannot be quiet in their bodies or their voices ; they are always wanting to move and to use their voices, now leaping and skipping, as it were dancing with delight, and now making aU sorts of cries. But while the other animals have no perception of order or disorder (rmv rd^emv oiSe ara^iSiv)'' in their motions — that is, of rhythm and melody — to us the Muses and Apollo their leader and Dionysos have given the perception, accompanied by pleasure, of rhythm and time." (Laws 653 d-654 ; also 664 e.) Aristotle also (Poet. 4) counts rhythm and imitation as equally Karh (fiva-iv; in the AristoteUan Trpo0\ij/iaTa (920 b ; p. 98 v. Jan), in answer to the query why aU delight in rhythm and song, it is remarked that they are Kara ^v tiag these cases aside, the priaciple asserted is this. Even in a language whose syllables are so elastic as in English, there are Hmits of relative length, narrower than those fixed by the organs of speech or the duration of the breath, to exceed which in speech or in artless song — that is, in song not composed by one well schooled in the specifically modern developments of music — appears unnatural, a distortion of the word, and is there- fore not admitted, except for a distinctively comic purpose. The fact seems indisputable when we follow in thought the rise of one of these work-songs. When words with a definite meaning are made to accompany the worker's motion, ia order to fit the rhythm in a way to satisfy the worker they must have been selected with some reference to those " natural " — that is, previously and elsewhere determined, however elastic — hmits of relative duration in the syllables. In languages employ- ing a marked stress or word-accent, that element too must be regarded; a syllable that in the same context would receive when spoken a markedly stronger stress is not in satisfactory harmony with the work-rhythm, if so placed as to accompany the weakest muscular tension. I trust the point is clear. While it is true that the rhythm of the work-song is primarily determined by the work-rhythm, the words also possess, before being selected and placed in the song, inherent qualities of syllabic length, perhaps stress too, such that the com- pleted specific combination of words naturally carries the same rhythm independently, when dissociated from the work, and even to those who have forgotten or never knew the work-rhythm in itself, provided they know 72 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC the language. The work-rhythm leads the worker to create a parallel rhythm in another medium; the second pvd/iLL^6/i£vop is of such character that its rhythm is per- fectly preserved by it independently. Of course this is true in a degree slightly varying with individual cases. As the verbal rhythm is in the worker's mind secondary, it is not always perfected iu every detail; but as the words become more important to him, the inclination is stronger to make their rhythm more independently clear. With a view to the farther course of this chapter it seemed necessary to put this relation between the words and the rhythm beyond question. The following summary I quote in substance from Biicher (p. 357 ff.). " In that center of convergence we see work stm undistinguished from art and from play. There is a siagle human activity, a solution of work, play, and art. In this unity of physical and mental action we perceive the germs of development along aU those hues. . . . The arts of motion (music, da,nce, poetry) come into being in the performance of work ; the arts of rest, of form, are embodied, if only in the form of orna- ment, in the results of work. This is aU simply the instinctive action of life in common, average humanity, — in savages, in peasants, in working people. The bond that holds together these elements, which we have come to think so unlike, is rhythm, whose source is in the very essence of the human organism." Allied to the work-song and a little nearer to our goal are verses that children recite or sing in con- nection with play. Great numbers of these are current, probably in all languages in which children enjoy games together. They are handed on almost purely by oral tradition, many of them from one child-generation directly to another, or rather from sUghtly older to RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 73 sKghtly yoTiiigeT children joining in the same game; parents who have forgotten them discover suddenly that their children are reciting them. Others are used by parents and nurses to amuse infants. Some are very old, existing in many versions. I will cite only a few, quoting, if at all, in the exact form that was familiar to my childhood. Counting out rimes * are generally doggerel. One child " counts out " by repeating the words, pointing in succession to all around the circle, to a new individual with every heavily stressed syllable. The person pointed at on the last syllable of the stanza, always a stressed syllable, is " out " ; the operation is repeated with the rest, until only one is left, who is " it." The rhythmic pointing is a sort of beating time ; the stressed syllables recur at equal intervals ; between them may be one or two syllables or none. No attentive onlooker can fail to distinguish, whether he can describe it correctly or not, the very exact rhythm. The following is a verse that may sound like non- sense, but which still had a very distinct and agreeable meaning to many New England country families thirty- five years ago. Bean porridge hot, Bean porridge cold, Bean porridge in the pot Nine days old. This was accompanied by a play, which must be de- scribed in full. Two persons are seated face to face and close together ; while the words are repeated by both or by one alone, both make the following movements. ^ See H. C. Bolton, Counting out Bhymes of Children, London, 1888. 74 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC Bean — each person slaps both pahns on his own knees ; por — both pahns together ; hot — both pahns agamst partner's, right against left, left against right ; Bean porridge cold — same play repeated; Bean porridge — as before ; in — right palm against partner's right ; pot — both palms together; Nine — left palm against partner's left; days — both palms together ; old — both pahns against partner's as on hot. [Then repeat ad libitum.] The louder the slapping noises the greater the fun; generally the speed would be gradually increased until one or the other made a mistake. The rhythm of the play is sharply marked, and the words being well known were often not recited aloud, merely running along in the mind of the players to help them keep the order of the changes. And on the other hand the rhythm of the words without the play is just as distinct and unmistak- able. They were often recited alone; there could be no better illustration of perfectly independent but par- allel rhythms in two different mediums. Neither regu- lates the other. Which was the original one, which secondary ? No one can say ; but as the words have an independent meaning and the pky has not, I should guess the word-jingle to have been first invented. And the rhythm is plainly this, expressed in metrical symbols : V/ V> I L_l I luf V> I t— I I _ w V I WS=? _ I I LJ I RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 75 The symbols are intended to indicate merely the time- intervals and their arrangement. Where two are writ- ten the upper indicates the intervals marked off by the syllables, the lower those marked off by the play. So written the word-rhythm appears a trifle more varied than the play-rhythm; but that is merely because the symbols fail to note some of the changes of the play. In fact the four hands in alternating pairs, now against each other and now against the knees, make a rhythm that is rather complex. The hand-rhythm alone is indeed threefold, according as it is perceived by the mus- cular sense, the ear, or the eye. In like manner that of the words is twofold; no symbols have been invented that '^really represent more than the larger divisions. In the words each distinct time is marked by the begin- ning of a syllable, or by the transition from one syllable to the next; more precisely by the beginning of the vowel of each syllable. The word-accent is prominent as a strong stress on the vowels of the more important intervals ; stress on the first syllable of porridge and on days is slightly subordinated; that of in, which is not in itself a strong word, is treated in the rhythm as equal to those that would ordinarily be considered heavier. Whether the words hot, cold, and old really fill the whole interval (except for a minute fraction required for the break in sense), or whether they occupy but half, the remainder being left vacant, one may feel uncertain. At first thought one would say the latter; but closer observation, and examination of gramophone records, incline me decidedly to the former explanation. Rhyth- mically it makes no difference which ; in either case the whole interval from the beginning of the syllable to the begumiug of the next is the same ; and that is what the rhythmic sense takes account of. In the play each 76 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC distinct time is marked at its beginning by audible contact of the palm witli tlie knee or another hand ; the rest of the interval is to the ear vacant, to the eye and mus- cular sense it is filled out by the bodily movements. The close of the last interval is unmarked; the uncon- scious arithmetician in us merely assumes it. StiU far- ther, the intervals fall into a complex grouping. In the words each line is a group, the first and second together are a larger group, as are the third and fourth ; rimes are one sign of this, but the variations of times, apart from the rime, would alone suflB.ce to group the whole in the same manner. The same grouping appears in the play as weU. So far in this description technical terms have been avoided, but it is quite clear that the rhjrthm is what the Greeks called dactyhc, Lq what musicians now call common (or perhaps f ) time. Each foot or meas- ure is a dactyl or its equivalent ; the single intervals are of three magnitudes, standing to each other in the ratio of 1, 2, 4 ; in the terminology of Aristoxenos the XP°^'"' iroSiKOi are the j^jjOoVos irp&TO^, ■x^povo? hla-r)iJ,o<}, ^^/joVos TeTpdff'qfio'i. The entire -n-epioSoi consists of four ic&Xa, grouped by twos, each KmXov being a dipody. There is a little three-part round that is often taught to companies of older children. It has doubtless been printed, but I do not remember to have seen it ; it lends itself easily to the Greek method of musical notation, as the rhythm of the melody is that of the words, only more exactly observed. Placing above the several syl- lables the letters that indicate the notes of our scale (the middle octave in capitals, A-G, the next above in small letters), it runs, in the key of C, as on the opposite page. In reading the words quietly, without m-Xda-fia, there are places where the rhythm may be