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 FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKHFELLHR 
 
 THE TECHNIQUE OF ENGLISH 
 
 NON-DRAMATIC BLANK 
 
 VERSE 
 
 A DISSERTATION 
 
 SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE 
 
 IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF 
 
 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 
 
 BY 
 EDWARD PAYSON MORTON 
 
 
 CHICAGO 
 R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO. 
 
 1910 
 
Ube XHniverstti? ot Cbicaoo 
 
 FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 
 
 THE TECHNIQUE OF ENGLISH 
 NON-DRAMATIC BLANK 
 . VERSE 
 
 A DISSERTATION 
 
 SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE 
 
 IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF 
 
 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD PAYSON MORTON 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO. 
 
 igio 
 
Copyright, 1910 
 
 BY 
 
 E. P. MORTON 
 
TO 
 
 MY FATHER AND MOTHER 
 
 239377 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction . . . . .3-8 
 
 This study examines the metrics of a large quan- 
 tity of English non-dramatic blank verse, exclud- 
 ing the drama, into which other considerations 
 enter (p. 3). Blank verse our simplest, most flex- 
 ible form, but should not be praised by disparaging 
 other forms (p. 4). Its conventions; 'lyric blank 
 verse, (p. 5). The poets here studied (p. 6), and 
 the significance of the facts about them (p. 7). 
 
 I. Lines ..... 9-37 
 
 Terms defined and discussed. Commastopt (p. 9), 
 run-on (p. lo), endstopt (p. 11), and unbroken lines 
 (p. 12), not matters of sentence-length, or punctua- 
 tion (p. 13). Feminine (p. 15), and unstressed end- 
 ings (p. 16). Tables I and II: the four kinds of 
 lines in blank verse and in the heroic couplet 
 (pp. 18-19). . . 
 
 The wide range of the percentages; variations 
 from Milton's figures; the proportion of run-on 
 lines not a certain measure of movement (p. 20). 
 Endstopt lines frequent; relation of run-on and 
 endstopt lines not clear. Commastopt lines corol- 
 laries to others, and vary in force (p. 21). Un- 
 broken lines used most freely by the greater poets. 
 Comparison of blank verse and the couplet shows: 
 more uniformity among users of couplets; more 
 endstopt and fewer run-on lines than in blank verse, 
 and more unbroken lines (p. 22). Unbroken lines 
 a measure of line-rhythm (p. 23). 
 
 Note on Paragraphs. Beginning a paragraph in 
 the middle of a line an indication of a tendency to 
 subordinate the line-unit; some figures (p. 25). 
 
 Table III: feminine and unstressed endings 
 (p. 27). Feminine endings little used except in 
 drama (p. 28); their quality (p. 29). Unstressed 
 endings avoided in the i8th century (p. 30), but in 
 the 19th more used than feminine endings. Dis- 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 tribution of feminine and unstressed endings be- 
 tween run-on and endstopt lines varies (p. 32). 
 Poets rarely use two devices in combination (p. 33). 
 Note on Rhyme. In blank verse the opportunity 
 for 'repetition' not often seized (p. 33). 
 
 II. C^SURAS . . . . 38-63 
 
 Caesura defined and discussed (p 38) ; 'strong 
 pauses' (p. 39) ; two or more caesuras in a line 
 (Table IV: percentage of lines with more than one 
 caesura), and their frequence (p. 40). Ability of the 
 caesura to modify line-rhythm greater in blank 
 verse than in the couplet, and in blank verse varies 
 with the proportion of endstopt lines (p. 41). Cae- 
 suras in trisyllabic feet relatively few (p. 42), but 
 raise question of 'extra-metricality'; illustrations 
 (p- 43)> and discussion (p. 44). The part played 
 by the caesura in the time of the line illustrated 
 (p. 45) to show that it merely modifies the rate of 
 delivery (p. 45). Tables V and VI: caesuras 
 (pp. 48-9). 
 
 Little uniformity of usage; the pause after the 
 4th syllable usually the most frequent (p. 49). Di- 
 versity of practice illustrated; the tendency of the 
 iambic line to break at the ends of feet (p. 51). 
 Distribution of caesuras (p. 52) ; variations from 
 Milton; monotony of pause (p. 53). Conclusions 
 (p. 54). Comparison of total caesuras with 'strong 
 pauses* shows greater tendency of strong pauses to 
 the middle of the line, in couplets as in blank verse 
 (p. 55)- 'Severity' of breaks not notable in Milton 
 (p. 56). The men who have the widest distribution 
 of caesuras have also many unbroken lines (p. 57)- 
 
 Table VII: 'run-on' caesuras (p. 58). *Run-on' 
 caesuras explained (p. 59) : most frequent in the 
 greater poets, as shown by figures (p. 60). Lines 
 *run-on' from a caesura near the end more often 
 than to a caesura near the beginning. 'Run-on' 
 caesuras most frequent after the 7th syllable (p. 61). 
 In blank verse, 'run-on' caesuras near the end of the 
 line modify the line-rhythm; but in the couplet in- 
 crease rhyme-emphasis (p. 62). 
 
 III. Feet ..... 64-79 
 Puzzling lines in non-dramatic blank verse rela- 
 tively few, and to be explained in several ways 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 (p. 64), but many are explicable by a simple prin- 
 ciple. Distribution of emphasis the source of effect- 
 iveness in both poetry and prose (p. 65). Blank 
 verse like prose in sentence-length and word-order 
 (p. 66); unlike prose in its regular rhythm (p. 67). 
 Mr. T. S. Omond's statement of the relation of 
 syllables to time applied to blank verse (p. 68). 
 
