The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (read books for money TXT) 📖

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This ear This heart
      Shall joy Shall bend Shall swear
    Your face Your tongue Your wit
      To serve To trust To fear."

ANONYMOUS: Sundry American Newspapers, in 1849.

Example III.—Umbrellas.

"The late George Canning, of whom Byron said that 'it was his happiness to be at once a wit, poet, orator, and statesman, and excellent in all,' is the author of the following clever jeu d' esprit:" [except three lines here added in brackets:]

Example IV.—Shreds of a Song.

I. SPRING.

II. WINTER.

Example V.—Puck's Charm.

[When he has uttered the fifth line, he squeezes a juice on Lysander's eyes.]

   "On the ground,
      Sleep sound;
      I'll apply
      To your eye,
    Gentle | lover, | remedy.
     When thou wak'st,
       Thou tak'st
     True delight
     In the sight
    Of thy | former | lady's eye." [508]
       IDEM: Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act iii, Sc. 2.

ORDER II.—TROCHAIC VERSE.

In Trochaic verse, the stress is laid on the odd syllables, and the even ones are short. Single-rhymed trochaic omits the final short syllable, that it may end with a long one; for the common doctrine of Murray, Chandler, Churchill, Bullions, Butler, Everett, Fowler, Weld, Wells, Mulligan, and others, that this chief rhyming syllable is "additional" to the real number of feet in the line, is manifestly incorrect. One long syllable is, in some instances, used as a foot; but it is one or more short syllables only, that we can properly admit as hypermeter. Iambics and trochaics often occur in the same poem; but, in either order, written with exactness, the number of feet is always the number of the long syllables.

Examples from Gray's Bard.

(1.)

(2.)

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—Trochaic verse without the final short syllable, is the same as iambic would be without the initial short syllable;—it being quite plain, that iambic, so changed, becomes trochaic, and is iambic no longer. But trochaic, retrenched of its last short syllable, is trochaic still; and can no otherwise be made iambic, than by the prefixing of a short syllable to the line. Feet, and the orders of verse, are distinguished one from an other by two things, and in general by two only; the number of syllables taken as a foot, and the order of their quantities. Trochaic verse is always as distinguishable from iambic, as iambic is from any other. Yet have we several grammarians and prosodies who contrive to confound them—or who, at least, mistake catalectic trochaic for catalectic iambic; and that too, where the syllable wanting affects only the last foot, and makes it perhaps but a common and needful cæsura.

OBS. 2.—To suppose that iambic verse may drop its initial short syllable, and still be iambic, still be measured as before, is not only to take a single long syllable for a foot, not only to recognize a pedal cæsura at the beginning of each line, but utterly to destroy the only principles on which iambics and trochaics can be discriminated. Yet Hiley, of Leeds, and Wells, of Andover, while they are careful to treat separately of these two orders of verse, not only teach that any order may take at the end "an additional syllable," but also suggest that the iambic may drop a syllable "from the first foot," without diminishing the number of feet,—without changing the succession of quantities,—without disturbing the mode of scansion! "Sometimes," say they, (in treating of iambics,) "a syllable is cut off from the first foot; as,

OBS. 3.—Now this couplet is the precise exemplar, not only of the thirty-six lines of which it is a part, but also of the most common of our trochaic metres; and if this may be thus scanned into iambic verse, so may all other trochaic lines in existence: distinction between the two orders must then be worse than useless. But I reject this doctrine, and trust that most readers will easily see its absurdity. A prosodist might just as well scan all iambics into trochaics, by pronouncing each initial short syllable to be hypermeter. For, surely, if deficiency may be discovered at the beginning of measurement, so may redundance. But if neither is to be looked for before the measurement ends, (which supposition is certainly more reasonable,) then is the distinction already vindicated, and the scansion above-cited is shown to be erroneous.

OBS. 4.—But there are yet other objections to this doctrine, other errors and inconsistencies in the teaching of it. Exactly the same kind of verse as this, which is said to consist of "four iambuses" from one of which "a syllable is cut off," is subsequently scanned by the same authors as being composed of "three trochees and an additional syllable; as,

There is, in the works here cited, not only the inconsistency of teaching two very different modes of scanning the same species of verse, but in each instance the scansion is wrong; for all the lines in question are trochaic of four feet,—single-rhymed, and, of course, catalectic, and ending with a cæsura, or elision. In no metre that lacks but one syllable, can this sort of foot occur at the beginning of a line; yet, as we see, it is sometimes imagined to be there, by those who have never been able to find it at the end, where it oftenest exists!