doubtful. Some RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 77 E D C I. Three blind mice; [thrice] Q P P E II. See how they run; [thrice] G c cbab cG G III. They all ran after the farmer's wife; Gcc c b abcG G She cut off their tails with a carving knife; G cccb abc GG G You never did see such a sight ia your hfe. [Kepeat ad libitum.] phrases might be spoken in quite another rhythm, were they not associated with corresponding phrases that admit of no doubt. But in the whole combination, if one simply takes the youthful attitude towards the lines, pro- nouncing them with vivacity, so as to rouse the children's imagination and make them see the scene described, — that is, if one pronounces them with appropriate irXdaiia — then the rhythm is not doubtful at all. If one carries the vivacity a trifle farther, and gives to his utterance the musical quality of the singing voice, the rhythm becomes unequivocally that in which the lines are always sung. I. ^H.J. I j. Ij W W. n. III. ^ S T~i" ^ ^ l» I* V V V ^^ :i2=i= 78 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC Or in metrical symbols : l_ I— I— ■tt I tris L_ 1 \^ l_ V 1 tris \J 1 u w w — w _ wl \J \J \J www _ w _ w 1 W \J \J www www l_ 1 As the -three parts are heard together, no confusion as to the relative lengths of syllables is possible. The movement is trochaic. The first irepioSof consists of three trisemes, making an incomplete dimeter, thrice repeated; the second is similar, but the second foot is now a plain trochee ; the third consists of three dimeters, with one trochee resolved into a tribrach in the first kS)\ov, two in the second, three in the third. No one will doubt that this correctly represents the time inter- vals of the music ; any one who duly considers the terms in which I have stated the relation between the spoken rhythm and that of the music, and the true character and function of what the ancients called irXda/jia, must allow that the words carry the same rhythm inde- pendently. As was remarked in the preceding chapter, a great number of lyric poems have been set to music on the same principle. The composer is absolutely free to sub- stitute his own for the poet's rhythm, and commonly does so; btit the older relation is so natural that it is even now often preferred throughout a song, and still oftener with only a few slight deviations. I will cite two examples to put beside the Heidenrijslein, for still fuUer illustration of what seems to me an important side of our subject. The first is an old setting of Ben Jonson's To Celia ; the metrical symbols alone will suffice, conform- ing strictly to the music, which may be found in the RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 79 Collection Litolff, No. 839, English National Album, p. 16. Where the tune, however, passes from one pitch to anotiier on the same syllable, my scheme unites the two eighth notes into one; the relation is exactly the same as in Greek music. Drink to me only with thine eyes. And I will pledge with mine ; w I — \j \j \ I I I A I Or leave a kiss but in the cup, \j \j \j \j \ \j And I'll not look for wine. v/ 1 w \j \ \ I r A The thirst that from my soul doth rise \j \ \J vyi v^ Doth ask a drink divine ; \j \ w \j\ I I I A I But might I of Jove's nectar sup, \j \j \j w I \j I would not change for thine. \j \ \j <-< 1 1 I The musical time is f. Two things are noticeable. First, the syllables " Or leave a " and " But might I " would be read more naturally as <-» I — w ; but since the corresponding syllables of the opening line naturally take the musical form ^ \j \j , the composer has chosen to treat tha,t as the model, and has followed it at the begin- ning of each couplet, except on the words " The thirst that." Secondly, it is a part of the irXda-fia, here carried a step farther than it was by the ancient musician, that all irrational syllables are in music made unequivocally short in the writing. On the other hand a solo singer rendering these lines with expression, giving the words 80 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC their due weight, would certainly depart from the exact ratios of the written notes, and would restore the irra- tionality. When irrational syllables are rather numerous in the verse, a composer who otherwise foUows exactly the verse-rhythm is likely to shift the whole from an iambic or | time to | or ^ time. A modem song treated in like manner by the com- poser is Teimyson's Sweet and Low, set to music by J. Bamby. As before, I give of the music the rhythm only, since that alone concerns us ; both words and music are well known wherever English is spoken. The time is again ^. Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow. Wind of the western sea. Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow, Blow him again to me ; While my little one, while my pretty one Sleeps. \J KJ \J \J \J \J \J \J W W \J W 1 — w L-l 1 1 f 1 A 1 1 w 1- 1 1 1 1 1 A 1 1 \J 1- 1 I_W1_ 1 1 l_ J-. 1 1 — w www Two details call for farther notice. The last word, standing as it does for a whole line, is by the musi- cian made equal to a line by prolongation through two measures : in the air and bass the whole is on one pitch, while the harmony is varied by simple changes in alto and tenor. This is an extreme instance of tovj; to fill the time which a reader would simply leave va- cant, waiting silently for the proper interval to elapse before beginning the next stanza. Also to the words RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 81 "little" and "pretty," the composer gave a dotted eighth and a sixteenth note instead of two eighths. These are the only departures from the rhythm given in my scheme. The significance of these and like songs for our pur- pose lies in this. The musician felt and expressed the same rhythm as the poet. But the only notation of the poet was the words. They suffice in practice for one who knows the language, and they were enough to give the rhythm to the musician. But they do not require either poet or reader to analyze and state, even to him- self, precisely what the rhythm is. But modern musical notation, vastly superior ia this to the ancient, not merely permits but requires the relative length as well as pitch of every note to be written, and that too with a precision which often goes beyond that of the actual rendering, so that various signs, as a hold or accelerando or tempo rubato, are required to give warning that the rigid ratios of the notes are to be varied somehow. Owing therefore to this characteristic of his notation, the com- poser of necessity and habitually analyzes the rhythm and gives a full and exact account of it to himself and to his reader. Hence in such songs as these we have our commonest poetic rhythms described for us by men of special training in just that direction. Nursery rimes that are not sung, nor accompanied by a rhythmical play, but are recited with delight by chil- dren, are another class of verbal combinations ia which the rhythm is both independent and unmistakable. Children like to repeat them with complete irXda/ia, which in this case we call sing-song, of a kind that in them is often charming. It is chiefly the rhythm that makes the jingle pleasing ; they therefore like to make the rhytlun perfect with little reference to sense. When 6 82 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC real poetry is taken in hand, tlie childish tendency to recite it in a similar way has to be corrected, until what adults consider the proper balance between rhythm and sense is attained. But in the latter case also the essential character of the rhythm is the same. Without irXda/ia the rhythm is not mathematically exact; an educated adult does not wish it too exact. To recur to our old comparison, in a fine oriental rug the hand-made, slightly irregular ornament and intentionally varied sjrmmetry are more interesting and more beautiful than the dead mechanical precision of a machine-woven pattern; but a geometrically perfect pattern may be said to he at the basis of the Persian weaver's design. So in verse there is an exact pattern underneath, to which the reader approximates, now more closely, now less, as the phonetic character of the words or the requirements of sense and expression permit or demand. The great mass of English poetry moves in one or another variety of triple rhythm ; but many examples, more especially but not exclusively comic, are in double or quadruple time. Some have denied this and maintained the impossibihty of it. One may even discern ui some quarters the notion that a Hellenist, by reason of his acquaintance with ancient metric, is somehow disqualified for giving an opinion on the metric of modem languages. There is a historical reason for such prejudice, in that attempts have occasionally been made to apply rules of classical prosody to English, and men imperfectly acquainted with both Greek and English meters have transferred to the latter crude ideas of the former, with unedifying results. Hence an attempt to state in terms of time- ratios the rhythms of English verse rouses in some people a feeling of suspicion that sadly disturbs the judicial balance. In fact there is in the study of these rhythms RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 83 an almost unworked field for one who has the requisite preliminary training and is able to devote his attention without prejudice to the actual hving facts of speech. What is needful is that one should calmly ask and con- sistently apply the answers to two questions — the same which Aristoxenos asked and answered in regard to Greek — namely: What is rhythm ? and What rhythms are produced when young children who have no theory, or adults possessed of a cultivated taste, speak or read English naturally?