 Substitution of trisyllabic feet (p. 69), which are 
 'duple time' anapests. Trochees most common at 
 the beginning of the line (p. 71), but many are de- 
 batable. Trochees are instances where the logical 
 and metrical accents do not coincide (p. 73); as a 
 rule the metrical accent yields, but not always 
 (p. 74). Changes in practice indicate increasing sub- 
 ordination of the rhythm (p. 76). Initial trochees 
 sometimes emphasized by caesuras, but the caesuras 
 also furnish various divisions, as illustrated (p.'77)» 
 and discussed (p. 78). These variations help to give 
 the cadences of verse, but cadences are not often 
 solely variations in arrangement of stressed and un- 
 stressed syllables (p. 79). 
 
 IV. Tone-Quality . . . 80-82 
 Tone-quality is not a part of the special tech- 
 nique of blank verse, but belongs both to prose and 
 verse (p. 80). 
 
 V. Summary and Comment . . 83-90 
 
 Blank verse has a minimum of requirements, and 
 therefore lends itself to a wide range of rhetorical 
 styles (p. 83), but has no 'standard' or 'formal' 
 type (p. 84). The proportions of run-on lines furn- 
 ish no measure of 'strictness' as in the couplet; 
 caesuras, however, are more important than in the 
 couplet, and their distribution is the most important 
 detail in the technique of blank verse (p. 85). Fem- 
 inine and unstressed endings are little used, and are 
 therefore rarelj^ important (p. 86). Writers of non- 
 dramatic blank verse have been careful both of the 
 iambic rhythm and of the five-beat line. Historical 
 study shows that endstopt and unbroken lines, and 
 feminine endings have increased; that run-on lines 
 and caesuras at the ends of feet have grown fewer; 
 that caesuras near the ends of the line are more fre- 
 quent and emphatic (p. 87). These changes point 
 to subordination of the rhythm and to greater atten- 
 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 tion to the effects of varying quantity. The most 
 
 common misconception of blank verse consists in 
 
 failure to distinguish technical details (p. 88), as 
 illustrated by Milton (p. 89). 
 
 VL The Individual Poets (Arranged 
 
 chronologically) . . . 91-129 
 
 ♦^Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of 91-2 
 
 Gascoigne, George 91-2 
 
 ^Milton, John 93-6 
 
 Philips, John 97 
 
 Watts, Isaac 97 
 
 Newcomb, Thomas 98-9 
 
 ^Thomson, James 99-101 
 
 Mallet, David loi 
 
 Somervile, William 102 
 
 Glover, Richard 102-3 
 
 Young, Edward 104-5 
 
 Blair, Robert 106 
 
 Akenside, Mark 107-8 
 
 Shenstone, William 108 
 
 ^-Cowper, William 109-10 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage i lo-i i 
 
 i- Wordsworth, William 111-13 
 
 »^Shelley, Percy Bysshe 113-14 
 
 ^Keats, John 11S-18 
 
 ^ Arnold, Matthew 1 18-19 
 
 i- Browning, Robert 120-23 
 
 t Tennyson, Alfred 124-25 
 
 ^ Swinburne, Algernon Charles 126-29 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 This study is an attempt to examine some consid- 
 erable quantities of English non-dramatic blank 
 verse, with the hope of pointing out some conven- 
 tions in the use of the metre, and of checking up 
 some of the current notions about the subject. I have 
 confined myself to non-dramatic blank verse (not ex- 
 cluding, of course, occasional comparisons with 
 dramatic blank verse, and with other verse forms) 
 because in the drama the verse is for the most part 
 a secondary feature, inasmuch as the dramatist wish- 
 es ordinarily to get an illusion of life or of reality, 
 and therefore subordinates or modifies his verse to 
 suit dramatic necessities. It is true that historically 
 English blank verse acquired its flexibility through 
 the drama, but the blank verse written by Milton and 
 his successors is a very different thing from the 
 blank verse of Shakspere's later plays or of those of 
 the other dramatists of that generation. The failure 
 to discriminate between dramatic and non-dramatic 
 blank verse has led often to debating whether such 
 and such a device is admissible, when as a matter of 
 fact it is found almost entirely in dramatic blank 
 verse, and there for dramatic rather than metrical 
 reasons. For example, the question of six-beat lines 
 in blank verse reduces itself to something like this : 
 In a verse-form like the rigid heroic couplet, for 
 instance, a six-beat line at the end of the couplet was 
 often, like a triplet, a concession to the limitations of 
 the verse- form. In the drama, a line divided be- 
 tween two or more speakers might be a beat long 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 or a beat short (that is, it might be made up of two 
 three-beat phrases, or two two-beat ones, or a four 
 and a two) without disturbing the swing of the 
 rhythm, because the auditors would not notice an 
 excess or deficiency that was hidden by the break 
 between the speeches. Hearers, moreover, would 
 not be as sensitive as readers to occasional six-beat 
 lines in the middle of speeches. In non-dramatic 
 blank verse, however, the demand for, or the op- 
 portunity for metrical license of this sort is lacking, 
 and six-beat lines, even possible ones, are so few as 
 to be negligible. 
 
