THE ART
OF
SCANSION
BY
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
ALICE MEYNELL
LONDON
Privately printed by Clement Shorter, December 1916THE ART OF SCANSIONTHE ART
OF
SCANSION
BY
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
ALICE MEYNELL
LONDON
Privately printed by Clement Shorter, December 1916PREFACE
MY friend Mrs. Meynell has obliged me with a few words of introduction to this letter by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, here printed for the first time in an edition of twenty-five copies. It was written when she was twenty-one years of age, and residing at her father’s house near Ledbury in Herefordshire. She did not meet Robert Browning until nineteen years later, but her girlish enthusiasm for poetry is reflected in this letter. Her correspondent, Sir Uvedale Price (1747-1829), did not live to see her recognition as a great poet, although her Essay on Mind was published when she was nineteen and her Battle of Marathon, published in our day, was written at the age of fourteen. Price was a Herefordshire neighbour. He was a schoolfellow of Charles James Fox at Eton. He had great ideas on gardening, and developed them in his own grounds at Foxley and wrote an Essay on the Picturesque in 1784, enlarged afterwards into a three-volume work. Sir Walter Scott utilised Price’s ideas when he laid out the gardens at Abbotsford. Price was created a baronet in 1828. Letters from him are to be found in Miss Berry’s Journals. Miss Barrett’s letter was doubtless inspired by Uvedale Price’s An Essay on the Modern Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, which he had had privately printed at Oxford in the year 1827. I have not seen the book, a copy of which he doubtless gave to his fair neighbour. Its perusal served, I am sure, to explain certain obscure allusions in the letter. It urged that “ our system of pronouncing the ancient languages is at variance with the principles and established rules of ancient prosody and the practice of the best poets.”
CLEMENT SHORTER.INTRODUCTION
IT is interesting to see Elizabeth Barrett eager over the dead languages. In her own living language she was modern in her day, more modern than any contemporary except the poet whom, nearly twenty years after this letter was written and the controversy closed, she married. It was modem to write poetry as she wrote, with an emphatic use of modem prose words; unlike Wordsworth’s, not at all childlike as were his. Robert Browning and Elizabeth have a peculiar tone of defiance in their nineteenth-century English; in the most gentle Elizabeth’s verse it is nearly swaggering, certainly swashing and martial. Nothing could be more sharply cut off from the eighteenth century, and the seventeenth, and the sixteenth than the vocabulary of Aurora Leigh, and, English apart, nothing could be more separated from Antiquity than the style that was most characteristically hers. In her quieter moments, when she is not marching, in doublet and hose, the march of her blank verse, but pacing softly in the strictest measure of the bonds that all true poets so love—the bonds of numbers, stress, quantity, rhyme, and final shape—the great beauty of her sonnets proves her delight in that order, and in these the diction is inconspicuous. It is in the romantic poems, those that deal with the lady and the knight, that the modernism is again evident. Where, in her language, is any trace of her reading of the older English ? Where in her style is any sign of her Latin and Greek ? In her most characteristic work she does not sow with her hand; she tosses out the basketful, with a gesture generous but wilful. In one respect—the point on whichthere was no question of deference to Antiquity—she shows none to her English masters. Thence her rhymes:	“ children ” and “ be-
wildering,” “ islands ” and “ silence,” and the rest. She had the right to make these experiments, and it is as evident a sign of her resolute novelty as her husband’s different and less tolerable rhymes were of his. But we may take such rhymes not only as demonstrations of a new independence; they may have been in part due to her peculiar position as the most secluded of poets. Elizabeth Barrett saw and spoke to very few. She cannot have gathered much of the pronunciation of English that was then usual. The friend to whom as a girl she wrote this and other letters on the art of metre was so old as to be numbered among eighteenth-century authors; he was not of her time. If she had the habit of dropping her final g’s, for instance, there might be none to correct it. It is noticeable that she writes of the word “ patriotism ” as generally pronounced in five syllables. The accepted way is to sound it as only three—crowded ones, it is true, but only three, and any other way would seem to us provincial. Especially would an educated ear resent the pronouncing of the last three letters in “ patriotism ” in two syllables.
Elizabeth Barrett’s comments on a few of Milton’s fines leave her reader at liberty to accept them or depart from them. No authority except that of Milton’s shade will ever decide a question as to one of his fines (page 10) : whether we should begin it with two rather strained iambic feet (which would be my scansion) or with a strained long syllable followed by a dactyl (which is hers). It is remarkable, by the way, that she never uses the word “ stress ” in writing of English prosody. It seems to me to be the only safe word; “ accent ” being alien and ambiguous,and “ quantity ” a valuable but nearly lawless part of our metre— present in every poet’s intention in his line, but perhaps best unnamed.