* Presupposing that mental attitude, — without which farther agreement in this direction is hopeless, — if any reader is inclined to distrust my determinations of rhythm in specific cases, I can only urge upon him two things. First, let' him carefully observe the work- ing of the tendency toward TrXdcr/iia, not merely in himself and not merely in my examples, but in every- 1 The late Sidney Lanier, in The Science of English Verse (N. Y., Scribners, 1880), brought to this subject the endowment of a genuine poet and of a competent musician — a rare combination. The essen- tial truth of the matter he discerned and stated clearly. But he lacked the conventional philological and scientific training, and was both poet and musician ; hence his presentation of the subject was not in the conventional manner of philologians, and repelled them, — espe- cially those who were not musical and therefore could not understand him. Some important details also Lanier did not see quite correctly. Therefore the beginning made by him has not been followed up as it deserved. My paper, Quantity in English Verse (Trans.Am. Phil. Assoc, | 1885, Vol. XVI, pp. 78-103), aimed to define more precisely and to I extend Lanier's principles ; it might be now much improved. Some scholars of repute, and even of well-deserved fame, were unable, in criticising us, to free their minds from a tangle of confused notions about word-accent and " quantity," and ask themselves the two funda- mental questions above mentioned. But a younger generation is now approaching the subject ; the growing appreciation of Lanier's poetry and the publication of his letters have led to better recognition of his critical insight, — of his power to draw " From Art's unconscious act Art's conscious laws." 84 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC day life about him, whenever one makes an effort to convey the emotion or the full meaning of any form of words. Secondly, let the objector ask himself without prepossession whether his capacity for detecting and analyzing rhythm, in distinction from the power of orig- inating or imitating it, has been in any way systemat- ically developed. For example, has he learned to read music readily, or has he been trained or trained himself in genuinely quantitative reading of ancient verse, dac- tyls and anapaests in quadruple time? If not, and if he has not also practised a good deal the analysis of rhythm in language, then he will do well to admit that his first impression on such questions may not be trust- worthy. In regard to tune, a particular succession of pitch-intervals in the musical scale, we put Uttle confi- dence in the judgment of one whose ear for pitch has not been well disciplined. If one cannot sing the scales correctly, or cannot tune a violin or tell with certainty whether a piano is in tune or not, — and some very good people and admirable scholars cannot, — then he rightly distrusts his opinion on such matters. The problem is at bottom the same in the two cases ; in both it is a question of discriminating fairly simple ratios. In both cases the thing can be done by mechanical means, so that a person without ear, that is a person who has no native or acquired faculty in that line, must be con- vinced. But such mechanical determination of pre- viously unknown pitch-ratios in music or time-ratios in language is difficult, requiring complicated and sensitive apparatus. In the case of rhythm the attempts hitherto made, so far as they are known to me, have produced no fiilly trustworthy results, owing to the imperfection of instruments or methods. More experimenters are now attacking the problem ; better success will certainly RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 85 follow and is much to be desired.^ But meantime, for the ti'ained ear to detennine the ratios between success- ive time-intervals in a rhythmical series is a task of the same kind as for the trained ear to determine the relative place, with reference to the musical scale, of successive tones in a melody. Instruments of precision are as necessary in the one case as in the other, and no more necessary. But the ear, iu both cases ahke, must have been adequately trained; else its judgment is without value. As regards music there are many in the commu- nity who have had the requisite training and practice, both for the pitch of the notes and for their rhythm; an orchestra plays together, musicians agree in their statements on such points, and we believe them. But language rhythms have received comparatively Uttle attention from this point of view; that sufficiently accounts for the lack of agreement and the sense of help- > My colleague, Professor Scripture, has for several years been conducting in the Yale Psychological Laboratory a series of experi- ments in this direction ; the first instalment of his results appeared in the Studies from the Yale Psych. Lab. VII (1899). "With his high sense of the delicacy and accuracy required in the apparatus, and his un- usual skill in devising means of meeting those requirements, the mechanical problems have demanded much time for their solution. It quickly became apparent also that much preliminary work on the elementary sounds of language was necessary. Hence on the rhyth- mical problem hardly more than a beginning has been made. This beginning, however, has brought out some important facts, which will be cited later ; and his researches promise to be of great value. Not as a criticism of Professor Scripture, but for its general bear- ing, the following should be added. It sometimes detracts from the utility of such experiments that those who conduct them are apt to cherish too great confidence in the exclusive suflSciency of mechanical analysis, and cannot easily admit the inaccuracy of their own machines. That is a fault, when it exists, no less serious than the converse, undervaluation of such methods of study. The latter was once unduly prevalent and strong ; the tendency now is to trust too exclusively to mechanism. 86 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC lessness before them that are so common. Even a musician whose rhythmic sense is unhesitatingly accu- rate in music may be obliged to accustom himself to the different character of the pv0fM^6/j,evov in speech before his ear becomes equally sure on rhythms that are really simpler. And then in rhythm, as in tone or harmony, it is one thing to reproduce a combination already noted down, or to make a new combination of your own, and another and a far less easy thing to distinguish accurately a combination that is merely heard. But a musician who is interested in the subject can with practice acquire a high degree of accuracy in analyzing rhythms of language. It is no claim of special proficiency on my part to say that in renewing such attempts frequently during nearly twenty years a marked gain in facility has been perceptible, though there are plenty of constant combinations, unhesitatingly made in ordi- nary speech and often heard, that still elude analysis. My experience is cited solely to illustrate the utility and the necessity of practice. It is not my intention to go farther into details on the subject of English verse. From this unavoidable digres- sion I return to the question which the preceding pages of the chapter lead up to : How, in general terms, does the rhythmizing impulse deal with English speech? Spoken words in connected discourse are a series of bodily movements producing sounds. If there were not a strong unconscious tendency to rhythmize those movements and the corresponding sounds, then language would be the sole exception in the whole life of man to the otherwise rmiversal rule ; we should have in lan- guage many series of sounds indissolubly united with voluntary but almost automatic bodily movements, repeated many times daily, eminently rhythmizable, yet RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 87 not rhythmized. Of course the exception does not exist. The rhythms produced are of essentially the same character as those of labor, or of music. How are they produced in the medium of the English language ? On an earlier page emphasis was laid on the fact that certain limits, between which the duration of syllables may vary, are fixed. Here it must be emphasized that every syllable and every vowel and every consonant, within those limits, is more or less variable. The elas- ticity of Enghsh consonants was noticed at length by Sweet in his article On Danish Pronunciation (Trans. Phil. Soc, 1873-4, p. 110), and was dwelt on in my paper above referred to (p. 98f.) ; gramophone records prove it beyond aU possibility of doubt, and for mutes no less than for fricatives and liquids. (See Scripture, op. cit., passim.) This furnishes for the free working of the rhythmizing impulse a range no less wide than is fur- nished in the laborer's task by the natural play of hmb and muscle ; which is also confined within strict limits, for the h\nnan leg can step and the human arm reach and the individual muscle contract only so far. In not a few syllables the elasticity resides far more in the con- sonantal part than in the vowel; and the ear is more offended by much prolongation of accented "short" vowels like those of pin, sunny, many, valley, than by the prolongation of adjacent consonants or unaccented vowels, or by the shortening of " long " vowels or diph- thongs. Another principle is of great importance. The small- est time-intervals recognized as constituents of rhythm are those marked by the syllables, not those of the sepa- rate vowels and consonants within the syllable. The times of the elements united into a syllable are not sepa- rately noted with reference to any ratios between them- 88 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC selves. The times of the syllables are so noted, with reference to ratios between them, and as forming little groups, feet, which form larger groups. The times of the successive sounds within a syllable flow on and run into each other without break ; but something happens in passing from one syllable to the next that causes us to feel that there a break was made. That is what chiefly gives language its articulate or jointed character. Pre- cisely where in the flow of sounds that articulating pro- cess, that audible break, occurs — if we come down to the minutest measurement — it is difficult to say ; but it occurs somewhere ; aU recognize that speech is jointed and that syllables are real entities. It occurs some- where between the vowels. Rhythmically, as it appears to me, it is the beginning of the vowel that begins the new rhythmic time. That is the place where the sound becomes louder again, where the stronger vibrations originating in the vocal chords reach the ear with less hindrance and with heavier impact. This would account for the fact that the consonants, however many, before the first vowel of a line or k&Xov have no rhythmical effect, in Greek, Latin, or English. Anyhow, the sylla- bic times are the smallest constituents of rhythm recog- nized as distinct by the rhythmic sense. If the curve of a transcribed gramophone record be so enlarged that three syllables making a dactyl ocupy 300 mm., it may not be possible to point out within a millimeter where the transition from one syllable to the next occurs ; but it win be possible to locate it within perhaps 10 mm., and the transition is a real thing, the syllable a dis- tinct rhythmic time. Given, now, any series of words, selected wholly with- out reference to rhythm, simply to convey an idea in ordinary talk, any one who speaks naturally the entire RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 89 series yields unconsciously to an impulse to arrange the syllabic times in some regular or approximately regular way. To that end he deals pretty freely -with the times of individual vowels and consonants, extending some, contracting others. Conspicuous points which he takes account of first of all, and is impelled to make most distinctly regular in their arrangement, are the more prominent among the accented vowels. But there is considerable freedom even here; some vowels that are certainly accented and felt as accented are yet made subordinate to others that occur in a more convenient location for the immediate purpose, and some vowels of slight prominence, or not