 When looked at from a purely theoretical point 
 of view, blank verse is the most flexible and adapt- 
 able of our English verse-forms, because it has the 
 fewest arbitrary metrical requirements. Stripped 
 of various minor rules which, as we shall see, change 
 somewhat from generation to generation, blank 
 verse demands of the poet merely five-beat lines 
 with a prevailingly iambic swing. It sets no restric- 
 tions upon sentence-length or paragraph-length, as 
 do stanza-forms, and even the heroic couplet. It 
 lends itself equally well to short, pithy, sententious, 
 or staccato sentences, and to long flowing periods. 
 It serves unobtrusively as a vehicle for quiet pedes- 
 trian material, raised above prose chiefly by the 
 rhythm; or for the expression of moods so intense, 
 or grave, or delicate, that more formal devices might 
 stamp them as declamatory or insincere. 
 
 This very fact, that blank verse makes so few 
 requirements, has led to two errors of attitude, both 
 sometimes serious. In the first place, it is worth 
 while to avoid praising blank verse in terms of dis- 
 praise of other forms. For example, blank verse 
 seems to oflfer peculiar advantages to both poet and 
 reader in various long poems, such as disquisitions 
 like the Excursion or the Ring and the Book; or 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 narratives like Sohrab and Rustum; or mixtures of 
 both like Paradise Lost. But let us recall the un- 
 flagging ease and vivacity of Chaucer's Troilus, 
 which is in the rhyme- royal stanza ; of Byron's Don 
 Juan, in ottava rima; of the Faery Queen, in a still 
 more intricate stanza; of Endymion, or if that be 
 thought too Hke blank verse in its technique, of 
 Dryden's Palamon and Arcite, or of Pope's Homer, 
 which still grips high school boys as it did Pope's 
 own generation. In the second place, it is necessary 
 to discriminate between effects which are really the 
 result of metrical technique and effects which are 
 primarily rhetorical, and which are prominent in 
 blank verse just because of the unobtrusiveness of 
 its metrics. 
 
 Most of the conventions of non-dramatic blank 
 verse, in fact, spring from its very unobtrusive- 
 ness. Inasmuch as the five beat& and the iambic 
 rhythm are practically its only fundamentals, its 
 users have generally been careful to keep both. In- 
 deed, with no rhyme to indicate line-rhythm, or to 
 affect sentence-length or structure, four-beat or six- 
 beat lines are not only unnecessary, but disturbing. 
 At least the poets seem to have felt so, for fractional 
 lines and alexandrines are very few indeed in the 
 poets here studied.^ Moreover, rhymeless measures 
 in other than five-beat lines have proved both difficult 
 and unsatisfactory. Even in Samson Agonistes, the 
 choral passages are accompanied by rhyme and as- 
 sonance : 'blank verse odes' like Thomas Fletcher's or 
 James Ralph's (which are simply lawless Pindarics 
 carried a step farther by the omission of rhyme) are 
 
 1 Cowley, in the couplets of his Davideis, introduced 
 incomplete lines, and in a note reminded his readers 
 that he was following Virgil. Cowley also informed 
 his readers that his occasional alexandrines were used 
 deliberately, and not carelessly. 
 
 5 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 few in number ; and Collins's Ode to Evening is the 
 one exquisite success of a long series of attempts 
 from Milton down. Collins's ode illustrates inci- 
 dentally the advantage in blank verse of the five- 
 beat rhythm, for more than one critic has printed 
 stanzas from Collins in three lines instead of four, 
 finding nothing in the cadences of the two short lines 
 to distinguish them as separate lines. 'Lyric blank 
 verse,' therefore, whether we include all rhymeless 
 lyric poems, or apply the term only to such five-beat 
 passages as Tennyson's "Tears, idle tears," makes 
 use of various special devices because of its lyric 
 purpose, and should consequently be as sharply dis- 
 criminated as dramatic blank verse from the verse 
 we are here concerned with. 
 
 A word is necessary about the choice of poets 
 whose blank verse is here studied. Milton, Words- 
 worth, Keats, Browning, and Tennyson — all of them 
 but Keats extensive users of non-dramatic blank 
 verse — demand a place in any comparative study. 
 To these I have added others, partly by design, 
 partly at haphazard. Surrey and Gascoigne I have 
 put in, both because they were very early practi- 
 tioners, and because their pioneer crudities are often 
 illuminating. Young should be added, it seemed to 
 me, because it is interesting to compare some ex- 
 tremely popular 1 8th century blank verse with what 
 we now find most admirable. Young, of course, 
 suggested comparison with Thomson, and Thomson 
 with his predecessor Philips and with his friend 
 Mallet, whose Excursion promised possible con- 
 trasts with Wordworth's. Newcomb, Blair, Glover, 
 Somervile, Shenstone, and Watts owe their presence 
 here not to any special importance, but to the acci- 
 dent that interest in them for other reasons led me 
 to examine their blank verse and to add their little 
 'sum of more.' In Cowper I felt I was adding an- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 other i8th century poet whose blank verse has al- 
 ways been spoken of with respect; Landor came in 
 because I was curious to see what kind of blank 
 verse he published in the year of the "Lyrical Bal- 
 lads/' Shelley, Arnold, and Swinburne — especially 
 the last two — offer interesting experiments. For 
 a history of English non-dramatic blank verse, this 
 list of poets would be only a beginning, but for a 
 study of its technique primarily, I think I have a 
 wide enough range, both in time and character, to 
 justify some conclusions. In all cases I have taken 
 either complete poems or large enough masses of 
 the longer ones to make me feel that my statements 
 about those particular poems are based on definite 
 knowledge. Browning and Tennyson alone, of these 
 poets, have written a variety of poems in blank verse 
 during a long period of years; in the case of the 
 others, then, I am usually justified in speaking of the 
 men rather than of individual poems. Long ago I 
 discovered, in the case of the heroic couplet, that 
 very mediocre poets often illustrate technical details 
 better than great poets, because the small men are 
 less skilful in concealing their art. A similar com- 
 parison between great and poor poets in blank verse 
 seemed likely to be equally profitable, although New- 
 comb's is the only instance in this list of a long 
 poem which has not still its admirers or was not 
 highly praised in its own generation. 
 