“ Her glories shall never fade,” wrote Browning of his wedded poet (in regard, by the way, to a poem in which she rhymed “ common ” with “ human ”), and they never shall. She is within English literature for ever and ever. Coventry Patmore held poetry to be the gravest among the undertakings of man, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning— child, maid, and wife—took her vocation with gravity, passion, and delight. In this controversy on “ accents ” ancient and modern, she withstands her old friend, literally foot to foot. She might even, but that she was humbly obstinate and courteous and sweet, have lost her temper over a matter so exciting. And what is so exciting to poets as these questions of their technique ? If I had ever had a fierce passage of arms with Francis Thompson (but I never had) it would have been on the question of trochaic endings, and whether one might pause on them before carrying on the weak syllable to the next line. The girl who so passionately cared for her Greek was, in time, the great woman who wrote memorable English passionately. The slightness of the connexion between two such beloved studies seems an incident in her life not easily understood; but she was for poetry first and last.
ALICE MEYNELL*THE ART OF SCANSION
A Letter from Elizabeth Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, to Uvedale Price, afterwards Sir Uvedale Price, Bart.
To UVEDALE PRICE, Esq.
Hope End. April, 1827.
My dear Sir,—I shall not detain you for any unnecessary prologuizing purpose, but with your permission shall go en avant at once, and “ tell you what I am going to say.” Pray have a great deal of indulgence ready for me, for I assure you I shall want all you can spare. Page 32. “ There is a manifest absurdity in transferring the Latin mode of accentuation to the Greek, yet we certainly should not like to follow the Greek mode.” Here you give the general taste a great deal more credit than it deserves, and more than you would give if you were acquainted with a material circumstance which I certainly imagined I had mentioned to you, but which either you must have overlooked in one of my letters, or I omitted in the great hurry with which I wrote one of them. This is that they do at the Charterhouse precisely what you say we should not like to do: they read Greek by the Greek accents, and then dismiss their prisca fides for the sake of embracing a new kind of idolatry, which has not even the advantage of being sanctified (may I profane that word ?) by old prejudices. In short they have left Belze6w6 and taken to Beelze&wZ, and therefore I hope you will grant them, par parenthhe, the special licence of liking to do anything that we certainly should not like to do; and of being, at least in this instance, “ uniformly and consistently absurd.”
Page 34. There is a difference in the character of the anapaestic and dactylic rapidity, and one that has been very happily marked by Marmontel in a very few words, “ le dactyl s’elance, et l’anapestese precipite.” This, I am persuaded, is not, what it may perhaps appear at first sight, a fanciful distinction. I am very sure it is not and cannot help pausing here to say how much I have been struck with the whole of this forcible illustration of Marmontel’s position. Milton who often likes to fill English verse from the iambic and trochaic dynasties, —you must let me think so still,—seems to have been quite aware of the distinction on which the position is founded : and has made admirable use of it in a line expressive of the lost Angels’ ‘ ruining ’ from Heaven—
Eternal wrath Burnt aft£r th£m | td th£ bottbmless pit.
where by the grand situation of the first long monosyllable we have revealed to us, first the Avenger with fixed foot on the battlement of Heaven,—and then the dactylic out-darting of the scorching thunderbolt—and then the headlong and precipitate descent of the condemned
The intermediate monosyllable which, as you observe, is necessary in an hexametral union of the two rhythms has been omitted by Milton, and perhaps with a view to the expression. For the pause by which we compensate the metre, adds, as I conceive, very singularly to the effect of this sublime line; by giving something unusual to the cadence that arrests the attention with the voice; as if one fear made us take breath a moment before we could turn from the contemplation of power to its terrible effect. Reasoning as Paley’s savage did about the watch, it becomes clear to me that the remarkable construction of this line is not accidental, and what makes me still more satisfied that Milton really intended to express the distinction in question is the circumstance that during the whole of his description he has had so evidently in his head the sublime combat of the immortals in theTheogony, where Hesiod has made use of the very same cadence,—tho’ of course with an intermediate syllable,—to express the precipitation of the conquered.