accented at aU in other com- biaations, if they chance to stand more conveniently, may be treated in the rhythm as the equals of strongly accented ones. Yet the sense of separate individuality in the syllables includes a recognition of limi ts to the freedom of treatment, to exceed which would be distor- tion. Therefore in ordinary conversation the rhythmiz- ing impulse is only partially successful ; it is held in check by the previously determined character of the pvOfii- ^6iu,evov, by the sense that if one prolongs or shortens syllables too much they will sound queer. That would offend more than the resulting rhythm would please. Hence there are frequent interruptions of the even flow. A few successive syllables take easily a distinct rhythm ; then comes an obstruction, a little siiift, then a few more syllables more easily arranged, and so on -with, infinite variety. The impulse is constant so long as the words come without hesitation; obstructions are frequent, changes in the character of the rhythm from one phrase to another are numerous, the result so complex that detailed analysis is impossible without instruments, and those more perfect than have yet been employed. Such 90 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC is the process in spefeeh when the words are not origin- ally selected or arranged at all with reference to rhythm. But every one who speaks or writes carefully for the public, if while making his sentences he is conscious of their sound (some are not so conscious), does select words and arrange them more or less, to make them easier for the rhythmizing impulse to deal with to its satisfaction, so that they may more easily assume a somewhat closer approach to regularity. Somewhat closer, I say ; for we do not like a too perfect rhythm in professed prose. Aristotle has put this as well as any one. to Se (TxrJH'a, ttj's Xe'^ew? Set firJTe efifierpov elvai fiLTire appvdfiov to jiKV rycip airidavov (veifKda-Oat, yap So/cei) Kal d/ia Kot i^lcTTrjcnv • irpoa-ej^eiv yap Trotet to) ofioicj), TTOTe nrdXiv ij^ei,. . . . Slo pvdp,ov Bel e^eiv tov \6yov, fierpov Sh i^ri • iroirj/jia yhp ecrTai. pvdfiov Sk ni) aKpi^oK ' TovTo 8k ecrrai iav y»e%/3t tov y. (Rhet. Ill, 8, 1-3.) "The words should be neither metrical or un- rhythmical. The former awakens [mistrust, for it seems artificial ; at the same time it puts one out, for it makes one look for the like and ask when it will recur. Hence prose should contain rhythm, but not meter, else it will be verse. And rhythm not too exactly ; as when it is carried only to a certain extent." That is, no one pat- tern may be carried far or repeated in close proximity without drawing attention to itself away from what is more important, and that would not be agreeable. If the thought rises for a moment, becoming nobly emo- tional, elevated, what we caU poetical, our sense of pro- priety admits a closer approach to perfect rhythm. But such closer approach when the thought is not distinctly above the ordinary prose level is felt to be affectation and pretence, form without the substance. But whether the composition be easy or not for the rhythmizing RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 91 impulse to deal with, and whether the resulting rhythm be appropriate and pleasing or not, the process in read- ing the composition aloud is the same as before, — an entirely unconscious one in most people, more or less consciously attended to by the actor or practised speaker. In the expression of the best thought and the higher ranges of emotion, in the "most perfect speech of man," we think a more perfect rhythmical form appropriate. We expect the poet to wed his thought to melodious verse, — so to select and arrange words that the voice win easily effect a satisfying arrangement of the times. The process in speaking them is still the same ; but the material supplied is more readily arranged, and the result is more regular, — is not only pvdfi6<;, but fierpov, in Aristotle's sense. And in verse itself there are all grades of success in rhythm; even in a single author hke Robert Browning we find some poems or lines of exquisitely perfect form beside others in which the author's intention is not clear, to the vexation of the reader. Thus three classes of cases may be distinguished, of three grades of adaptabihty to rhythmization in dehvery. But the classes are evidently not separated by a sharp dividing Hne ; such classification is nothing but a con- venience in presentation. In reahty there is no break in continuity in the series of cases, and no essential change in the mode of vocal action, in passing from the most unstudied or least rhythmical utterances of every- day hfe to the most perfect examples of poetic rhythm. To repeat once more the fundamental principle which we have reached, and from which this whole investiga- tion sets out : All speech, like aU other bodily activity in which similar movements are repeated at brief inter- 92 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC vals of time, tends towards rhythm, and approaches regularity of rhythm as closely as the phonetic and semantic character of the words, all things considered, permits. For simphcity our attention in this chapter has been confined to Enghsh ; but the principle is prob- ably universal. It certainly apphes to the few languages which I know enough about to judge. In literature poetry is generally earlier than prose, in great part be- cause verse as an artistic rhythmical form is simpler and more intelligible than prose. It therefore pleases earher, — pleases composer and Hstener aUke. Verse isolates a single pattern of rhythm from the tangle of rhythms made in ordinary speech. What is said in that more easily followed form — always provided a content of thought and feeling that seems worthy of it — pleases primitive man, as simple rhythms of aU kinds please children. One needs considerable literary training to see an artistic form in prose, which is, as rhythm, so much more complex. This is like what has happened in music. Simple melody pleased first; perfect con- cords pleased earlier than the less perfect ; discords are not received into music till quite late; numerous acci- dentals and free modulations, mingling different keys, require for their appreciation a high degree of culture of the musical sense, such as only a fraction of the people even in the most musical nations have attained. In the study of music, and likewise in the study of rhythm in language, one naturally begins with the simpler. Another fundamental principle, implied in what pre- cedes but requiring distinct statement, is this. In study- ing specific language rhythms — I do not say in teaching the beginner, but in trying to ascertain their real char- acter — we must start from the larger group of words BHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 93 rather than from the syllable or the foot. This is merely applying in metric the principle which has been reached by the student of phonetics generally and by students of syntax. In all ahke the sentence, the Satz, the larger grouping, may be analyzed into smaller groups, — into words bearing certain syntactical relations to each other, or into feet, syllables, individual sounds, which last are also not. simple. But alike in all three fields every smaller unit reached by analysis is much influenced by its surroundings ; other surroundings may transform it; these must therefore in each instance be aU duly taken into account. The moment you isolate the smaller unit and consider it without reference to collocation, you are treating a variable as a constant. That is a frequent source of error in. a good many fields. A problem solved by the aid of that assumption is not solved, in metric any more than in mathematics. To understand the nature of the smaller metrical units we must watch them im Werden, observing first, as we have been doing, how the voice deals with the larger group of words, and secondly, what the composer does who combines words with the aim of producing a particular rhythmical pattern. Let us look at the matter a mo- ment from the latter side. Negatively, we must not conceive that process as one of addition, in which the lower units, whatever elements the larger group when analyzed is found to contain, are taken like so many bricks or stones already shaped, and bmlt up into the larger structure. The process is rather to be compared — except in rapidity, where the difference is immense — to the growth of a plant, in which the vital force pervades every part, and all the parts, larger and smaller, adjust themselves to each other in a hving and organic relation. This is true of music and the 94 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC dance no less than of poetry ; but we will look only at the last. All poets who have given us any account of their experience in the act of poetic creation agree on this point. Not the single sound, nor the syllable, nor even the word is to their feeling the unit ; but the phrase, the Une, the whole poem. Illustrations might be multi- pUed; two wiU suffice. Lowell in his letters describes the writing of his masterpiece, the Commemoration Ode. " The ode itself," he wrote to Mr. Gilder, " was an im- provisation. Two days before the Commemoration I had told my friend Child that it was impossible — that I was dull as a door-mat. But the next day something gave me a jog and the whole thing came out of me with a rush. I sat up all night writing it out clear, and I took it on the morning of the day to Child." Again to T. "W. Higgiuson, " I was longer gettiag the new (eleventh) strophe to my mind than iu writing the rest of the poem. In that I hardly changed a word, and it was so undeliberate that I did not find out till after it was printed that some of the verses lacked corresponding rhymes." The poem as delivered was over four hundred lines long, in compUcated and changing meter. O. W. Holmes also in his Autocrat at the Breakfast Table com- pares the conceiving a lyric poem to being hit by a bullet in the forehead. Many people who lay no claim to genius have had experiences resembling these nearly enough to understand such accounts perfectly. Ribot in a recent article on The Nature of the Creative Im- agination (International Monthly, July, 1900) devotes some pages to the psychology of such inspiration, em- phasizing the suddenness and also the impersonal, uncon- scious, subterraneous aspect of it in its ordinary form. Isolation of the single syllable or word, and conscious calculation of its relative space in the pattern is whoUy RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 95 absent. Single effects may indeed be altered by calcu- lated substitution of word or phrase ; but even here what we have is stiU primarily and distinctly a reshaping of the larger unit — not a mechanical building up of syllable on syllable already shaped beyond the poet's control be- fore he picks them out. Within certain limits they are unformed and plastic until fixed in a specific collocation, which then — speaking