 It is necessary also, I imagine, to say a word about 
 the facts I present, and their significance. I have 
 taken pains, and frequent checking up of portions of 
 my work has led me to think it reasonably accurate. 
 None of my conclusions, however, depends upon 
 absolutely final winnowing out of a few small grains. 
 I find, for instance, only one feminine ending in 
 the Seasons; I should not be disturbed if some one 
 else found a half dozen more, because the signifi- 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 cance of the matter lies not in there being only one 
 but in there being so few that Thomson must have 
 definitely avoided them. I have given my figures 
 exactly, as an evidence of good faith, and not be- 
 cause the precise fractions are significant. It is of 
 no importance, for example, that Somervile should 
 have 20.70% of his lines endstopt, and Mallet only 
 20.69; ^^ ^s significant, however, that those men 
 should come in a group with many others who have 
 between 15 and 30% of their lines endstopt. And 
 this leads to a caution about my inferences: the 
 same reason which has led me to examine long pas- 
 sages keeps me from laying stress on differences 
 between poem§ which are not of considerable length. 
 The variations between different books of Paradise 
 Lost, for instance, are often greater than those be- 
 tween two or three minor poets. The danger of 
 drawing definite generalizations from brief passages 
 is illustrated by the table which Professor Mayor 
 printed on page 208 of the second edition of his 
 "Chapters on English Metre." Frequently he re- 
 cords greater variations between different passages 
 from Tennyson than he finds between Tennyson and 
 either Milton or Browning. That the reason for 
 such differences may be accidental and not metrical 
 was aptly illustrated by the experience of a student 
 who was perplexed to find that in one scene of As 
 You Like It only 28% of the lines were endstopt, 
 while in another over 50% were endstopt. The rea- 
 son was that, although the two scenes were of about 
 the same length, one consisted of ten speeches, of 
 which only four ended within the line ; while the 
 other had twenty-seven speeches, of which but five 
 ended within the line, so that a mere difference in 
 the length of the speeches — in the liveliness of the 
 dialogue — affected materially the details of the versi- 
 fication. 
 
 8 
 
I. LINES 
 
 In order to avoid confusion I shall begin by defin- 
 ing my terms and explaining their limitations. 
 
 Run-on lines are lines which without punctuation 
 at the end ''run-on" into the next. 
 
 Endstopt lines are lines which end with some 
 punctuation other than a comma. 
 
 Commastopt lines (which n^ed no definition) I 
 have kept separate for two reasons. In the first 
 place, although some commastopt lines undoubtedly 
 have, in some poets, at least, the force of endstopt 
 lines, while others are almost as certainly run-on, 
 any attempt to apportion them means hopeless en- 
 tanglement in the meshes of the personal equation. 
 In some cases, Tennyson, for example, I have tried 
 distributing the commastopt lines and I found that, 
 while the proportions of run-on and endstopt lines 
 did not materially change, my results were less 
 definite. In the second place, commastopt lines are 
 neutral in the sense of not being emphatically either 
 run-on or endstopt, and I feel pretty sure that the 
 proportion of such neutral lines counts distinctly in 
 the general effect of the verse. (See p. 21.) At 
 least, I hope my division may make my figures 
 serviceable to readers of various opinions. Those 
 who think that any punctuation at the end of the 
 line means an endstopt line, have only to add my 
 percentages of endstopt and commastopt lines. 
 Those who think that even a comma does not neces- 
 sarily keep a line from being run-on, will find in 
 my figures for commastopt lines some basis for spec- 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 ulation as to the proportion in which such Hnes may 
 be found. 
 
 In the case of run-on lines, it seems to me that 
 my percentages are perfectly definite. To the objec- 
 tion that some lines which have no punctuation at 
 the end are nevertheless not run-on, it may be 
 pointed out that two or three factors may combine 
 to give us gradations which we must all recognize, 
 though it does not seem to me feasible to tabulate 
 either their frequency or their proportions. For 
 example, the end of a line may, without punctuation, 
 coincide with the end of a syntactical phrase, which 
 would make the reader pause appreciably longer 
 than if the line ended in the midst of a syntactical 
 group. 
 
 and by success untaught 
 
 His proud imaginations thus displaid (P. L. 2. 9-10) 
 
 is an example of the first, and 
 
 High on a throne of royal state, which far 
 Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind (P. L. 2. 1-2) 
 
 of the second. There is a similar difference between 
 instances like 
 
 -yet our great enemie 
 
 All incorruptible (P. L. 2. 137-8) 
 
 and 
 
 or when we lay 
 
 Chain'd on the burning lake (P. L. 2. 168-9) 
 
 where the initial stressed syllable of the next line 
 forces a pause. The most hurried type of run-on 
 line, frequent in Shakspere's later plays, is rare in 
 non-dramatic blank verse — at least it is so infre- 
 quent and unobtrusive that I have no instances 
 in mind. I mean the light or weak ending, as in 
 
