ENGLISH PROSODY.*
PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY has at last ended his important History of English Prosody by the publication of its third volume, which includes the period " From Blake to Mr. Swinburne." The completion of the work inevitably raises the question whether the special study of the form of verse is likely to be of much assistance in the proper appreciation of poetry. We need not, it is true, plunge into the unsatis- factory discussions of the logic books upon the possibility of separating form from matter, though we shall have to point out that Professor Saintsbury undoubtedly makes the dis- tinction a very rough one. But we may consider for a moment in what way the study of poetry from the prosodic side—with the emphasis, that is, upon its structure rather than upon its content—is likely to be of value. There would seem at first sight to be two ways of treating prosody, both of which would be likely to yield interest- ing results. On the one hand, it might be studied by the historical method,—its broad tendencies and movements (such as the rise and fall of the couplet) might be traced, and the influence of these upon particular poems and poets might be discussed. This method could necessarily descend to no great detail. It might explain why the Duchess of Malfi could not have been written in the eighteenth century. But it would have no light to throw upon the peculiar construction of an individual line like " Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young." A study of prosody might, on the other hand, be quite independent of historical sequence, and devoted precisely to an analysis of such individual lines. The ranges of a study of this kind are clearly without limit. A deeply interesting examination might be made line by line of The Tempest; the effect upon the ear and the mind of every prosodic subtlety might be examined, and compared perhaps with a similar effect in a lyric of Shelley or a phrase of Paradise Lost. Both these methods of approaching the subject of prosody have advantages of their own. Professor Saintsbury, however, has attempted in his History to combine the two of them, with the result, we cannot help thinking, that he has lost many of the advantages of each. Examples of his employment of each of these methods may be found in the volume before us. On the one hand, we may admire the skill with which he displays the birth and develop- ment of the romantic movement from Coleridge to Tennyson. —May we, however, in a parenthesis question whether Professor Saintsbury attaches enough importance to the prosodic influence of Swinburne ? Is it true that, whereas Tennyson's first two volumes "founded the last new dynasty (up to the present moment) of English poetry," Swinburne's right place is in the middle of a chapter upon the Pre-Raphaelite School P—And, on the other hand, we may be delighted by much of his close prosodic analysis, such, for instance, as that of the first stanza of The Ancient Mariner, which he shows can be reduced almost to flatness by the elimination of the trisyllables :- "It is an ancient mariner,
And he stops one of three- ' By thy grey beard and piercing eye Now wherefore stop'st thou me ? '"
But although we find much that is admirable in his use of both these methods—the sweeping generalisation and the detailed analysis—it is hard not to feel dissatisfaction with
• A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day. By George Saintabury. Vol. III. London : Macmillan and Co. [15s. net.]
the manner in which he combines them. The work may perhaps have been designed originally upon the first of these plans. and have been intended to keep to generalisations and broad outlines. But the author, no doubt owing to his enthusiasm for his subject-matter, has found it impossible to resist frequent plunges into detail ; scarcely, however, has he become thoroughly interested in some subtle contro- versy or fine distinction than he discovers its irrelevancy to his principal theme, hastily abandons it, and, after a brief and hurried advance along the main road, becomes involved once more in the intricacies of another bypath. For instance, Professor Saintsbury devotes two pages to Beddoes. Regarded as a contribution to the history of English prosody these two pages are merely distracting ; but regarded as an analysis of the prosody of Beddoes they are grotesquely inadequate.
This criticism might be extended to the whole book so far
as its value as a work upon prosody is concerned: it is either far too detailed, or not nearly detailed enough. Fortunately, however, it is not simply a work upon prosody; it is a work
upon poetry as well. Each of the details, irritating and unsatisfying as a part of a history of prosody, is appetising, and even stimulating, when considered as mere literary criticism. Professor Saintsbury's immense knowledge and unrestrained display of it are for ever bringing before the reader's eyes forgotten or unknown beauties. Who will
not be grateful to him for his quotations from Blake's French Revolution, which was so long believed to have been completely lost?— "Then the ancientest peer, Duke of Burgundy, rose from the monarch's right hand, red as wines
From his mountains, an odour of war like ripe vineyard rose from his garments, And the chamber became as a clouded sky; o'er the council he outstretched his red limbs, Cloth'd in flames of crimson, as a ripe vineyard stretches over sheaves of corn The fierce Duke hung over the council ; around him crowd, weeping in his burning robe, A bright cloud of infant souls ; his words fall like purple autumn on the sheaves."
And no one could bear the burden of great knowledge more lightly. The allusive jokes, the fierce sallies, the wayside controversies, the irrelevant excursuses, and above all the strikingly personal note of every sentence of criticism or
praise, make it clear that poetry is to Professor Saintsbury nothing academic or dead. We may quote what every one acquainted with his writings will recognise as a fair and typical example of many of his pages,—a passage from his- account of Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden. The frontis- piece to the first edition of that work was a conventional design by the Swiss Fuseli of Flora being attired by the elements. By a stroke of " tremendous irony," however, one of the other plates was engraved by Blake himself:-
"Colossus-wise, an enormous Anubis bestrides the Nile, his back to the spectator, pyramids at his right foot, and a great sistrunt dropped on the bank at his left, his dog-face uplifted unseen, and his hands raised above it in prayer ; while below and beyond a. huge vague figure, with outstretched wings and arms, and looking as if, conventionalised a little, it had stepped out of the Book of Urizen, fills the background with thunder, lightning, and with rain till the cataracts start the river itself. I do not know whether the artist's original drawing for this exists : I do know that it makes me look wistfully for the engraver's undulating scrawls of letterpress, with something about Enitharmon or Luvah or Urizen himself, to make it all clear and comfortable. This is what we find instead;— Sailing in air, when dark Monsoon enshrouds His tropic mountains in a night of clouds; Or drawn by whirlwinds from the Line returns, And show'rs o'er Afric all his thousand urns ; High o'er his head the beams of Sirius flow, And, Dog of Nile, Anubis barks below. Nymphs; you from cliff to cliff attendant guide In headlong cataracts the impetuous tide.
It is impossible not to think that good Dr. Darwin must have turned with a slight sigh to the frontispiece, and thought how much nicer it would have been to have had some more nymphs, with fruits and flowers and baskets and mirrors and giggles, and a neat Sphinx and a ditto Memnon, and everything handsome as he had himself defined it." _
But Professor Saintsbury is not a farceur. He is simply our enthusiast who cannot bear his mockery of Dr. Darwin to be less hearty than his delight in Wordsworth or Keats. And, indeed, the greatest pleasure to be derived from the book is a feeling of gratitude that here at least some one is writing of poetry who really loves it.
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