generally — admits without dis- tortion only one rhythm, that which the poet had in mind. Now holding fast this recognition of the fact that the poet's mental action is so rapid and is largely below the level of consciousness, and that, dealing primarily with the larger group, he considers the single syllables only in their relation to that, we may describe in the follow- ing way the purely metrical side of what he does in composing English verse. He so selects and arranges words that the reader will find strongly stressed syllables coming naturally into the majority of the more promin- ent times of the desired rhythm, — or into enough of these to determine clearly how the other syllables are to make the rest of the pattern. The only essential feature of our word-accent is stress ; other elements, like change of speech-tune, may be present or absent, and are variable; but removal of stress to another syllable is a change in accentuation. The stress accent in our words being very little under the arbitrary con- trol of the poet or of any individual, we say it is fixed. It could easily be proved by scores of examples that, as was said above, a degree of freedom is permitted even here that would surprise one who has not given attention to the question; but it is stUl true that the principal word-accents determine the majority of the more promin- ent time-intervals. That is a fuller and more detailed 96 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC statement of what we mean, and of all that we ought to mean, in saying, as we do with truth, that English verse is based on word-accent. But in all this there is no place for the pernicious assumption that in English an accented syllable is long, the unaccented short. Only in a sense that is misleading, and has misled most writers on English metric, can those terms be treated as generally convertible or equivalent. Until that equation is defi- nitely discarded, clear notions of rhythm in English are practically impossible. At least one modem poet besides Lanier, namely Tennyson, recognized this distinctly; and it would be difficult to find a poet possessing a keener insight into the principles of his own art. To indicate precisely what is properly meant by say- ing that Greek versification, in contrast with English, is based on quantity, the matter may be put thus. In English and German speech much is made of differences in stress, quite apart from versification. Some syllables are passed over so lightly that one may even doubt whether a separate syllable is formed or not, and usage may vary on the same syllable. Others are spoken always distinctly and forcibly ; these by contrast appear very heavily stressed ; in most words of more than one syllable usage has settled which one shall receive the heaviest stress. Monosyllables pronounced alone all seem accented ; in continuous discourse some are felt to be more significant and are more likely to receive a stress, others less important are likely to be passed over lightly. For rhetorical purposes also much use is made of stress, which is heavier on the more emphasized word, hghter on the less important ; thus stress is made to render part of the service in conveying meaning that in Greek or Latin was rendered byword-order. In these several ways all grades of variation in stress between the RHYTHM AND LANGUAGE 97 two extremes are in constant use. To my ear modern Greek and Italian seem to make distinctly less use of it ; apparently different dialects vary a good deal in this regard, and of course no one doubts that those languages also employ it enough to be properly called accentual. In ancient Greek ort the other hand stress had but a narrow field ; it was at least as nearly level as in modern French, probably more so. Between word-order, parti- cles, and the pitch-accent, about all the functions of stress in Enghsh, leaving rhythm out of view, appear to have been fully supplied without stress. A stress so nearly level that speaker and Hstener were hardly con- scious of any variation could not play a leading part in determining rhythm. Shifting of the points of slightly heavier stress from one syllable to another, for any reason, could not cause any confusion or seem strange, — as with us variation of the speech-tune on the same word in different collocations does not seem to affect in the least the identity of the words, although in Greek it did, except in siaging. Even in modern French a good deal of such shifting of stress, of which the Frenchman is perhaps not conscious, is noticed by the foreigner. When a Frenchman with a good command of Enghsh speaks it ia some excitement, he is apt to treat our accents with the freedom of his own language, as rather variable, unless he has acquired with remarkable thor- oughness our peculiar intonations. On the other hand, as every Greek syllable (elision and the hke apart) was pronounced with fairly equal precision, variations in quantity or quality of vowel or consonant, such as we admit freely in unstressed syllables, were of necessity less free. Without at least some variation in time of pronunciation of the separate elements rhythm was impossible; but the limits were narrower; in compari- 98 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC son with English, quantity may be said to have been fixed. The difference between " long " and " short " syllables was just about as distinct as in English be- tween accented and unaccented, and could no more be overlooked by the ordinary speaker. A Greek, therefore, desiring to produce a particular Xpdveov Tci^K, so selected and arranged words that the reader would find long syllables coming naturally into the majority of the more prominent times, — or into enough of these to determine clearly the place of the other syllables in the arrangement, i. e., how the other syllables should constitute the other times. The ques- tion whether any stress at all accompanied the more prominent times, which were marked by the down beat when one kept time by beating, I still postpone a little. Finally it should be noted that a very slight change in the relative prominence of stress in comparison with qualitative precision, in the utterance of groups of syl- lables, is enough to cause a language to shift from the accentual to the quantitative basis in rhythmization. It is therefore nothing surprising that the two systems existed for generations side by side in late Latin and Greek. IV EHYTHM m GEEEK By this gradual approach, from the side of rhythm in nature and in other activities of man, through rhythm in a typical living language, we have finally reached the central problem of Greek rhythm. The reader cannot but inquire vrhether this conception of rhythm is not iDappUcable to Greek, because based too much on habits ' of speech purely modem, or at least not Greek. Was there any recognition of such ideas by the ancients them- selves ? To answer this requires examination of several passages from Aristoxenos and others; and a careful examination, because previous discussion of the same passages by the most competent scholars has in part issued ia very diverse interpretation. Only some method of approach at least partially new, and implying wider comparison and induction, combined with more careful scrutiny, affords any hope of advance. We have seen that Plato, Aristotle, and their suc- cessors were aware that rhythm has a large place in nature, though they could not realize so fully as we how large ; also that they did not overlook the natural bond of kinship uniting the various forms of rhythm in many human activities, whereof speech is one. But this is not enough. Have we evidence that competent ancient observers recognized in syllabic quantities the degree ,{ of elasticity assumed? And did their conception of rhythm in language admit such unbroken gradation from simple speech through artistic prose and spoken verse 100 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC to song ? At least the former of these two questions, the fundamental one, has been generally answered in the negative. The reason for that appears to be that state- ments of the metrici, interpreted with a little twist because not taken in their true relation to other evi- dence, created a strong prepossession in favor of the hard and fast rule, long is to short as two to one. The other evidence was approached with that prepossession well settled; consequently statements of Aristoxenos that would otherwise have seemed sufficiently clear were explained away, or were taken with such restrictions that the real force was obscured. It is necessary to put aside that prepossession ; to aid in clearing it away was part of the object of Chapter II, " Rhythmicus or Metrious ? " In that chapter (pp. 42-52) were quoted a series of passages differentiating ' rhythmi ' from ' metra,' and de- ! daring that in ' rhythmi ' — that is, as we found, in more elaborate melic verse — the times of syllables were shortened and prolonged with great freedom, in disregard ^ of the " metrical " rule of two to one ; that rule prevailed only in the ' metra ' or verses of the simpler type, which were destined for reading only, — or which at any rate preserved their proper rhythm in plain reading unadorned by TrXda-fia. I see no admissible understanding of those paragraphs that does not include the conception of con- siderable elasticity of syllabic quantity, at least in lyric verse. Those texts, however, do not stand alone, but are supplemented by others that accord with them and state the matter more plainly. The very term pvd^iii^o/jLevov, applied to the material or medium which embodies a XP°^^^ raft? and makes it perceptible to one or more of our senses, of itself naturally suggests the same conception. Unless there is positive evidence to the contrary, he who employs RHYTHM IN GREEK 101 that present passive participle to denote \i^K, Kiw]vaeK ravra^, rijv re rov pvdfiov Kal TTjV rov pvd/M^ofievov, vapd/TrXTjcrioiK e')(pvaa<; trpo^ aW^Xa? Sffirep exet to a-xfjfJM xal to a-'XTjiiari^o/iievop irprn avrd. tSairep yap to aA/ia TrXetous lSea to indicate an irrational syllable) w _ O _ > and w _ > — Again, Theognis begins a dactylic hexameter with the words evp^oiteV^ p,oi KXvdt ; he has also the elegiac penta- meter ^^-^^f V"*. aeuTto • a~u Se /iot kKvOi koX eaOXh SlSov. RHYTHM IN GREEK 103 The words fioi. kXv6i have the two values ^ and L-i — v-*. Again, the word avr^ would ordinarily have in the hexameter the value , or before a vowel — v^ ; in iambic trimeter the value might be > — or — > ; in Aisch., Ag. 170 f. Zeus offTii TTOT iariv, el to'S* avrai iXov KeK\rjfievq> the value is i Such examples are plenty enough. In each case it is the neighboring syllables that show which of the possible values was intended by the poet. It is strange that the plain meaning of ek xpovovi Tedelaa Sia^epovra^ is not accepted in full by Westphal (Gr. Rhythmik, p. 70). He translates redeiaa zerlegt, and selects for an example the phrase edavev SiariOeiTcov wws to pv0fii^6fievov koX ttoiovvtwv Kara roii^ 104 