 It should the good ship so have swallow'd and 
 
 The fraughting souls within her (Temp. i. 2. 12-13) 
 
 or 
 
 10 
 
LINES 
 
 Thy father was the Duke of Milan and 
 
 A prince of power. (Temp. i. 2. 54-5) 
 
 It may be argued that the sense of line-rhythm 
 was more constant or stronger in Milton than in 
 Wordsworth or Browning or Tennyson, and that 
 therefore my figures for Milton would not mean 
 quite the same as for the other men. But assuming 
 that line-rhythm is stronger in Milton than in the 
 others — as I think it is — the absence of punctuation 
 at the end of the line serves the same function in 
 both groups, although with the same difference of 
 effect that there is between Milton's stately, sonorous 
 manner and the easier, more colloquial vocabulary 
 of the Prelude or the Excursion. Indeed, I find no 
 obviously and primarily metrical differences; the 
 same thing is evident if you compare Milton's para- 
 graph about the Verse, prefixed to Paradise Lost, 
 with Wordsworth's Preface to the second edition 
 of the "Lyrical Ballads." Diction, in short, makes 
 itself felt in the movement of either prose or verse, 
 and in verse of whatever sort. Therefore, I am in- 
 clined to maintain that counting as run-on only 
 lines (and all lines) which have no punctuation at 
 the end, gives a definite and unquestionable set of 
 facts. 
 
 In the case of endstopt lines, my percentages are 
 not quite so satisfactory. Periods, colons, semi- 
 colons, and, ordinarily, question marks, are clear 
 indications of a marked pause in the sense or the 
 syntax; but exclamation points, and parentheses, 
 and dashes are less certain. (Where there is a 
 double mark like , — or ), or ! — , I have felt safe 
 in counting a full pause.) My practice has been 
 to count these various marks always as full stops, 
 so that I have, if anything, somewhat exaggerated 
 the proportions of endstopt lines. However, various 
 attempts to determine the proportions of these am- 
 
 II 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 biguous marks have led me to conclude that their 
 total number is not great enough to make signifi- 
 cant changes in the results. 
 
 Unbroken lines are lines with no punctuation 
 within the line, though I do not try to discriminate 
 between the four varieties illustrated in these lines 
 from the fourth book of the Prelude: 
 
 -and at once 
 
 1 Some lovely Image in the song rose up 
 Full-formed, like Venus rising from the sea; 
 
 2 Then have I darted forwards to let loose 
 
 3 My hand upon his back with stormy joy, 
 
 4 Caressing him again and yet again." (11. 1 12-17) 
 
 I have made various attempts to find out whether 
 the proportions of the varieties just illustrated bore 
 any significant relation to each other, or to the in- 
 dividual poet's use of them, or to the proportions 
 of other metrical details, but without tangible re- 
 sults. At first thought, unbroken lines would seem 
 likely to vary in inverse ratio to run-on lines, be^ 
 cause a large proportion of lines without internal 
 pause would force the pauses to the end of the line, 
 and vice versa. The case of Gascoigne, who has 
 only 17.64% of his lines run-on, and 70.56% un- 
 broken, seems entirely in point, but his case, as we 
 shall see, like Surrey's, is exceptional. Again, New- 
 comb and Philips, who have most run-on, have few- 
 est unbroken lines; but Akenside and Swinburne, 
 who have over 50% of their lines run-on, have also 
 over 40% unbroken. Except in men who go to 
 extremes in the use or avoidance of run-on lines, 
 unbroken lines have no essential relation to run-on 
 lines, but are indications, according as they are many 
 or few, of the extent to which the poet emphasizes 
 or disguises line-rhythm. The proportion of un- 
 broken lines is important, too, in connection with 
 caesuras, as indicating rapidity of movement. 
 
 12 
 
LINES 
 
 It may be urged that all these matters, so far, are 
 mere records of variations in sentence-length. In 
 one sense that is true, for in blank verse sentence- 
 structure practically determines the flow of the 
 verse. In the heroic couplet, on the contrary — to 
 take for illustration another five-beat iambic verse- 
 form — rhetoric rarely dominates the verse, but the 
 verse usually compels a limited type of sentence- 
 structure or, perhaps, attracts chiefly men of certain 
 markedly similar habits of thought and expression. 
 The exceptions to this are cases like that of Keats, 
 and, so far as I know, always of men who treat the 
 couplet as if it were blank verse, and reduce the 
 rhyme to an almost purely decorative function. 
 These men, it may be noted, come always in periods 
 of extravagance or revolt, and are therefore not 
 representative users of couplets. In a discussion of 
 the couplet, then, we should often be pointing out 
 the ways in which the poets adapted themselves 
 to the demands of the couplet ; in our discussion of 
 blank verse, we shall be chiefly engaged in show- 
 ing how various poets have availed themselves of 
 the opportunities of the form. In taking account of 
 these things, then, it is necessary — and this is a 
 point often neglected or blurred — that we should 
 discriminate between what is rhetorical and what is 
 really metrical, but we shall find that varying habits 
 of sentence-structure affect or exhibit metrical pe- 
 culiarities. 
 
