the poets had to meet the new conditions of the language by writing a new kind of verse.(1) § 6. Origin and decay of Latin quantitative versification. The later developments in Latin literature were similar, but the beginning seems to have been different. That the earliest known forms of Latin verse were of an accentual character seems now fairly established.(2) The quantitative system was not a spontaneous creation of the Romans, nor apparently the natural outcome of any peculiar fashion in their mode of speech, but was an exotic, engrafted upon their literature in the 3rd century B. C. by students of Greek. It could not have thriven at Rome if the Latin language had not been more markedly quantitative (and perhaps less accentual) than, for example, modern English: but it would hardly have been necessary to go abroad for it if the language had not been naturally less prone to it than the Greek.(3) That the application of the Greek system to the Latin tongue must have involved something of a wrench is clear enough,(4) and there is reason for believing that accentual poetry, even through the classical age, kept a place in the ear of the common people. Apparent (1) In the following pages I shall not develop this branch of the subject, because, although the Greek and Latin literatures were so related that a mutual influence in the matter of versification seems very probable a priori, yet in fact the progress in Latin verse seems self-explanatory. It is only with the latter that we are directly concerned, and I have observed no decisive evidence that the Greek verse is even indirectly relevant, except as presenting an interesting parallel. (2) Lindsay, Am. Journal of Phil., Vol. 14 (1893), p. 139. (3) Kawczynski says, (p. 30), "les influences historiques sont plus fortes que les conditions naturelles", and the phenomena of classical Latin metres seem to support his assertion. I think we shall find, however, that this is an isolated case. At all events, the generalization is unwarranted. (4) Cf. the artificial way in which the Roman poets treated the complexities of logaoedic verse. remnants of it are found, for example, in the song of Aurelian's soldiers, Tantum vini habet nemo quantum fudit sanguinis, and the song of the 6th legion, Mille Francos, mille semel Sarmatas occidimus.(1) It seems not impossible that a keen ear for prosody, a nice perception of quantities,-may have been something of a rarity even among the upper classes in the Augustan age. But assuming that it was lacking then only among the uncultivated, it is certain that in the succeeding centuries the educated classes lost it too. As early as the beginning of the 5th century the difference between. long and short syllables was no more practical to the average Roman than it is now to the average Englishman. This is shown by a curious passage in St. Augustine's treatise on music. The treatise is in the form of an imaginary conversation between teacher and pupil. At one point the teacher purposely misquotes Virgil's line Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primis ab oris. And the student is unable to see that the excellence of the verse is in any way impaired.(2) And the grammarian Servius, writing probably at about the same time, says most explicitly:-"Quod pertinat ad naturam primae syllabae, longane sit aut brevis, solis confirmamus exemplis; medias vero in latino sermone accentu discernimus; ultimas arte colligimus."(3) In other words even the most highly educated Romans learned the quantity of penults only from the accent, and that of other syllables only from the example of the poets or from established rules. Usage in pronunciation was no guide. Under these circumstances, the composition of quantitative poetry began in Latin as in Greek to involve too (1) Cf. also Horace, Ep. II. 1. 157: "Hodieque manent vestigia ruris". (2) De Musica, II. 2. (3) De Ratione Ultimarum Syllabarum, as quoted by G. Paris, Sur l'accent lat. p. 30, n. 2. much of pedantry: and as in Greece during the Byzantine period, so in Rome during the dark ages, the art of writing syllabic or accentual verse grew gradually in favour, until the old style had been effectually ousted from the field of lyric poetry. In the Romance languages, then in process of formation, one of the new styles was adopted for all kinds of poetry, to the entire exclusion of the old. § 7. The problems of late Latin verse. The object of the first part of this paper will be to trace and explain. so far as possible, the processes of decay just mentioned, The problem may be provisionally divided into two parts, In the first place, was the late Latin verse essentially accentual, or was it merely syllabic? In the second place. how did the poets acquire the new art? The answer to the first question most favored by contemporary scholarship (notably by Wilhelm Meyer) is in substance that the so-called "rhythmical" form of the late Latin hymns was not based upon accent at all; that as quantitative verse passed into "rhythmical", the element that survived was not the true rhythm of metrical stress, but merely the parallelism that was enforced by uniformity in the number of syllables per verse; and that when there seems to be a strictly accentual rhythm in the later verses, its appearance is in general the result of a happy chance, not at any rate an essential condition of the verse. To the second question the answers have been various, but we may group the most important of them under three heads. The later "rhythmical" system, according to modern opinion, was derived either (1) from the quantitative system by a natural transition, not the result of external influences, or (2) from foreign sources, either as an entire importation or (according to Meyer) as a sort of graft upon the decayed quantitative system, or (3) from the popular accentual verse of the earlier days of Rome. § 8. The theory of a popular origin. The last theory deserves some attention, although its strongest advocate has withdrawn his support.(1) It has been contended that there existed a continuous literature (if it deserves the name) of accentual poetry, from the earliest to the latest age of the Latin language, beginning with the Saturnian verse, manifesting itself in the classical epoch in the popular songs of which specimens have already been given, and culminating in the triumph of the accentual system. It is unnecessary to repeat the arguments that have been advanced against this contention,(2) but, if it should still be regarded as plausible, it is worth while to point out that it does not explain the phenomena that most need explanation in our present study. All the fragments of popular song that have been cited in support of this theory are in a trochaic rhythm. The two verses already quoted in these pages are fairly representative. Now (as will be shown hereafter) the trochaic rhythm was of no direct influence in the development of those Romance verse-forms to which the great body of English verse is indebted. We may fancy that we see in the song of Aurelian's soldiers the direct progenitor of such poems as the anonymous "De Gaudiis Paradisi": Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sitivit arida, Claustra carnis praesto frangi clausa quaerit anima, But we should search French literature in vain for any verse imitated from the latter. § 9. Popular verse of irregular rhythm. There are however certain other evidences which may tend to show (1) G. PARIS. Compare his Lettre à M. Léon Gautier, with his note in Romania XV. 138. (2) They are well reviewed by MEYER, pp. 107-8;—although, as will appear in the next chapter, the argument based on Commodian's experiments is easily refutable. the continuous existence of a popular Latin versification of an accentual character. The popular songs already mentioned were perhaps merely sporadic,-ignorant imitations of a form of quantitative verse heard at the Roman theatres. Those which we are now to consider, on the other hand, seem to have no connection with any quantitative verse. There is preserved from the 7th century a collection of curious letters that passed between Bishop Frodebertus and a person styled Importunus. They are written in a sort of hap-hazard accentual rhythm, not much better than their latinity, as an example will show: Amas puella bella Satis est, vel non est?(1) This is not much better than prose, and it really seems unnecessary to believe that the author had ever seen any rhythm of the kind before:-to have invented it out of whole cloth would have required no great effort of ingenuity. But there are those (2) who have little belief in any natural penchant of ignorant men for rhythmical expression, and seek more or less confidently for precedents for all such phenomena. It is certainly not impossible that Frodebertus and Importunus may belong to an undiscovered order of popular Latin versifiers, with an unbroken file of predecessors reaching back to the earliest times: their verse certainly resembles the Saturnian as closely as does that of the soldiers' songs. In that (1) BOUCHERIE, Cinq Formules Rhythmées et Assonancées du VII. Siècle, (Montpellier 1867), p. 26. (2) Notably Kawczynski. See ante, § 6, note, and his "Essai", passim. |