OvpavoOtv KCLTIU>V bfKUTrj
It is clear then to my mind that Milton considered his “ td the bottdmless pit ” as equivalent to Hesiod’s kotkov btKarrj; and that consequently he would have agreed with you in your pronunciation of the Greek, and have accepted your position. “ Accent, in its modern sense, gives length—both the first syllable of bot'tomless and the concluding word pit' being accented,—-and long, according to Hesiod’s analogy,— if that be admitted, tho’ short according to the new heresy. Do not be ungrateful to Milton, and try to resolve his verse into iambi and trochees : which you will here find a much too difficult matter to accomplish. This is one instance out of the thousand he offers us:
Of English cut on Greek and Latin.
I know you will add, and justly ;
Like fustian heretofore on satin.
Page 36. In the second book of the ASneid, there is an instance of a mixture of the two rhythms, but where the expression is chiefly in the anapaestic." I dare to contend upon your own principle founded on Marmontel’s distinction that in your simile quoted from Virgil, the expression neither lies chiefly in the anapaestic cadence, or chiefly in the dactylic but equally in both. I appeal to Philip against Philip,— and beg you to consider whether the dactylic impetus at the beginning of the fine Fertur in arva furens cumulo does not bring to the mind the first out-bursting of the spumeus amnis, where it leaps forward fromthe stronghold of its	banks,—as	much as the anapaestic	fall	does its
rushing descent upon	the plains.	You, who are so just	and	rigid in
your ‘ division of property * should really adjudge this case equitably.
Page 37.	“ We have not many choriambi in English and of them
none I believe are of Greek or Latin or perhaps of Saxon origin.” I like so much all you say about the choriambi, that I am the more sorry you should shut the door of English poetry in their face.
If they were lame Ugly and slanderous to our mother tongue I would	not care, I	then might be content
but it really seems to	me a little	hard that we should be	denied their
acquaintance the minute after you have proved it to be most desirable. I shall try to maintain that, neither we or the choriambi having a disinclination to each other’s company, you are very uncharitable to make such mischief between us ; and I shall therefore put down one or two respectably sounding words derived from the Greek and Latin, — tho’ not from Greek and Latin choriambi,—as candidates for that rank in English. You will, I think, admit characterize—temperament— temperature,—if you can by any means get over their disallegiance to ancient quantity. You may, perhaps admit patriotism : but I bring this example forward with no kind of triumph : for, in common discourse, we pronounce it much as five syllables ; and find it rough and unmanageable on reducing it to four; which however, I believe, is undeviatingly done in poetry. The most inharmonious line Campbell ever wrote has no reason to be obliged to it—
If the patriotism 6f yOur fathers.You may not, a fortiori, refuse to admit righteousness—of Saxon extraction,—
“ Just confidence and native righteousness ”
and its connections par la suite; hideousness—gloriousness—hbrrible-ness, &c.
I think lineament tho’ pleading guilty to the imperfections you find out in charidteer, has no weak claim—
“ Six wings he wore to shade His lineaments divine.”
And virtudsest,—rather a rusty word,—receives testimonials from Milton for itself and kindred—
Seems wisest, virtu6sest, discreetest, best.
It seems to me that you can only make one objection to my next candidate—
Oh alienate from God! oh spirit accursed—
£.nd that another is almost unexceptionable
Plenipdtent on earth of matchless might,
I feel so sure about this last word plenipbtcnt that I should not scruple to treat him as Atlas and make him bear the whole burden of my defence—without going on,—which I might do,—to such compound tetrasyllables as ovSrfatigue—over-delight—c6nquer6r-like sex. Nevertheless before dismissing the subject, it is quite proper for me to be candid, and confess that I am aware of the imperfection of most of our choriambi, and that, generally speaking, the foot is considerably mutatus ab illo in the process of its naturalization into our language. But you do recognise our dactyls ; for which they owe you no obligation;for you must do so on your principle, and the recognition is unattended with any complimentary or obliging expression on your part,—rather with Boileau’s pathetic remonstrance.
Que vous ont fait nos oreilles Pour les traites si durement ?
Therefore I submit to you whether our choriambi do not deserve a similar recognition, tho’ possibly a similar remonstrance.