 It may be urged, too, that this method merely 
 records vagaries of punctuation, that poets and 
 printers alike had notions both eccentric and incon- 
 sistent. True, both poets and printers are eccentric, 
 and what is worse, inconsistent, but these very 
 things more or less clearly record significant details 
 in which past generations did not have our precise 
 point of view. An illustration or two will help. 
 
 13 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 When Ben Jonson declared that he ''loved Shak- 
 speare (this side Idolatory) as much as any man," 
 he capitalised a common noun and used parentheses 
 where we should be content with commas, and 
 should print (as some of his editors have) ''loved 
 Shakespeare, this side idolatry, as much as any 
 man." We have not changed the sense, but I feel 
 sure that we ha,ve changed the emphasis, and that 
 Jonson's capital and parenthesis, however custom- 
 ary and conventional they may have been, repre- 
 sented to him a somewhat stronger sense of the 
 inter jectional quality of the modifying phrase, and a 
 somewhat more emphatic conception of the heresy 
 he disclaimed in "Idolatory," than the modern read- 
 ing gives. It is true that the i8th century men 
 punctuated far more elaborately than we do, but that 
 I am sure was something more than a mere conven- 
 tion; it indicated a habit of mind, a habit, if you 
 will, of attention to the details of a matter rather 
 than to the larger groupings. In the Night 
 Thoughts, for instance, one of the most profusely 
 punctuated of the poems, the punctuation is no mere 
 excess of pointing ; it is an index of Young's habits 
 of expression. In short, I am convinced that punc- 
 tuation is not merely a matter of printing, but that 
 it is indicative of a mental habit, and in the long 
 run measures fairly well a poet's sensitiveness to 
 long or short groups — to details as details, or to de- 
 tails as parts of a whole. When Milton wrote 
 
 "Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of 
 death," (Par. Lost, 2. 621) 
 
 it may be that his punctuation was formal merely, 
 and not intended to force a slow reading of the 
 line and prevent the hasty pairing that the rhythm 
 would suggest. But when he wrote 
 
 " and chase 
 
 Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain 
 From mortal or immortal minds" (Par. Lost, i. 557-9) 
 
 14 
 
LINES 
 
 it looks as if the omission of the punctuation were 
 deliberate ; at least the omission admits of a swifter 
 reading than otherwise.^ 
 
 The very fact that blank verse and heroic couplets 
 of the same period, when subjected to the same sort 
 of examination, exhibit marked and fundamental 
 differences of treatment, goes to show that the punc- 
 tuation of a given generation is on the whole sig- 
 nificant, and that freaks due to careless printers are 
 rarely if ever numerous enough to vitiate the 
 general results. 
 
 A feminine ending (called also double, or re- 
 dundant) is an extra unstressed syllable at the end 
 of the line after the fifth metrical beat. The chances 
 for difference of opinion are relatively few. Such 
 words as 'heaven,' 'given,' 'striven,' I have counted 
 as monosyllables at the end of the line inasmuch as 
 they are usually so in the middle, as are also all 
 words in -ire and -ower. 'Being' I have counted 
 always a monosyllable ; 'spirit' always a dissyllable.^ 
 The most puzzling cases are adjectives in -able. In [^ 
 spite of Mr. Bridges' comments, I have not counted 
 
 ^ On the question of the blind poet's supervision of 
 details of printing, see Canon Beeching's Preface to 
 the Oxford edition of Milton. 
 
 2 In books I and II of Paradise Lost, 'Heaven' oc- 
 curs over i8o times, and in only some half dozen cases 
 must it have two syllables, as in 2. 772 : "Driv'n headlong 
 from the pitch of Heaven, down." In some fifty cases 
 it seems intended for one syllable, and in the rest may 
 have one or two according to how you read the line. 
 
 'Being' ends a line 14 times in Paradise Lost, and 
 once in Paradise Regained; in the body of the line 
 it occurs six times in Paradise Lost and once in 
 Paradise Regained, but in only one instance must it 
 have two syllables: "My being gav'st me; whom should 
 I obey." P. L. 2, 865. (In Young, 'being' ends a line 
 only four times.) 
 
 'Spirit' ends a line in only five instances (all in 
 Paradise Lost). It must have two syllables only 24 
 
 15 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 them feminine, because they are only possible cases, 
 and are relatively few in number — Mr. Bridges 
 gives only five instances in Milton. 
 
 Unstressed endings are such words as 'Provi- 
 dence/ 'enterprise/ or 'supremacy/ which by end- 
 ing the line with a logically unstressed syllable, 
 soften the line-emphasis. Many trisyllables like 
 'inexpert,' 'understand,' or 'comprehend,' are obvi- 
 ously not unstressed; many others, especially when 
 found in a set of lines clearly ending with emphatic 
 syllables, are troublesomely doubtful. As I have 
 tried to count only words which seemed indubitably 
 unstressed, my figures should represent minimum 
 percentages. (Words like 'sanctuary,' which at the 
 ends of lines are both unstressed and feminine 
 endings, are sometimes found, but are not used 
 often enough to be significant. See p. 31.) 
 
 In Table I, the names in each column are arranged 
 in a descending scale of percentages, and similar per- 
 centages are put side by side in the four columns. 
 This arrangement shows at a glance the extent to 
 which the poets vary or agree, as well as whether a 
 particular poet is moderate or extreme in his use or 
 avoidance of any device; it also makes obvious some 
 comparisons in the use of the various devices. In 
 Milton's case, for the sake of more accurate compari- 
 son, I have given in each column not only his average, 
 but also the figures for Paradise Lost and Paradise Re- 
 gained. 
 