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC j^povovf TouivSe t} ToiovSe. (II§6W.) In Stand evrmv irm'i alone there might be ambiguity ; but none is left when it is added that the rhythm " makes the rhythmized material of this or that character as regards its time- intervals." Farther at the end of § 8 : toiovtov vorjreov to pvO/iii^oiievov olov Svvaadai fjieraTidecrdai, eh y^povcov fieye- 07) •jramohaira koI eh ^vv0ecret,v auTjj? Trj^ pv9fi07roiiav fieyedcav ixev6vTopal irepl jxevov n fjbdyeGo'i yCyvovrai. Ka66\ov B' elireiv ■f) fiev pvd noTToUa iToXKa i— i — These and many other variations from the theoretical forms (by which never- theless the fundamental character of the movement is de- i, termined) are part of a rhythmizing process that moulds a plastic material; the simple adding together of long and short syllables, in the ratio of two to one, cannot produce such combinations. The result is that in pvfffio- TToiia the divisions are in truth often manifold, and the Tr6^e<; a-vvderoi of Aristoxenos might be divided into several times four parts, while the simple feet in their theoretical form, which the conductor followed in his beating (as the modern conductor does), and which ran along in the mind of the musician as the skeleton pattern underlying the complicated pvO fLoiroUa, contained but two, three, or four %/"'''''" iroSiicoi. The whole pvd/io- TToua as a concrete thing would thus in fact be a com- pound made up of the xpovoi irohiKoC and those peculiar to the puOfioiToUa, Those verses which the metricians called ' rhythmi ' in the passages quoted above (jp. 42- , 52) were examples of this, in contrast with the ' metra,' ! which contained little, many of them nothing, outside } of the xP°^°'' irohiKoC. To us this separate treatment of the two systems of times, those of the pvdfioi and those of the pv6 fjioiroUa^ seems at first rather strange, perhaps more obfuscating tha,n clarifying; Aristoxenos found, as we have seen, that it struck his listeners and readers in the same way. In reality the xpovoi t^9 pvd iioiroiiai iSiot are as normal as the ^P^'"'"' iroSiKoi, 1 The new fragments published by Grenf ell and Hunt (Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Pt. I, pp. 14-21) appear to be from a section on ^vB/MnroUa, and from the second chapter of it, that on xpvo''S' Compare Aristid. Q., p. 42 Mb. RHYTHM IN GREEK 109 and stand on the same level -with them. Both alike ' arise naturally in the rhythmizing process, and the still more intricate time-intervals of prose are no less legiti- mate and natural. But there can be no doubt what the idea of Aristoxenos was. And as a solid basis for the distinction remains the fact that in any given poetic or musical rhythm the fundamental character of the move- ment was really defined by the XP°^°'' 'toSikoi. Enough 1 of these had to appear in their proper order to make a ! distinct impression of their character ; else the whole ' seemed to have too Kttle regularity for verse or music. The only method of treatment by which the two systems of times could be put on the same level and treated together was not invented tiU centuries later. The times employed in ancient music could all be described and noted accurately enough by the method of Aristoxenos, if not always so simply as might be wished. But when in its further development the rhythm of instrumental music became much more intricate still, the old theory of the foot as determined by the ratio between arsis and thesis, either of which might stand first, was found quite inadequate ; the modern theory of the measure, as deter- mined by the number of beats and always beginning with a down beat, inevitably resulted. But we are not to disdain Aristoxenos for not discovering a method that his contemporaries would have thought stiU stranger and less acceptable than the one he followed. His method is intelligible, and is perfectly sound within its own sphere, however different from ours; and it contains such unmistakable recognition of elasticity in syllabic quantities that one cannot but wonder that this has been so little regarded. So too of the doctrine of a\oyla, which Aristoxenos thus describes : 110 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC "Dipurrai Se rSiv iroS&v aeao-ros tJtoi \6y

9eirj(rav Svo Tro'Se?, 6 fiev laov to avw Tm KaTca e^av Kal SurT]iv>v eKUTepov, 6 Be to iJ,ev /colto) Sio'Tjfiov, to Se avm rjiMa-v, TpiTO^ Se Tt? XT](f)6eir] ■jrois irapa towtov?, ttjv fiev ^dcnv ta-rjv av Tot? afid€l T/awrps unequivo- cally. If by exception it occupies a positipn where the exact rhythmic pattern (^pvdfio^ in Aristoxenos's nar- rower sense) leads us to expect a syllable that shall have only the time of the %/3oVo9 Tr/awro?, a long syllable retards the movement a little ; it produces a time-inter- val, variable with circumstances, but in general incom- mensurable with the others, or dXoyo';. In the earliest period, and always in the most widely used verse, the dactylic hexameter, no long syllable is allowed to occupy such a position. In many kinds of verse a long was often allowed, within certain restrictions, to stand in place of a ■)(p6vo<; •n-pcoTO';, but with an effect of retardation; while it cOuld fill a Siar)iJ,o<: y(p6vo';, or a three-timed or four-timed, with no suggestion of inade- quacy. Thus a long syllable, if we take as a standard its most common length of two times, is capable of consider- able extension but of only slight compression. A short syllable on the other hand cannot iiU. a S^o-^j/to? XP°^°^ unequivocally. If asked to do so, as it apparently was RHYTHM IN GREEK 115 occasionally in some meters, there was a slight inade- quacy, a little hastening of the time. But it might in some circumstances be crowded into less than the xP°voui^rjV. elal Se ol [Mev inro tSiV r\pe^i5iV KaTerj^ofievoi yjpovoi yvmpir IJLOi, ol Se viro twv Kivqa-ecov dyvmaroi Bia tr/MiKpoTijra Sa-Trep opoi Tivev ayvoMTTCov, aXX' eK fiev r5)P yvcapijioov Kara to Troaov to's eK fiepuv nvcov avyKeirai TO, crv? yveopi/iLov'; Kara to ttoctov xpovovi. That is : " Each of the pvdfu^6/j,eva is neither in motion nor at rest continuously, but is both by turns. The period of rest is marked by the bodily position, the musical note, and the syllable, for no one of these can be perceived without the cessation of motion ; the period of motion is marked by the transition from position to position, from note to note, and from syllable to syllable. The times occupied by the periods of rest are determin- able, while the periods of motion are not determinable, because of brevity, serving as boundaries, as it were, to the times occupied by periods of rest. This too should be observed, that each of the systems of rhythm consists both of the times whose length is determinate and of those whose length is indeterminate, but not in like manner ; the combinations consist of the known quanti- ties as constituent parts and of the uijknown quantities as separating and bounding the known." The terms yvwpip^o'i and dyvaxno^ are not easy to translate consistently, though their meaning is clear, RHYTBM m GREEK 117 and is not obscured, I hope, by the above rendering. It is evident that Ktvea and Kivria-i'i Kara rov 'Xfiovov — virep^aivovaa fiev Toil's irepie'xpfievov's inrb tSiv rdaecov tovovi larafievr] S' iir avTwv rSiv Taaewv koL v iiricmjfir}, rw "TTOcrq) BiaWdrTovaa t^9 iv (phalf icaX opydvoK, ov)(l t^ irocm. Koi yap iv ravrr/ Kol fieXoi '^^(pvcnv al Xef et? Koi pvOfwv Kal fieTa^oXr)v koI irpeirov. ware Koi iirl ravrrji jj uKoi] repTrerai fj,ev rot? fieXecnv, dyerai Se rot? pvfffj,oi<;, aaird- Jerat he ras fiera^oXdv, iroQel Se iirl irdvrwv to oIksIov • r} he hioKKayr) Kara to i^aXXov koi tJttov. "In the case of rhythms too I have seen the same thing happen, — a whole crowd together showing dis- pleasure and indignation when one rendered a passage, either of instrumental music or dance or vocal utterance, in unsymmetrical or improperly proportioned times, and so destroyed the rhythms." If Dionysios stopped here one might suppose (fycovijv to mean singing merely. But in fact, after insisting that variety and appropriateness are no less important than tune and rhythm, as one may see in vocal and instrumental music and in dancing, he proceeds: " And my comparison is not alien to the subject, for oratory was also a sort of music, differing from that of songs and instruments in degree, not in kind. For in oratory too the words have tune, rhythm, modulation, and appropriateness. So that in this too the ear is pleased by the melody, is moved by the rhythms, wel- comes the changes, and everywhere desires appropri- ateness ; the difference is in the more and less." It is plain that to Dionysios the rhythms of prose RHYTHM IN GREEK 127 ■were like those of music; they lay in the aiiftfierpoi Xpovok of successive syllables; a speaker might destroy the rhythms by giving to the times of the syllables wrong ratios, at which a large mixed audience would take offence. He then goes on, in a passage akin to the one cited from Aristoxenos, to describe the tune of speech, consisting of the prose accents; these disappear in singing, being replaced by the composer's melody, as he illustrates from a chorus of the Orestes. Later (p. 136 Schaefer) he calls a pleasing speech-tune, not of the , singing but of the speaking voice, eu/iteXe? but not ». efifj,e\eHdyto music and verse. He then proposes to show-r]iJLi iracrav Xe^iv ev/ierpov, •^n^ ifi,(j)ai- vei ro TTOirjriKov Kal fteTUKov ' y S^ Kal rbv Arjfioa-dein] Ke)(^pria6al <\)7)iM. 128 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC Accordingly his whole metrical section, describing and naming the feet, is as suitable to a handbook of metric as to a treatise on rhetoric. All the detailed discussions of prose rhythm, from Aristotle and earlier to Quintilian, assume the same thing without any per- ception on the part of their authors that a specific state- ment of it was needed. On every side, in fact, in Greek as in English, lan- guage exhibits this unbroken gradation from the most careless to the most perfect artistic form. On the side of tone-quality and tune we may readily observe the progression. As the finer and more elevated emotions gain prominence, the tones of the voice — unless indeed the nature or violence. of the emotion weakens the muscular control over the organs of speech — take on more and more of the pure quality that we call musical; appropriate passages of prose, still more of poetry, one may hear pronounced on the stage, and particularly by the best actresses, in the purest musical tone. Concurrently with this progression we may discern a parallel change iu the speech-tune; where the purest tone is appropriate a good, actress wiH frequently employ a form of true mel- ody. GHdes may be more prominent than is usual in acknowledged singing, but the whole will approach, as nearly as possible without attracting too marked notice, the character of a melody that could be written in our musical scales. Darwin has noted this in his Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (chap. IV) : " From