Page 46. “ If my mode of accenting Pope’s verse be thought the right one, it seems clear that a trochee at the beginning of an English verse, if followed by another trochee, tho’ it may give vigour, does not also produce grace.” I have so little intention of decrying the choriambus, in marking down the above passage, that I have merely been induced to do so by sympathizing very strongly with your delighted feelings respecting it,—and by a consequent regret that you should depreciate its propriety in the second place,—which you seem to do, with some reservation. There can I should think be no doubt as to the propriety of your reading, in Pope’s line,—
Jumping high air th& shrubs 6f th£ rough ground
and there can be no doubt that, according to your reading, the line has much more vigour than grace. The ungracefulness, however, seems to me produced, not so much by the choriambus, as by that very rough termination of the whole—a spondee preceded by a pyrrhic; so that, according to my idea, ce n’est que le dernier pas qui coute,—unless indeed we take into consideration the cacophonous assembage of harsh consonants and vowels which are “ rather seen than heard.” As the line stands, however, it is extremely expressive, but perhaps hardlyTHE ART OF SCANSION
a fair specimen of the introduction of a choriambus into the second place. There is a considerable degree less roughness and more impetuous energy in the following example
Shoots Invisible virtue e’en to the deep w here the dernier pas is composed of another choriambus. I hope you do not disapprove of choriambi introduced into the internal part of the line, but as you only mention, approvingly, the incipient and final choriambus I am half afraid that you do.
I shall not be satisfied if you profess to tolerate them sometimes “ for the sake of expression,” a principle on which we admire many deformities, and among them those multiplied elisions that make Virgil’s line a “ monstrum nonendum informe ” in itself : The plea of expression in versification is something like the plea of expediency in morals; and the internal choriambi do not seem to me reduced to such a last resource. When a dactyl, or amphibrach, begins the verse, the choriambus appears to follow it in a singularly pleasing manner, giving to the cadence of the line a swelling graceful movement which is quite delightful to my ear: as in Lord Byron’s
Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth or Shakespeare’s
As zephyr blowing below the violet— which you can hardly find fault with; for you say (page 65) in your observations on amicitiam that “ its cadence (that of a choriambus with a preceding short syllable) is of a very pleasing kind.” Also before the last iambus, as Chamberlayn has it,
His yielding spirits now prepare to meet
Death, clothed in thoughts white as his winding sheet.I think with regard to these examples that they are both harmonious and expressive; tho’ in all of them we feel the “fall” which you mention,—in the case of the choriambus following the commencing trochee,—rather in a tone of regret as far as relates to the general harmony. To go to another part of the subject, I observe that you only notice two feet which follow the trochee commencing an English verse : viz. the iambus usually, and the trochee casually : whereas it is sometimes followed by a pyrrhic as in Milton’s—
“ Myriads, b&tween two brazen mountains lodged ”
“ Embry6es and idiots, eremites and friars— ”
and not unfrequently by a spondee with very good effect—
“Bone 6f my bone, thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted.”
“ Strains his y5ung nerves and puts himself in posture.”—Cymbeline.
“ Rapture ! bold man ! who temp’st the wrath divine.”
Page 47. I am glad you have marked “ High over-arched ” as a choriambus. It gives me an opportunity of writing down an anapaestic line of Stevens’s—
Fire artillery tier 6v£r tier and of submitting to you whether you are not forced by the metre; your suprema lex ; to treat over, the distinct dissyllable,—exactly as you have treated over,—the compounded; by taking away the accent. And if you take away the accent, which seems to me a most evident necessity, you are immediately reduced to another necessity quite as evident, that of recognizing English pyrrhics. I believe that English pyrrhics exist much in the same word that Latin unaccentedwords may be said to exist by the doctrine of atonies : and I am struck with a singular analogy between the two cases. There is, I concede, no English dissyllable, a pyrrhic per se; and, in Latin, according to Quinctillian “non est aliqua vox sine acata.” But in Latin, according to Quinctillian, some words by juxtaposition with others lose their own accent, ex. gr : circum litora or ab ores and, in an analogous manner many English dissyllables either by incorporation with other words, as High SvSr-arched, or by juxtaposition with them, as tier ovSr tier, lose their own accent, in its modem sense. English pyrrhics made by these means seem to me sufficiently abundant: I shall put down a few exemplary lines : one from Anstey
The ladies you see v£ry justly remark
from Cowper
You speak vSry fine and you look v£ry grave.