 In Table II, the correspondences between the per- 
 centages of the different columns have made it possible 
 to arrange the poets in three groups: in the first, all 
 
 times in Paradise Lost and three times in Paradise 
 Regained; e.g.: "From thence a Rib, with cordial spirits 
 warm." P. L. 8. 466. Or: "One day forth walk'd alone, 
 the spirit leading." P. R. i. 189. In 64 instances in Para- 
 dise Lost and 11 in Paradise Regained, 'spirit' may 
 have one or two syllables, for it is always followed by 
 an unstressed syllable; e.g.: "Can perish; for the mind 
 and spirit remains." P. L. i. 139. Or: "To which my 
 Spirit aspir'd, victorious deeds." P. R. i. 215. 
 
 16 
 
LINES 
 
 of the poets have under 20% of their lines run-on; in 
 the second, between 20 and 30%; and in the third, 
 above 30%. In each group the order of names is chron- 
 ological. The figures for each poem under Chaucer, 
 Dryden, and Pope show how little the figures were 
 aflFected by different kinds of writing. For Chamber- 
 layne and Keats, however, average figures would con- 
 ceal metrical differences between poems. The average 
 for the total number of lines I have added to show 
 how misleading the use of such figures might be. 
 
 17 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 TABLE 
 
 RUNON 1 
 
 Newcomb, 70.18 
 
 Philips, 
 
 Endstopt 
 
 61.25 
 
 58.16 Young, 
 
 Par. Lost, 
 Shelley, 
 
 Akenside, 56.27 
 Milton, Ave. ,54.41 
 Swinburne, 53.14 Surrey, 
 Somervile, 5196 
 
 Wordsworth,48.94 
 Cowper, 48.55 
 Watts, 47.30 
 
 Shenstone, 45.02 
 Par. Reg'd, 44-78 
 
 Glover, 
 
 Tennyson, 
 
 Mallet, 
 
 Landor, 
 
 Keats, 
 
 Browning, 
 
 Thomson, 
 
 Arnold, 
 Blair, 
 
 Surrey, 
 
 Gascoigne, 
 Young, 
 
 36.60 Blair, 
 
 35.91 Arnold, 
 
 35^2 
 
 35-42 
 
 34-00 
 
 33.34 ^ ^ 
 Landor, 
 Keats, 
 Browning, 
 
 30.00 
 
 Thomson, 
 28.00 Gascoigne, 
 25.30 Tennyson, 
 Shenstone, 
 Cowper, 
 Par. Reg'd, 
 Somervile, 
 20.18 Mallet, 
 
 CoMMASTOPT Unbroken 
 
 Gascoigne, 70.56 
 
 S8.15 
 
 52.41 
 
 Gascoigne, 54.21 
 
 Surrey, 
 
 Glover, 
 Mallet, 
 
 Thomson, 
 
 47.40 Landor, 
 43,69 Keats, 
 
 Tennyson, 
 41.28 Akenside. 
 
 Swinburne, 
 
 51.26 
 
 44.10 
 43-40 
 42.94 
 41.47 
 40.64 
 
 Blair, 
 
 Tennyson, 
 36.76 Arnold, 
 35.07 Browning, 
 
 Watts, 
 
 Swinburne, 
 
 Keats, 
 
 Par. Reg'd, 
 32.60 Wordsworth, 32.06 Thomson, 
 32 00 Landor, 31.98 
 
 31.85 .Akenside, 30.98 
 
 Shenstone, 30.59 
 
 39.94 Shelley, 39-58 
 38.67 Par. Reg'd, 39.32 
 36.93 Wordsworth, 37.22 
 34.QI Cowper, 37.01 
 34.84 Browning, 36.05 
 34.20 Blair, 35.99 
 
 34.00 Glover 35- ^9 
 
 32.37 Milton, Ave. ,32.88 
 32.67 
 
 28.73 Shelley, 
 28.15 Surrey, 
 25.42 Somervile, 
 24.39 Cowper, 
 24.32 Milton, Ave 
 22.85 Young, 
 20.70 Philips, 
 20.69 Par. Lost, 
 
 Wordsworth, 19.00 
 
 Milton, Ave. ,18. 89 
 17.64 Watts, 
 
 Par. Lost, 
 15.50 Glover, 
 
 Philips, 
 
 Shelley, 
 
 Akenside, 
 
 Swinburne 
 
 Newcomb, 
 
 17.86 Newcomb, 
 
 l6.Qr 
 
 moo 
 
 13.04 
 
 12.91 
 
 12.75 
 
 12.66 
 
 11.99 
 
 29.04 Arnold, 
 27.41 Young, 
 
 27.34 Par. Lost, 
 27.13 Watts, 
 
 , 26.70 
 
 26.35 Mallet, 
 25.71 Shenstone, 
 24.73 Somervile, 
 
 17.83 Philips, 
 Newcomb, 
 
 29-38 
 
 2Q.20 
 28^ 
 
 21.31 
 21.29 
 
 20.05 
 
 17.41 
 17.39 
 
 1 For details as to 
 name, pp. 91 f. 
 
 dates, poems, etc., see under each poet's 
 
 18 
 
LINES 
 
 TABLE II 
 
 SOME FIGURES FOR THE HEROIC COUPLET 
 
 Ll. Run. End. Com. Unb. 
 