this fact [that an ape, one of the gibbons, produces an exact octave of musical sounds]," he says, " and from the analogy of other animals, I have been led to infer that the progenitors of man probably uttered musical tones [to express emotion] before they acquired the power of articulate speech ; and consequently when the RHYTHM IN GREEK 129 voice is used under any strong emotion it tends to assume, through the principle of association, a musical character." Aristoxenos observed the same thing. In the discussion of the speaking and singing voice, just after the passage before considered, he says (p. 9 Mb.) : " In talking we avoid holding the voice steady on any pitch, unless because of emotion we are forced to that kind of move- ment." This is a recognition of the fact that emotions cause the speaking voice to become more like the singing voice ; greater steadiness of pitch and greater evenness in ghdes are accompanied by more musical quality of tone. In accordance with this remark of Aristoxenos we find that Aristides Q. (p. 7 Mb.) places beside the con- tinuous and discrete movement of the voice a third kind, /leai], 27 tA? tcov iroiTjfidTeov avayvdoo'ei'i TroiovfieOa. This is a valua.ble observation. It adds the fact, which accords fully with what we see ia modem languages, that Greek poetry was read in a style that stood between I that of conversation and that of singing, as regards tone- quality and pitch changes. The passage from the more commonplace and diffuse in thought or verbal expression to the more elevated, condensed, rich in ideas and emo- tion, was expressed also in the changed character of the vocal sounds, in the increase of the musical element. Along mth this went, as we saw in Chapter II, in- creased precision in the observance of rhythm. A high degree of this was called irXda-fia, which doubtless con- noted the closer "approximation to music in the other particulars besides rhythm. In all these aspects song stood at the upper end of the scale, which ran down, as with us, to the simplest prosaic utterance. In the latter, it is true, the ancients appear to ha,ve been hardly con- scious of any approximation to rhythm. Their attention was attracted only by the conscious endeavor to produce M 130 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC rhythm through selection and arrangement of words; their treatises were meant first of all for practical use in directing such endeavor, or at least in enabling one to understand the procedure and the product of such endeavor. There they recognized, at least the more acute minds recognized, the essential nature of the sub- conscious rhythmizing process deahng with material more or less plastic. That they faUed to recognize the universality of the tendency to rhythmize, even where that conscious endeavor was not present, and that they sometimes conceived of the syllabic quantities in prose as rigidly fixed (as in the first sentence of the passage from Dionysios Hal. quoted above on p. 51) need not surprise us nor prevent our acceptance of a conclusion based on such an accumulation of evidence. FOOT, ICTUS, "CYCLIC" FEET Aristoxenos defines the foot by describing its func- tion, in the words : & (xrifiaivofieBa tov pvdfibv koI jvcopi- /jiov iroiovfiev ry aiaOrjcrei 'itov<; icrnv eh rj irXeCov^ ivm. This follows, in our fragment of the Elements of Rhythm, a series of preliminary definitions. After reit- erating with emphasis that rhythm deals with time, and arises only when there is an arrangement of times, he defines first the ttjOwto? t&v y^povcov, the hiaiqjMO'i j^p6voi;, Tpta-rjixo<}, etc., then simple and compound time in vari- ous relations, which involves a partial elucidation of pv6 jiOTToiia. It is thus made as distinct as possible that the foot, which is treated next, is a matter of times, and only secondarily of syllables, notes, or steps, as these embody times. The essence of the foot is that by it the rhythm is marked and made cognizable and intelligible. The active and middle voices of the two verbs are not acci- dental, but are designed to bring out the two aspects of the action. ^rj/iaivofieBa points within, to the mental process of apprehending, of noting to one's self as articu- lated in some definite way, the series of times concerned ; r/vmpifLov iroiovfiev looks outward, to the action of making the articulation of the series perceptible to others. Both of these at once we do through the foot- Neither verb refers to beating time ; that is merely an external aid to one or the other side of the process. The process is complete within the meaning of the defi- 132 CHAPTERS ON GREEK. METRIC nition whenever one simply renders the series of times, being conscious of its rhythmical character, so that another may also become conscious of it. Evidently the foot is conceived as a sort of common measure of the series. The earlier name fierpov embodies the same idea. When a rhythmical series is rendered, the times are perceived to be grouped, in larger and smaller divisions; that is what is meant by a Ta|w j^povmv. Among these various divisions, and running through all with more or less distinctness, a group of times detaches itself to our sense, because it is often repeated, either in the same form or with so shght varia- tion that we stUl feel the substantial identity. The group so repeated, with not too great variations, makes up the whole series and gives it a specific character, which varies with the character of the smaller group. To Aristoxenos any group of times recognized by our senses as performing that function is a foot. The smallest such group is a simple foot ; if a group which performs that function is perceived to be itself made up of smaller groups which also perform the same function, then the larger of the two is a compound foot. The simple foot is the smallest unit of measurement — not group of times, but sufficiently repeated and distinctly characterizing group of times to constitute a unit of measurement — after the TrpcoTo? pjjpoVos. The qualifying phrase " one or more than one " is added to the definition to cover the class known as dochmiac or " slantwise " rhjrthms.^ Different kinds of 1 Perhaps also the "logaoedic'' or mixed meters. The difEerence between Westphal's conception and mine, with regard to the appli- cation of the phrase to that class of rhythms, will become clear if one cares to compare his Aristoxenos I, pp. 20-23, with my discussion of those meters in the next chapter. FOOT, ICTUS, ''CYCLIC" FEET 133 simple feet were so combined in these that one alone was not sufficient to characterize the whole ; each was dis- tinctly felt, the frequent shifting from one to another within the kolon was an essential part of the effect. We have parallels in modern music. For example, there are some Hungarian popular songs in which the time shifts frequently, from measure to measure, so that a double indication of it has to be used, as f f , or | |. The char- acteristic movement of one may be seen in the phrase : I rl 2a 44 J y P 3 p ivm Rhythmically the whole song^ consists of this kolon repeated six times with varying tune and harmony. A notable example of such combination is thus described by William Mason in his Memories of a Musical Life. 2 "Raff had composed a sonata for vioHn and pianoforte in which there were ever-varying changes in measure and rhythm ; measures of \, ^, |, alternated with common and triple time, and seemed to mix together promiscuously and without regard to order. Notwith- standing this apparent disorder, there was an ■under- current, so to speak, of the ordinary f or ^ time, and to the player who could penetrate the rhythmic mask the difficulty of performance quickly vanished." Mr. Mason goes on to tell how one of the musicians who had prac- tised the sonata to play it before Liszt broke down from nervousness over the confusing changes, whereupon Liszt " played it through at sight in rapid tempo and without the slightest hesitation." Whether among ^ Collection Litolfl, No. 1281,WVIagyar Dal-Album, 214; others in the same volume are 226, 255, 294, 310, 391. 2 Century Magazine, Sept. 1900, vol. Ix, p. 775. 134 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC modern popular dances any sucli shifting rhythms exist I do not know; I should rather expect one might be found. There is probably no parallel in English verse ; though the verse that originates and gains acceptance among the less cultivated, who are less bound by theory and foUow the ear more boldly, certainly exhibits far more variety of rhythm than greater poets dare employ, and such verse has received no serious examination on this side. There can be no doubt that such rhythms were familiar to the Greeks, and therefore without the words 649 rj TrXeiou? Ii/o? the defining sentence would not q[uite cover the ground. In our farther discussion, how- ever, the dochmiac rhythms will for the present be left out of view. The sentence that defines the foot is followed by the words: TStv 8e TToSav ol ftev eK Svo j^povav avyKeivrai tov re dyco Kal tov kotco, ol 8e etc rpL&v, Svo fiev rSiv avco ivbv Sk TOV Kara), rj i^ evo^ fiev tov dvco Svo Se twv kutco [o( Sk eK TeTTapav, Svo jjtiv t5)V avm Svo Se Tmv «£itq)] . on \i,ev ovv e^ evo<; ^(^povov ttov? ovk av e'ir) iJ,eye6et . to yap Siarjfiov /j.eyeOo'} TravTe\5>-'_i-', containing four iroStKol y^povoi, each represented by a syllable. Earlier in col. v the clause, cSffre TTjV jJikv irpmTqv ^vWajSrjv iv t5 fieyla'Toi y^pova KetaOai, rfjV Se Sevrepav iv tSi eXa'^^Ca-TW, rrjv Se rplrrjv ev tS> /xeacp, employs xpoi'o^ for ttoSj/jio? j^pdm<;, but in such a manner that the technical and the ordinary sense run together. So also in col. ii, 6 SdKTv\o<; 6 tear oafifiov avdtrdKi tS>v irepie')(pva-S)v ^v\\a^&v redetamv eh Toi? ■X^povovi rj ft)? iv t5 KprjTiK^ iriOevTO, "the iambic dactyl (or dactyl with iambic thesis and arsis, w _ w _), in which FOOT, ICTUS, "CYCLIC" FEET 137 the syllables comprising it (or constituent syllables) are set to the time-intervals in the reverse order as com- pared with the cretic {—w — w)." Adhering now to our restricted application, the mean- ing of the passage under consideration is this. There can be no foot without at least two syllables, for one syllable does not divide time and produce a ratio of times. A fiovd^povov among trochees is not strictly a foot, though its equivalent in time. Some feet consist of two syllables, one for the up-beat and one for the down-beat, (iambus, trochee, or spondee). Others con- sist of three syllables, two for the up-beat and one for the down (anapaest and dactyl) ; or again one for the up-beat and two for the down ( v^ and _ <-- _) ; others consist of four syllables, two for the up-beat and two for the down (paion _ w w w, or ionic v^ ^ and \j \j^. The foregoing appears to me the most probable solu- tion of the long-standing and much-discussed problem, precisely what times Aristoxenos meant to include under the XP°^°'' """oSiKot. In its favor, besides the sim- plicity of interpretation for this locus classicus, are three