a perfect note. It partakes more of the character of the violin, and can develope a perfect note with an accurate articulation, depending on the pitch, the modulation, the stopping, and the ear of the speaker.

The effort of every speaker is the sustained attempt of the violin player to play in tune, to stop, or articulate accurately. But the multiplied articulation, as we also observe in music, often interrupts the melody; and all musicians know with what pleasure the performer dwells upon a note, repeats a note, or returns to the key-note; and what relief and gratification this affords his audience. The effort ceases, the harmony is more prolonged, the repeated note, from accurate stopping, by repetition is more perfect; and the repose upon it is often a positive relief from the fatiguing ever-varying articulations. An obvious illustration of this is the enjoyment we experience in listening to a simple air, and the same air with elaborate variations; or, better still, the pleasure felt as the air becomes perceptible, peeping out through the often confused mazes of the variations.

Let it be borne in mind that what we have attempted to describe above is the essential element, not merely of alliteration, but of all metre-nay, of poetry itself.

Metre, in its largest sense, may be defined as a periodic recurrence of syllables similarly affected." This recurrence may extend to accent, quantity, or articulation. The metre of modern English poetry is based wholly on the recurrence of accent or accentuated syllables, though accompanied commonly by the recurrence of the same articulation in the form of rhyme. Metre

which depends on accent may be exemplified in the following instance, from Milton's first lines of Paradise Lost:

Of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree, Whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe.

The classical metres of the Greeks and Romans, though dependent to some extent upon accent, were characterized by the recurrence of quantity—thať is, a succession of long and short syllables, in a definite order, according to fixed and highly artificial laws. The recurrence of an articulation may consist in rhyme, alliteration, or assonance. Rhyme (called by Milton "the jingling sound of like endings ") is the repetition of the same articulation at the end of words, whilst alliteration, properly so called, is the repetition of the same articulation at the beginning of words. Assonant metre, confined chiefly to Spanish literature and the modern Irish street ballad, is the recurrence of a part of an articulation, most frequently vocal.

We shall now give a few examples illustrative of these different varieties of metre, and in doing so shall select, when available, the earlier writers in our own language, in the first instance, unless when better examples are to be found elsewhere.

An example in rhyme we take from Fairfax's Tasso, where he describes the fascinating Armida, sent to captivate and obstruct Godfrey of Bouillon, and the leaders of the Crusade :

Her cheeks on which this streaming nectar fell,
Still'd through the limbecke of her diamond eyes,

The roses white and red resembled well,

Whereon the roary May-dew sprinkled lies,

When the fair morn first blusheth from her cell,

And breatheth balm from open'd Paradise ;

Thus sigh'd, thus mourn'd, thus wept this lovely Queen,
And in each drop, bathed a grace unseen.

An example of metre in quantity may be given from Horace :

Misĕrārum ēst nèque ămōrī dărĕ lūdūm, něque dūlcī

Mălă vīnō lăvĕre aūt ēxănĭmārī mětuēntēs.

An example of alliteration from Piers Plowman's Vision:

Ich went forth wyde,
When walking myn one

In a wylde wyldernesse
By a wood syde,
Bliss of the birddes

A byde me made.

That Milton held alliteration much higher, as an embellishment to poetry, than he did rhyme, is patent, not merely from the large use he made of the former in his compositions, but also from the slighting tone in which he treated the latter. In fact, he denounces rhyme as no necessary adjunct, or true ornament of a poem or good verse.

We find the earlier writers, Chaucer for instance, occasionally unite rhyme with alliteration, and this although he held the latter rather at a discount. The following gives not a bad example of this combination. It is one of his least objectionable humorous passages, and exhibits a good deal of the broad sense of the ridiculous that was subsequently so conspicuous in the

We

prose passages of Smollett. It is from the prologue to
the Wife of Bath's Tale, as rendered by Ogle.
shall first give his description of a lady's occupation
in the fourteenth century:—

It so befel, in holy time of Lent,
That off a day I to this gossip went

(My husband, thank my stars, was out of town).
From house to house we rambled up and down,
This clerk, myself, and my good neighbour Ales,
To see,
be seen, to tell and gather tales.
Visits to every church we daily paid,
And march'd in every holy masquerade;
The stations duly and the vigils kept,
Not much we fasted, but scarce ever slept;
At sermons, too, I shone in scarlet gay.

The wasting moth ne'er spoil'd my best array,
The cause was this-I wore it every day.

Well! she disposed of her husband and married the clerk, but she discovered, when too late, in Chaucer's words:

Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,

And Venus sets e're Mercury can rise.

The clerk's scholastic habits and tone of reading were evidently displeasing to his wife, and this is not to be wondered at from his selection, and his requiring her to act audience. But let her speak for herself:

My spouse, who was, you know, to learning bred,
A certain treatise oft at evening read,

Where divers authors (whom the devil confound
For all their lies) were in one volume bound-
Valerius whole, and of St. Jerome part;
Chrisippus and Tertullian, Ovid's art,

Solomon's proverbs, Eloisa's loves,

And many more than sure the Church approves ;
More legends were there here of wicked wives

Than good in all the Bible, and saints' lives.
Who drew the lion vanquish'd? 'Twas a man!
But could we women write as scholars can,
Men should stand mark'd with far more wickedness
Than all the sons of Adam could redress.

It chanced my husband, on a winter's night,
Read in this book aloud, with strange delight,
How the first female (as the Scriptures show)
Brought her own spouse and all his race to woe;
How Sampson fell; and he whom Dejanire
Wrapped in th' envenomed shirt, and set on fire;
How some with swords their sleeping lords have slain,
And some have hammer'd nails into their brain,
And some have drench'd them with a deadly potion;
And this he read, and read with great devotion.

Long time I heard, and swell'd, and blush'd, and frown'd,
But when no end of these vile tales I found,
When still he read, and laugh'd, and read again,
And half the night was thus consumed in vain!
Provoked to vengeance, three large leaves I tore,
And with one buffet fell'd him to the floor!
With that my husband in a fury rose,
And down he settled me with hearty blows,

I groan'd and lay extended on my side.

"Oh! thou hast slain me for my wealth (I cried),
Yet I forgive thee; take my last embrace."
He wept, kind soul, and stoop'd to kiss my face.

I took him such a box as turn'd him blue,

Then sigh'd and cried, "Adieu, my dear, adieu !"
But after many a hearty struggle past,

I condescended to be pleased at last,

Soon as he said, "My mistress and my wife,
Do what you list the term of all your life;"
I took to heart the merits of the cause,
And stood content to rule by wholesome laws,
Secured the reins of absolute command,
With all the government of house and land,
And empire o'er his tongue and o'er his hand.
As for the volume that reviled the dames,
"Twas torn to fragments, and condemn'd to flames.