English Verse - Specimens Illustrating its Principles and History

Raymond Macdonald Alden

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• Publié par: zakij
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 19
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's English Verse, by Raymond MacDonald Alden, Ph.D.
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Title: English Verse
Specimens Illustrating its Principles and History
Author: Raymond MacDonald Alden, Ph.D.
Release Date: May 5, 2010 [EBook #32262]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH VERSE ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Louise Pattison and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Pg ii]
ENGLISH VERSE
SPECIMENS ILLUSTRATING ITS PRINCIPLES
AND HISTORY
CHOSEN AND EDITED
BY
RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN, PH.D.
Associate Professor in Leland Stanford Junior
University
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
[Pg iii]Copyright, 1903,
BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.
[Pg iv]TO
my Father and Mother
WHO HAVE GIVEN
BOTH THE INSPIRATION AND THE OPPORTUNITY
FOR ALL MY STUDIES
[Pg v]PREFACEThe aim of this book is to give the materials for the inductive study of English
verse. Its origin was in certain university courses, for which it proved to be
necessary—often for use in a single hour's work—to gather almost numberless
books, some of which must ordinarily be inaccessible except in the vicinity of
large libraries. I have tried to extract from these books the materials necessary
for the study of English verse-forms, adding notes designed to make the
specimens intelligible and useful.
Dealing with a subject where theories are almost as numerous as those who
have written on it, it has been my purpose to avoid the setting forth of my own
opinions, and to present the subject-matter in a way suited, so far as possible,
to the use of those holding widely divergent views. In the arrangement and
naming of the earlier sections of the book, some systematic theory of the
subject—accepted at least tentatively—was indeed indispensable; but I trust
that even here those who would apply to English verse a different classification
or terminology may be able to discard what they cannot approve and to make
use of the specimens from their own standpoint. Even where (as in these
introductory sections) the notes seem to overtop the text somewhat
threateningly, they are invariably intended—as the type indicates—to be
subordinate. Where it has been possible to do so, I have preferred to present
comments on the specimens in the words of other writers, and have not
[Pg vi]confined these notes to opinions with which I wholly agree, but only to those
which seem worthy of attention. My own views on the more disputed elements
of the subject (such as the relations of time and accent in our verse, the
presence of "quantity" in English, and the terminology of the subject) I have
reserved for Part Three, where I trust they will be found helpful by some
readers, but where they may easily be passed over.
To classify the materials of this subject is peculiarly difficult, and one who tries
to solve the problem will early abandon the hope of being able to follow any
system with consistency. Main divisions and subdivisions will inevitably conflict
and overlap. For practical purposes, basing my arrangement in part on that
found convenient in university lectures (which it will be seen is not altogether
unlike that followed by Schipper in his Englische Metrik), I have divided the
specimens of verse into two main divisions, each of which is suggested by a
word in the sub-title of the book. Part One contains specimens designed to
illustrate the principles of English verse, arranged in topical order. Part Two
contains specimens designed to illustrate the history of the more important
forms of English verse, arranged—in the several divisions—in chronological
order. Part Three has already been spoken of. Part Four contains extracts from
important critical writers on the place and function of the verse-element in
poetry,—matters which give us the raison d'être for the whole study of
versification.
If there had ever been hope of making the collection of specimens fairly
complete, even in a representative sense, this would have been dissipated by
the discovery, during the very time of the book's going through the press, of a
[Pg vii]number of additional specimens which it seemed wicked to omit. Doubtless
every reader will miss some favorite selection which might well have been
included, and suggestions as to important omissions will be received gratefully.
The attempt has been to put students on the track of all the more important lines
of development of English verse, and to indicate, by including a considerable
number of specimens from early periods, the continuity of this development
from the times of our Saxon forefathers to our own.
Little consistency can be claimed for the practice observed in the matter of
modernizing texts that date from transition periods like the sixteenth century. In
some cases the text has been modernized, or retained in its original form,
according as it seemed well to emphasize either the permanent significance or
the historical position of the specimen in question. In other cases the form of the
text was determined merely by the best edition accessible for purposes of
reproduction.
Dates have been appended to the specimens in those sections where
chronology is a significant element. It has not always been possible to verify
these dates with thoroughness, or to distinguish between the date of writing
and that of publication; but it is hoped that inaccuracies of this sort will at least
not be found of a character to misrepresent the historical relations of the
specimens. Dates are not ordinarily given for the poems of writers still living.
In the notes on the specimens I have tried to distinguish between material likely
to be useful for all students of the subject and that going more into detail, which
is intended only for advanced or special students. Notes of the second class
[Pg viii]are printed in smaller type. There has been no attempt to give the notes of a
bibliographical character any pretension to completeness. One may well
hesitate to add, in this direction, to the admirable material presented in the
Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism of Professors Gayley and Scott.I have resisted strenuously all temptation to choose or to annotate specimens
on general grounds of æsthetic enjoyment, apart from the distinct study of
verse-forms. Yet it would be useless to deny having sometimes made choice of
particular verses, all other considerations being equal, for their poetic or literary
value over and above their prosodical. I shall not claim for the collection what
Boswell did for Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, that "he was so attentive in the
choice" of the illustrative passages "that one may read page after page ... with
improvement and pleasure;" yet I may say that, so far from fearing that the
enjoyment of any poem will be injured by a proper attention to the elements of
its metrical form, it is my hope that many a haunting verse may linger, a
perpetual possession of beauty, in the memory of the student who first found it
here classified under a technical name.
Many obligations are to be acknowledged to scholars of whose advice I have
availed myself. Most kindly aid has been received from Professor G. L.
Kittredge and Dr. Fred N. Robinson, of Harvard University; from Professor Felix
E. Schelling, of the University of Pennsylvania; from my friend, Mr. H. P. Earle,
of Stanford University; and from my colleague, Dr. Ewald Flügel. My obligation
to Schipper's monumental works on English verse will be obvious to every
scholar. They suggested many of the specimens of verse-forms, and are also
[Pg ix]represented by translations or paraphrases in the notes; references to
Schipper, without full title, are to the Englische Metrik,—the larger work. I have
also made thankful use of Mr. John Addington Symonds's essays on Blank
Verse, and of Professor Corson's Primer of English Verse,—both somewhat
unscientific but highly suggestive works. The section on Artificial French Forms
obviously owes very much to Mr. Gleeson White's Ballades and Rondeaus. A
book to which my obligation is out of all proportion to the number of actual
quotations from it is Mr. J. B. Mayor's Chapters on English Metre. This modest
but satisfying volume seemed to me, when I first was taking up the study of
English verse, to be a grateful relief from the thorny and often fruitless
discussions with which the subject had been overgrown; and in returning to it
again and again, I have never failed to renew the impression. Its suggestions
underlie a good part of the system of classification and terminology adopted for
this book. The new and enlarged edition came to hand too late for use, but I
was able to include references to it in the notes.
I must also record thanks to those authors and publishers who have
courteously given permission for the reproduction of their publications: to Mr.
John Lane, for permission to quote from the works of Mr. William Watson and
Mr. Stephen Phillips; to Messrs. Hought