considerations, two positive and one negative. First, the feet thus assumed as the normal ones, by which the rhythmical character of the series was deter- mined and the beating of time was regulated, are adequate, filling all requirements. In them without exception each long syllable has twice the length of a short. AH three '^evt], namely icrov, SiirXdaiov, ^fiLoXtov, are provided for fully, in every variety. AU the other common feet are but shght variations of these, pro- duced by resolution of a long syllable into two short, or union of two short into one long, or both together. These changes produce the simplest of the XP°^°'' ''''}' 138 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC pvdfioiroUa's tSioi. Trisemes and tetrasemes are also Xpovoi TToBiKoi, provided they coincide with arsis, thesis, or whole foot; otherwise they are among the XP°^°'' Tfj'i pvdfioTToiia'} tSioi, farther varieties of which we need not dwell on at present. Secondly, the term a-rjfteiov ttoSikop and most of the passages employing it are rendered more intelligible, at least as regards the simple feet. Besides the clause ev irrjfielov ov iroiel Siatpeaiv xp^^ov, where ar)/j.elov as applied to language is pretty clearly identical with syl- lable, the most significant passages are these. (1) IIoStKO? fiev ovv ecTTt xpovo's 6 KaTexdnv a-tjfieiov voSiKov /Jieyedo<;, olov dpaecoi rj )8av\da-(70VTa. Where arsis or thesis of the fundamental foot is divided between two syllables, it would seem that each syllable must embody a ■x^povo^ tto St/cos and be represented by a a-rjfielov ttoBikov, if the crrj/iieia are really to indicate and preserve amid aU variation the individuahty of the foot. To this add: (3) Av^ea-Bai Se <^aiverai to /jtev lafi^CKov yepoi; /J-expi' rov oKTCOKaiSsKacri^/iov /leyedov:, mare yivea0ai tov /lejicr- Tov TrdSa k^airKaaiov tov iXaj^icTTOv, to Se SaKTvXiKov /levpi TOV eKKaiSeKaai^fJiov, to Be iraieoviKov fji'^'x^pi tov vev- TeKaieiKoaaariiiov. auf erat Se eirl TrXeiovcov to re la/i^i- Kov iyevo bvQ be. Tepovcn Se ol fie(^ovev ev tm avro) \6yq) irohoiV Kara jiieyevo^ hiai^opd, olov 6 Tpia"rjfi,ov FOOT, ICTUS, "CYCLIC" FEET 141 ev apcrei Kai Snr\dcnov iv 0eaei], r&v ykp rpiaiv fj BiaC- pev rerrdpav [arjfieicov^ would seem to be the more natural antecedent, from the purely grammatical standpoint. The former has been preferred as fitting a preconceived interpretation; the argument for the latter, besides the very slight one of grammatical probabihty based on order, in that it pro- duces harmony of meaning with the other passages that point to four a-rj/jiela in the ionic and paionic. The four a-qfiela of the largest fundamental feet are never exceeded in ntimber in the multiples of those feet, in the fieydXoi Tro'Ses of eighteen and twenty-five primary times. In the light of (4) and (5) the whole of (3) is now clear. In English : " In extent of the foot the limit of the iambic class is eighteen primary times, so that the largest foot becomes in extent the sixfold of the small- est ; in the dactylic class it is sixteen primary times, in the paionic twenty-five. The iambic class and the pai- onic increase to a larger number of primary times than the dactylic, because each of them has more a-rjfiela TToSiicd " — that is, in the fundamental foot into which the compound foot is divided. The scale would be 144 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC Foot Si}/i6(a Nun Iambus \j 2 Trochee w 2 Spondee Dactyl Anapaest Cretic 1 c 1 1 1 1 c 3 3 3 3 Paion — \j y^ \j 4 Ionic WW 4 Obviously the argument is not quite complete with- out one farther assumption, which is, I believe, justifi- able. Not only were ionic kola extended to eighteen times, with and without anaklasis, but also the plain iambic and trochaic. The argument therefore does not cover the ground unless we may understand that Aris- toxenos counted as fundamental feet for this purpose the iambic and trochaic dipody. That is possible enough. We are by no means fully informed as to the details of his nomenclature ; but he appears to have given to these forms, at least in some connections, the distinctive names Sa/eruXo? war' ta/jk^ov and KptjTiKO'; respectively.^ Also, they were of very frequent occur- rence mingled with ionics and precisely equivalent to them, while the longer iambic and trochaic kola were regularly measured and named on the assumption that what we call the dipody was the unit. With this addition to the scale the figures harmonize. A further reason for the addition will appear shortly. But the causal connection (on) is not so plain and has been considered absurd. Westphal (Rhyth., pp. 113-117) followed Baumgart in rejecting it, finding the only rational explanation of the limits of extent for the 1 See Oxyrh. Pap., col. ii, and Aristid. Q,, i. 17. FOOT, ICTUS, ''CYCLIC" FEET 145 compound feet in Aristid. Q., p. 35 Mb. We are there told simply that the dactylic class stops at the sixteen- timed kolon hici rb i^aadevelv '^jj.d'i rov; /iteifow? rov toiov- Tov yevovi SiayiyvaaKeiv pvOfioik ; that the iambic stops at eighteen times, ovicen yap t^s tov tolovtov pvQjjLov <; avrikafi^avoiJieOa ; while the paionic extends to twenty-five times, i^ej^pi yap too-ovtov tov toiovtov pudjiMv TO al(T0rjTi]pi,ov KaTaXafi/Sdvei. But is not this in perfect accord with the Psellos fragment, the two supplementing each other? Our power to grasp a rhythmical series as an organized whole depends on the character of its divisions. The simpler those are, the sooner in point of time, when a succession of them meets the sense, do we cease to organize them into a new whole and begin to receive them as a mere unorganized succession. The principle is general; it apphes perfectly to the case before us. A imit of two foot-times or ar^pLela is the very simplest in rhythm; hence very soon, before six such units are heard, the mind ceases to organize them and group them, so as to view the series mentally all together (avvopav) as one. Unless, be it added, they are so constituted that the mind naturally groups them by twos, and so forms a larger imit than the original one of two arj/jieia. That was the case for the Greek with the common iambic and trochaic rhythms. Each alter- nate simplest foot admitted an irrational syllable, a variation in structure that of itself made a dipodie grouping ; and whether the irrational syllable was there or not, the dipodie grouping was generally made. This larger unit, with four arjiJieia, might be repeated to form a series of three ; the mind would still organize them and be conscious of them as a larger whole up to eigh- teen primary times. That this theoretical explanation agrees with the practical treatment of such series no 10 146 CHAPTERS ON GREEK METRIC one can doubt; our addition of the iambic and tro- chaic dipodies to the scale of feet and o-T^/xeta is thus confirmed. The dactyl, however, with only three a-rjij,ela, could be so organized and unified only to the hmit of four feet, sixteen primary times.^ The anapaest followed the dactyl in this, in spite of the fact that for some reason, perhaps merely because of the connection with the double step in marching, anapaestic verse was counted and named by dipodies. Yet the anapaestic tetrameter was a very common group, though felt to be divided into two members. Ionic rhythms naturally were subject to hke conditions with others of the iambic class, having the same number of arjfiela as the iambic or trochaic dipody. The paion, with four a-rj/jLela, and with arsis and thesis in the peculiar ratio of two to three, had a more complex organization still; it could be extended to five feet or twenty-five times without failure of the unifying faculty. There is plainly a connection between the ratio of two to three within the foot and the number of five feet. (6) Three other remarks of Aristides Q. must not be overlooked. In the first chapter of his section on rhythm (p. 32 Mb.) he says : " The rhythm is divided in speech by the syllables, in music by the ratio between arsis and thesis, and in bodily movement toI<; re cry(^i^ij,acn koI rol^ Tovroav •Kepaaiv a Srj Kal arffiela KaXelrai." His whole treatment of rhythm is so brief that it is difficult to say whether the antecedent of a is irepaaiv or crx'>]f''Cicn kuI irepaai, or in what precise sense nrepaaiv is here em- 1 How we are to explain the apparent discrepancy between this statement and the unquestionable occurrence of dactylic pentapodies I do not yet know. In such a case as cilKivov atKivov eiVe, rh S' c? yiieiTia a modern musician would certainly prolong the last two syllables to tetrasemes ; if the Greek musician did the same, he would regard the whole as of two kola. FOOT, ICTUS, "CYCLIC" FEET 147 ployed. The parallel expression in Aristoxenos is Siai- prjo-ei TOP jfpovov ... 57 KivqaiM a-rj/jteiOK re koI cr;^^)iiao-t Koi ei Tt ToiovTov ia-Ti KLvqcremis /jLepoi; (p. 278 Mor.). Here the context indicates that arj/jueia, ^'xrnJ^ara, and toiovtov n fiepo^ Kivqcreai} are meant to include all varieties of divisions in the dance, from the smallest unit to the largest, by no means restricting crrjiiela to the smallest. The next section of Aristides begins: 7rpa>To<; i^ev ovv iffTi j^pdvoi aTop.o<; xal eXa^^tcrro?, o*s kuI (rT)p,elov KaXel- TM. Aristides, then, appHed the term a-rjiJ,elov to the •jrp&TOi "Xpovo^ ; and he goes on to explain that this use of (rr]p,elov is analogous to that in geometry, the tt/jwto? 'Xpovo'i, lite the ' point,' being afiepr]';. ovto<; Be 6 a/u,epr)<; ftovdSo'i oiovel '^copav ej^et • decopslrai y^p ev /lev Xe^ei irepX avWa^rjV, ev 8e p,e\ei irepl (jjOoyyov rj irepl ev Sidarrifia, ev Se Kivrjcrei. a-aj/MaToi; vepl ev a-jfrijj.a. Either here is a partial confusion of thought, or else what looks hke that is merely the result of his brevity. The latter is more probable, and in that case the explanation would be this. Aristides distinctly does not say that this use of arjueiov is borrowed from geometry, but only that it is analogous to the use in geometry. His phrase is Ka6b kuI ol yeajMerrpai. to irapd ar^Laiv aid,epe but avTrji Tjy? pv9 it,oTroi(aaa-t tij? reXeias " ovk ey(^ovTe<; Se elvelv TroVm, KoKovffiv ainrjv a\oyov. erepov Se avTurrpocfiov Tiva tovto) pv6/ibv, o? airb t&v ^pa'xei&v ap^dixevoopav TO T7J9 airayyeXia^ Tdy^oi ; e/ioiye Soxei. Kal tis evTavOa irdXiv atria ; Kal yap ravTrjv d^iov ISetv • 6 rf/v Kara- opav SrjX&v tov irerpov ari'xp';, fiovoavXXa^ov fj.ev ovSe- fiiav, SiavXXd^ovi; Be Bvo /jLova'S e%coz' Xe'^ei?. tovto ovk ea irpSiTOV SiecTTTjKevai tou? ■y^povov'i, a\V eiriTa'^vvei. eireiO' eTTTaKaiSeKa avXXajS&v ovaSiV iv t& (TtIx<9i BeKa fiev elai ^paxetac a-vXXa/3al, eirra Be /lovai fiaKpal, Kal ovS' avToi TeXetoi. avdyKTj ovv KaTecrirdaOau Kal avaTeXXecyuai ttjv v apfiovimv axpi^eiav. o* Se fiaXLCTTa Tav aXkcov dav/jLcii^eiv a^iov, pvdficK ovSeh rS>v fiuKpav, ot va-iv exovcrL irCirTeiv ek /ierpov ■^paov, otJre cTTTOz'Seto?, oiire 0aKxelov Tpoxaimv. ovBev Sr) to clvtl- irpaTTOv icTTiv, evTpoj(pv koX Trepupeprj Kal Karappeovaav elvai TTjV T0i KarafierpovvTe'; airaaav e/jLi^erpov re Kal afierpov Xe^iv, i^