Tirocinium. But he (his musical finesse was such, So nice his ear, so delicate his touch) And every warbler has his tune by heart ; which may be almost called the "notice to quit" of the couplet in this form. But he who lodged it did not at once observe it for himself, and The Progress of Error, Truth, and the rest all employ the same medium-a couplet which in the main follows, but frets at and occasionally half kicks over, the rules of "smoothness," at which it has been mocking. Sometimes he comes closer to Pope, or at least to Young, who has a certain premonition of Cowper in many ways. Sometimes he goes back to the Alexandrine, as just now noticed, or at Expostulation, l. 499— And while the victim slowly bled to death, Upon the tolling chords rung out his dying breath, where the principle which Johnson criticised as laid down and put in practice by Cowley, is evidently followed once more. Of his later returns to the style, which he so fortunately deserted in The Task, the most important is, of course, Tirocinium, where it was well in place. There is absolutely no such vehicle for regular satire-satire which is not merely playful but which means business, which intends to "burn, sink, and destroy," if it can -as the couplet. Both-all four, if we join Young and Churchill to Dryden and Pope-of Cowper's masters had shown that to demonstration; and he proved himself one of the aptest of their pupils. One-sided and excessive as the piece may be in thought and purpose, it is, as satire, not much the worse for that; and in form it is quite excellent. In fact, it is by far Cowper's best piece in the couplet for craftsmanship and adaptation of means to ends. Yet we must not forget "My Mother's Picture," where, with true poetic power, he manages to make this vehicle, if not exactly a "bauble coach," a carriage for something very different from satire; or "The Needless Alarm," and others in which he brings out its capacities for playfulness. "Anti-Thelypthora," though it has pained some good people, is unexceptionable as heroi-comic verse -in fact, it is in parts not inferior to Canning's "New Morality" from this point of view. "The Colubriad " is pure burlesque, and very excellent burlesque; but though burlesque certainly is sometimes a form of dissembling love, it was by no means the form that the couplet wanted at this particular time. There was no danger to blank verse in the "Lines to the Immortal Memory of the Halibut," for blank verse was young and strong. There was a good deal in " The Colubriad," for the couplet was old and could not stand being unceremoniously handled-all the more so that it had been handled with rather too much ceremony. Once more, all Cowper's dealings in different ways with couplet are "notices to quit"—except in its satiric divisions, and in some even of these. Even in "My Mother's Picture" one cannot help feeling how much better blank verse, or stanza, would have suited the occasion.1 1 This chapter is so dominated by Pope that it may be better to give here, rather than with the "Prosodists," his views of couplet scansion as contained in the "letter to Cromwell" (1710), already cited sup. (p. 392): "I. As to the hiatus, it is certainly to be avoided as often as possible; but on the other hand, since the reason of it is only for the sake of the numbers, so if, to avoid it, we incur another fault against their smoothness, methinks the very end of that nicety is destroyed: as when we say for instance, But th' old have int'rest ever in their view, to avoid the hiatus in The old have int'rest. Does not the ear in this place tell us, that the hiatus is smoother, less constrained, and so preferable to the cæsura? “2. I would except against all expletives in verse, as do before verbs plural, or even too frequent use of did or does, to change the termination of the rhyme; all these being against the usual manner of speech, and mere fillers-up of unnecessary syllables. "3. Monosyllabic lines, unless very artfully managed, are stiff, languishing, and hard. "4. The repeating of the same rhymes within four or six lines of each other, which tire the ear with too much of the like sound. "5. The too frequent use of Alexandrines, which are never graceful but when there is some majesty added to the verse by them, or where there cannot be found a word in them but what is absolutely needful. "6. Every nice ear must, I believe, have observed that in any smooth English verse of ten syllables, there is naturally a pause either at the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllables; as for example, Waller :— At the fifth: Where-e'er thy navy | spreads her canvas wings. At the fourth: : Now I fancy, that to preserve an exact harmony and variety, none of these pauses should be continued above three lines together, without the interposition of another; else it will be apt to weary the ear with one continued tone- at least it does mine. "7. It is not enough that nothing offends the ear, that the verse be, as the French call it, coulant; but a good poet will adapt the very sounds, as well as words, to the things he treats of. So that there is, if one may express it so, a style of sound; as in describing a gliding stream, the numbers should run easy and flowing; in describing a rough torrent or deluge, sonorous and swelling; and so of the rest." CHAPTER II BLANK VERSE AFTER MILTON The meaning of "after "--Roscommon-John Philips-Broome and of "after." THE present chapter is one of those where convenience The meaning requires, and real symmetry does not forbid, that we should double back a little from the main stage of our Book. But its title contains, in a double sense, the justification of this proceeding. All non-dramatic blank verse that follows the death of the author of Paradise Lost is "after him" in the two senses-posterior to him, and imitated, as best the imitator might, from him. The remarkable effort of Thomson himself does not escape this description, though it furnished, not an independent, but an additional and slightly altered model. From these two, and thus from the one, descends all blank nondramatic verse-of dramatic blanks we may speak later -till quite the close of the eighteenth century. It is a sign of the comparative paralysis of poetry during this century that no one seems to have thought-Young is the only possible exception, and we shall deal with him presently of adapting afresh from Shakespeare and others, and moulding a non-dramatic form different from Milton's,1 1 In fact, most of the early eighteenth-century pieces in the metre are The idea that Addison's criticism was necessary before Milton could be "got read," as Mr. Carlyle used to say, has been, or ought to have been, long ago dispelled; but it is certain that people were not in a hurry to imitate him. The exception which in the fullest sense proves the Roscommon. rule here is that of Roscommon. Not only did that ingenious earl translate the Ars Poetica into blank verse; but he shocked precisians by inserting, at the end of his much more famous Essay on Translated Verse, a solid block of blanks, very oddly paraphrased or abstracted from the Sixth Book of Paradise Lost itself. This is a sort of Miltonic cento. The Horatian piece very properly avoids all imitations of the Miltonic style, which could not but have had the effect of sheer burlesque. But as blank verse it betrays no grasp, on its author's part, of Milton's real secrets-pause- variation, line-composition, and architectonic of the lines when composed. It is, indeed, a strong justification of the use of that couplet which its writer had employed, but discountenanced, for didactic purposes. Roscommon, in fact, falls back on the old single-mould " line before Shakespeare,1 and as he has not, and could not with propriety have had, the magnificence of diction which lightens that mould in the University Wits, the effect is not exhilarating. This kind of thing, for instance, will give the enemy of blanks plentiful opportunity to blaspheme Quintilius, if his advice were asked, Would freely tell you what you should correct, What is the advantage (except perhaps that it is rather formally described not as “in blank verse," but "in the manner of Milton." The chief exercise of the other kind, apart from actual drama, that I remember is Dr. Ibbot's Fit of the Spleen in the fifth volume of Dodsley. If this was the Ibbot who died in 1725, it is interesting as being early, and has the additional interest of being wonderfully bad; but it has no other. 1 The presence of this mould may be traced further in the blank-verses of the eighteenth century right onward to Cowper, and sometimes in him. |