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By Root 16187 0

that men would come in time to think of the refrain or burden, where, at the closes of the several stanzas of a poem, one word or phrase is repeated; and of alliteration, in whose simplest form a consonant is repeated in the commencements of various words. This effect would be extended so as to embrace repetitions both of vowels and of consonants in the bodies as well as in the beginnings of words, and at a later period would be made to infringe on the province of rhyme by the introduction of general similarity of sound between whole feet occurring in the body of a line- all of which modifications I have exemplified in the line above.

Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it.

Further cultivation would improve also the refrain by relieving its monotone in slightly varying the phrase at each repetition, or (as I have attempted to do in "The Raven") in retaining the phrase and varying its application, although this latter point is not strictly a rhythmical effect alone. Finally, poets when fairly wearied with following precedent, following it the more closely the less they perceived it in company with Reason, would adventure so far as to indulge in positive rhyme at other points than the ends of lines. First, they would put it in the middle of the line, then at some point where the multiple would be less obvious, then, alarmed at their own audacity, they would undo all their work by cutting these lines in two. And here is the fruitful source of the infinity of "short metre" by which modern poetry, if not distinguished, is at least disgraced. It would require a high degree, indeed, both of cultivation and of courage on the part of any versifier to enable him to place his rhymes, and let them remain at unquestionably their best position, that of unusual and unanticipated intervals.

On account of the stupidity of some people, or (if talent be a more respectable word), on account of their talent for misconception- I think it necessary to add here, first, that I believe the "processes" above detailed to be nearly, if not accurately, those which did occur in the gradual creation of what we now can verse; secondly, that, although I so believe, I yet urge neither the assumed fact nor my belief in it as a part of the true propositions of this paper, thirdly, that in regard to the aim of this paper, it is of no consequence whether these processes did occur either in the order I have assigned them, or at all; my design being simply, in presenting a general type of what such processes might have been and must have resembled, to help them, the "some people," to an easy understanding of what I have further to say on the topic of Verse.

There is one point, which, in my summary of the processes, I have purposely forborne to touch; because this point, being the most important of all on account of the immensity of error usually involved in its consideration, would have led me into a series of detail inconsistent with the object of a summary.

Every reader of verse must have observed how seldom it happens that even any one line proceeds uniformly with a succession, such as I have supposed, of absolutely equal feet; that is to say, with a succession of iambuses only, or of trochees only, or of dactyls only, or of anapaests only, or of spondees only. Even in the most musical lines we find the succession interrupted. The iambic pentameters of Pope, for example, will be found on examination, frequently varied by trochees in the beginning, or by (what seem to be) anapaests in the body of the line.

oh thou / whate / ver ti / tle please / thine ear /

Dean Dra / pier Bick / erstaff / or Gull / iver /

Whether / thou choose / Cervan / tes' / se / rious air /

or laugh / and shake / in Rab / elais' ea / sy chair /

Were any one weak enough to refer to the Prosodies for the solution of the difficulty here, he would find it solved as usual by a rule, stating the fact (or what it, the rule, supposes to be the fact), but without the slightest attempt at the rationale. "By a synaeresis of the two short syllables," say the books, "an anapaest may