to show an equally marked accentual rhythm. The hymn "Ad perennis vitae fontem", of which a few lines have already been quoted,(1) shows what we may perhaps regard as a development from the style of verse employed by Augustine, evolved under the influence of the new idea. Mone thinks this hymn was written about a century after Augustine's time. Perhaps it would be safer to put it a little later, but we cannot be exact. It is very interesting to note that the Ambrosian hymn, which began with perfect iambic regularity, developed in the middle ages into a form so irregular as to make modern scholars call it purely syllabic; while the trochaic rhythm, which seems to correspond with the purely syllabic verse of Augustine, became almost perfectly regular when the accentual principle took possession of it. Here we have a most striking refutation of the view that historical influences are stronger than the natural conditions of language and the fitness of things. The proof that the Ambrosian verse was governed by the accentual principle, is clinched by comparison of it with the work of its French imitators. Consideration of these latter, however, is more conveniently postponed to the next chapter. Evidence many also be found in iambic hymns other than octosyllabic. One of the earliest of these is the "Aurea luce et decore roseo", ascribed to Elpis. If this hymn was really written by the wife of Boethius, it must have been as early as the first quarter of the sixth century; but here again we have to rest in doubt. The hymn contains 28 lines of 12 syllables each, and there are only two instances of inversions other than initial. Something has been made of the verse of the mystery play on the foolish virgins, in which the Latin verses, though so late, are plainly not accentual. Part (1) § 8, ante. of the verses are Latin and part French, and in both the structure is for the most part merely syllabic. It is sufficient to say of this, however, that the verses were obviously written for musical recitation, and the Latin metre was designed to correspond with the French. The bad quality of the Latin shows that French was to the author the more familiar language. It will be made clear in the next chapter that a Latin imitation of a French form of verse can prove nothing as to the nature of true Latin verse. CHAPTER V. Early French Verse. § 38. Introduction. It has already been intimated that the accentual rhythm of mediæval Latin poetry exhibits a fair parallel to the ordinary rhythm of modern English verse. Thus in the lines Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sitivit arida, and Aurea luce et decore roseo, we find the same rhythms that are so familiar in Comrades leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn, and This is my son, mine own Telemachus. It has been seen that the licenses which the poets of the two languages have allowed themselves have been in some respects different: but their verse-forms in general have been controlled by the same essential principles. Now Latin rhythmical hymns have been familiar to English poets of every generation since the time of Bede, and it seems not unlikely that our verse would have assumed substantially its present forms, if it had had no other foreign model to imitate. In that case this investigation might fitly end here. But in point of fact our most important verse-forms, so far as they have been borrowed at all from abroad, have been borrowed from the Latin largely by an indirect process. The Latin influence was felt, during a critical period in the history of our versification, almost solely through the medium of the French. It is one of the remarkable facts in the history of the subject, one of the facts tending most strongly to negative Kawczynski's theory of the supreme power of external influences, that though the French system itself was widely different from the Latin, yet when it came in contact with the English it had the effect of moulding the latter into substantially the Latin form. The remaining chapters of this essay will briefly review the development of the French system out of the Latin, and its influence upon the English. § 39. Modern French verse. The essential principles of modern French versification are most clearly discernible in the Alexandrine. A fairly typical passage is subjoined, to illustrate the main features of this verse. Quoi, madame! parmi tant de sujets de crainte, Here we have verses of twelve(1) syllables each. The 6th and 12th syllables are always tonic, and there is a fixed cæsura after the 6th.(2) There is no other syl (1) The 13th syllable in the feminine rimes need not be counted, as it is not pronounced. (2) The modern romantic forms of the Alexandrine need not concern us in the present inquiry. lable in the verse which must be tonic, or which can be said even to be generally so; and on the other hand there is no place in the line which must be filled with an atonic syllable. The 5th and 11th are commonly atonic, but not necessarily so. Owing to the weakness of the word-accent in French, -the fact that it tends continually to lose itself in rhetorical emphasis, the scientific principles which underlie French versification have not been easy to discover. Even now so keen an observer as Stengel suggests(1) that such verses as those above quoted should be recognized as divisible into feet of equal length; that they move with a definite accentual rhythm, and that the frequent conflict of accent with ictus is one of the chief beauties of the form. This however is not the prevailing opinion. There is in reality no conflict of word-accent with verse-accent, because the latter, in the ordinary sense of the word, does not exist at all except at the verse-end. Of the six syllables in each hemistich, one, two, three or four may be tonic; and provided one of these is in the 6th place, the others arrange themselves in obedience to no other laws than those of euphony. It frequently happens, of course, that a French Alexandrine gives substantially the rhythm of the corresponding English verse. Thus we find this rhythm in Et lorsqu'à sa fureur j'oppose ma tendresse: and such a line as Quoi madame! parmi tant de sujets de crainte may with difficulty be fitted to the English scheme:compare Spenser's As the God of my life? Why hath he me abhord? But this is an extreme case of the English Alexandrine, (1) p. 8, § 13. |