OBS. 5.—I have hinted, in the main paragraph above, that it is a common error of our prosodists, to underrate, by one foot, the measure of all trochaic lines, when they terminate with single rhyme; an error into which they are led by an other as gross, that of taking for hypermeter, or mere surplus, the whole rhyme itself, the sound or syllable most indispensable to the verse.

"(For rhyme the rudder is of verses,
With which, like ships, they steer their courses.)"—Hudibras.

Iambics and trochaics, of corresponding metres, and exact in them, agree of course in both the number of feet and the number of syllables; but as the former are slightly redundant with double rhyme, so the latter are deficient as much, with single rhyme; yet, the number of feet may, and should, in these cases, be reckoned the same. An estimable author now living says, "Trochaic verse, with an additional long syllable, is the same as iambic verse, without the initial short syllable."—N. Butler's Practical Gram., p. 193. This instruction is not quite accurate. Nor would it be right, even if there could be "iambic verse without the initial short syllable," and if it were universally true, that, "Trochaic verse may take an additional long syllable."—Ibid. For the addition and subtraction here suggested, will inevitably make the difference of a foot, between the measures or verses said to be the same!

OBS. 6.—"I doubt," says T. O. Churchill, "whether the trochaic can be considered as a legitimate English measure. All the examples of it given by Johnson have an additional long syllable at the end: but these are iambics, if we look upon the additional syllable to be at the beginning, which is much more agreeable to the analogy of music."—Churchill's New Gram., p. 390. This doubt, ridiculous as must be all reasoning in support of it, the author seriously endeavours to raise into a general conviction that we have no trochaic order of verse! It can hardly be worth while to notice here all his remarks. "An additional long syllable" Johnson never dreamed of—"at the end"—"at the beginning"—or anywhere else. For he discriminated metres, not by the number of feet, as he ought to have done, but by the number of syllables he found in each line. His doctrine is this: "Our iambick measure comprises verses—Of four syllables,—Of six,—Of eight,—Of ten. Our trochaick measures are—Of three syllables,—Of five,—Of seven. These are the measures which are now in use, and above the rest those of seven, eight and ten syllables. Our ancient poets wrote verses sometimes of twelve syllables, as Drayton's Polyolbion; and of fourteen, as Chapman's Homer." "We have another measure very quick and lively, and therefore much used in songs, which may be called the anapestick.

'May I góvern my pássion with ábsolute swáy,
And grow wiser and bétter as life wears awáy.' Dr. Pope.

"In this measure a syllable is often retrenched from the first foot, [;] as [,]

'When présent we lóve, and when ábsent agrée,
I th'nk not of I'ris [.] nor I'ris of mé.' Dryden.

"These measures are varied by many combinations, and sometimes by double endings, either with or without rhyme, as in the heroick measure.

''Tis the divinity that stirs within us,
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter..' Addison.

"So in that of eight syllables,

'They neither added nor confounded,
They neither wanted nor abounded.' Prior.

"In that of seven,

    'For resistance I could fear none,
      But with twenty ships had done,
    What thou, brave and happy Vernon,
    Hast achieved with six alone.' Glover.

"To these measures and their laws, may be reduced every species of English verse."—Dr. Johnson's Grammar of the English Tongue, p. 14. See his Quarto Dict. Here, except a few less important remarks, and sundry examples of the metres named, is Johnson's whole scheme of versification.

OBS. 7.—How, when a prosodist judges certain examples to "have an additional long syllable at the end," he can "look upon the additional syllable to be at the beginning," is a matter of marvel; yet, to abolish trochaics, Churchill not only does and advises this, but imagines short syllables removed sometimes from the beginning of lines; while sometimes he couples final short syllables with initial long ones, to make iambs, and yet does not always count these as feet in the verse, when he has done so! Johnson's instructions are both misunderstood and misrepresented by this grammarian. I have therefore cited them the more fully. The first syllable being retrenched from an anapest, there remains an iambus. But what countenance has Johnson lent to the gross error of reckoning such a

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