And again Anstey’s
O’erflow all my hay, may my dogs nSvgr hunt and Cowper
But the sound of the Church-gding bell These valleys and rdcks n£v£r heard—
NSvfcr sighed at the sound of a knell;
Page 50.	“	As	far	as I have observed the hexameter never begins
with a dispondee.” There are several examples to militate against the “ never ” : one I shall take from Lucretius—
Immortali sunt natura proedita cesti and a very expressive one from the Theogony—
'SiKTjuavTfS \(p(Tiv 'vnepOvpovs ntp tovrasPage 54. By laying our accent wherever the Romans laid theirs, and nowhere else, we have left them but one dissyllabic foot in the language. Should we not, even by the misapplied accentual rule, give the Romans one or two iambi ? It appears so; if there be any correctness in a note attached to my edition of Foster, where I find an extract from ^Elius Donatus (supported by Victorinus) who makes some exceptions to the general rule of the accent falling on the first of dissyllables “ pro causa discretionis, ut in adverbio pone, ideo ne verbum putelier imperativi modi:—ut in ea particula quae est ergo.” From which, it appears that our measure of absurdity is not yet filled up; that accent (or rather, as you would say, quantity, under its name) having turned so many iambi into trochees, has to do now ; pro causa discretionis; the very different office of turning trochees into iambi; or else cry peccavi,—pro causa discretionis indeed! This is a case analogous to that you mentioned to Mr. Commeline, of eoai and diu, and which he tried to get rid of by the adoption of a monosyllabic pronunciation. But such a measure, could it be admitted in that case, is no panacea,—as is obvious from the present case of pone and ergo.
Page 81. You observe relatively to the first lines of Virgil, first eclogue, that if an advocate for the system gave a length to tu and nos for the sake of expression “ he would do wrong in respect to his system and its rules,—one of which is that all unaccented syllables should be quickly passed over to the next accented one.” I will submit to you with deference whether you do not rather beg the question by calling tu and nos “ unaccented syllables.” You are well aware of the old rule so simply and clearly stated by Franciscus Sanctius,—“ accentum in se mono8yllaba dictio ponit; ” and tho’ the rule be, in practice, modifiedby the doctrine of atonies, yet I have some doubts,—and, a fortiori, an advocate of the system might possibly have,—whether such discriminating monosyllables should not in recitation be separated from the neighbouring words, on account of the expression ; and so claim a length even on accentual principles. This is an impression which perhaps I should not have felt but for want of better information, and which I certainly should not communicate to you but in desire of it.
You have now the whole history of my doubts and difficulties; as I have reported them very faithfully in obedience to your desire. The obedience was at least a proof of my confidence in your kindness; and in that light I hope you will consider it; for I have run a great risk in passing such an Mgcmn in such a scaphula. My general debt of information, to you, is put down among those singular debts which are pleasant to think of, and which the debtor can never be expected to repay, but I must be allowed to thank you in particular for that percussion vers le fin you give the Abbate Scopha It is extremely forcible and entertaining,—and presents an example of your peculiar manner of amusing your readers—by convincing them. You have indeed made it abundantly clear that the Abbate for his system’s credit should have been muet as his French e. But, tho’ I have put off making the charge so long, my poetical conscience wont let me rest till I accuse you of committing heinous profanation in page 48; first by quoting Will o the Wisp contemptuously as “ a little phrase,” and secondly by introducing it to your readers in such company as Jack in a box' \ Mouse in a cheese', Bug In a rug', &c. And should you really feel “ some regret ” if it became the fashion to say Will o the Wisp—Bug in a rug &c. ? Our poets, from Milton upwards and down-wards, who have sanctified the first of those “ little phrases ” in their melodious verses, would sympathize feelingly in your regret; and might beg you at the same time to disengage Will o’ the wisp from Bug in a rug forthwith. Could not riddle m£ ree do your business as well, without sacrificing such an Iphigenia ?
I have done reading your correspondence with Mr. Commeline; and with all your adversary’s ingenuity, am considerably confirmed in my convictions on your side. I thought it odd that an article of the Edinburgh Review should be referred to, on a philological subject; and, on looking into the one which Mr. Commeline calls the ‘ Manual of his heresy,’ I was surprised to find us accused there of subverting the true metrical structure of Latin hexameters, even according to the accentual system “ by not laying our accent on the long syllable, and by laying it on the short ones. The Reviewer seems confused in his speculations : but that passage is so decidedly in favour of your position that I think you can hardly have seen the article or would have retorted Mr. Commeline’s own Manual on himself.
Papa was very glad to see you at Hereford, and I was very glad to hear from him, nomine mutato, exactly what you have since said of his good looks. We hope to have favorable accounts of you all; dear Miss Price in particular, and, with our best regards,
Believe me
Your grateful
E. B. BARRETT.*
* Mrs. Browning’s name was Elizabeth Barrett Barrett before her marriage.Of this letter twenty-five copies only have been privately Printed by Clement Shorter for distribution among his friends.
London, December 1916.