 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, entire.. ..13680 13.22 43.95 42.83 
 
 Prologue, 858 10.95 =;o.35 39- 7o 64.^0 
 
 Knight's Tale, 2250 13.90 39-8i 40-29 58.8o 
 
 Marlowe, Hero & Leander, I and 11. . . 722 16.06 45-o6 35.88 55.12 
 Browne, Wm. Brit's Pasts., 1, Songs I and 
 
 IV 1590 18.67 42.89 38-44 57-04 
 
 Cowley, Davideis, Book 1 901 16.53 54- 7o 28.77 56-38 
 
 Oldham, Satires upon the Jesuits 1702 8.46 17.55 73-97 40-i8 
 
 Waller, 9 Poems, (all over 100 lines).. 1622 15.77 47.72 36.51 50.55 
 
 Dryden, Pal.&Arcite; Abs.&Achit.,.. 3458 10.72 51.79 37.49 53-o7 
 
 Abs. & Achit, 1031 8.43 56-74 34-83 58.97 
 
 Pal. & Arcite., 2427 11.70 49-^9 38-6i 5i-7o 
 
 Pope, 4 Poems 3258 8.04 53.86 38.10 48-06 
 
 Ess. on Crit., 739 7-57 53-3i 39-i2 57-90 
 
 Windsor Forest, 434 8.52 45.85 45-63 56.91 
 
 Iliad, I, 78I 10.37 52.49 37-14 51-85 
 
 Essay on Man, 1304 6.74 56.89 36.37 37.27 
 
 Young, Universal Passion 2497 6.60 63.03 30.35 43.08 
 
 9 Poets, 21 Poems ...29430 12.12 46.19 41-69 
 
 18858 lines 51-44 
 
 Chapman, Hero & Leander, 111 & IV. .. 769 26.40 35-5o 3810 53i8 
 
 Wither, Elegiacal Epist. to Fidelia. .. 1250 22.72 38.48 3880 60.96 
 
 Cleveland, 5 Poems, (all over 100 lines). .. 674 29.82 47.61 22.57 58.60 
 
 Randolph, 4 Poems,(all over 100 lines). . . 696 27.14 43.53 29.33 50.86 
 
 Sandys Paraphr. on Job, l-XVI,...ca 1020 20.29 46.07 33.64 50.00 
 
 Marmion , LegendofCupidandPsyche 2270 26.56 33.26 40.18 47.57 
 
 Godolphin. Passion of Dido for Aeneas.. 454 27.53 3^-54 33 93 50.22 
 
 Wordsworth, Et. Vlk, Descr. Sk's. Ep. to Bean.... 1280 27.65 40-85 31- ?o 59-6o 
 
 8 Poets, 17 Poems 8413 25,73 39-23 35 04 57-30 
 
 Bosworth, Arcadius and Sepha 2511 37-19 27.77 35-54 43-21 
 
 Chalkhill, Thealma and Clearchus 3150 42.60 23.90 33.41 33.17 
 
 Chamberlayne, Pharonnida, 1 & V =^363 69.18 9.63 21.19 29.07 
 
 England's Jubilee 298 54.70 23.14 22.16 45.30 
 
 Keats, Endvmion 3905 47-ii 28.04 24.85 34.57 
 
 Lamia 708 32.47 31.36 36.17 38.13 
 
 Shelley. Epipsychidion 604 39.90 28.31 31.79 44-86 
 
 Browning, Sordello, I, II, III 3036 59-68 16.04 24.28 28.52 
 
 6 Poets 8 Poems 19575 52-o8 20.42 27.50 33-62 
 
 23Poets 46 Poems 574^8 27.74 36-56 35-70 
 
 46846 lines 45.04 
 
 19 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 The tables of run-on, endstopt, commastopt, and 
 unbroken lines show that the percentages of run-on 
 lines tend toward the top of the column, of end- 
 stopt lines toward the foot, and of both commastopt 
 and unbroken lines away from either extreme. It 
 will be noticed, however, that only three percentages 
 go above 60. It was to be expected that most of 
 these poets should have many run-on and few end- 
 stopt lines, but it may seem surprising that so few 
 have more run-on or fewer endstopt than Milton. 
 The only two who exceeded Paradise Lost were 
 among the earliest of Milton's acknowledged imita- 
 tors, and of those two, Newcomb is all but unknown, 
 and Philips is usually quoted as a mere burlesquer 
 of an outworn fashion. Were these two men imi- 
 tating Milton in a mere superficial device of tech- 
 nique, or were they trying a device which only a 
 supreme artist could use successfully? Even Swin- 
 burne and Shelley — those past masters in effects of 
 rapidity — fall slightly below Paradise Lost. Tenny- 
 son, Keats, and Browning, whose blank verse is 
 highly praised, fall far below Milton in their use 
 of run-on lines. In Milton's group are nine men 
 with, in round numbers, between 45 and 55% of 
 run-on lines ; but there are also nine men in a group 
 ranging from 25 to 35%. Apparently then, the pro- 
 portion of run-on lines is a less certain measure of 
 the movement of blank verse than we have been in 
 the habit of thinking; it may be a measure of ease 
 and flexibility, but even then, the proportion neces- 
 sary is less than one might think. That run-on lines 
 are not essential to give ease and fluidity to five-beat 
 iambic verse is proved by the fact that in the Canter- 
 bury Tales the percentage of run-on lines is only 
 13.22. 
 
 That Swinburne and Shelley should use fewer 
 endstopt lines than Miiton did in Paradise Lost is 
 
 20 
 
LINES 
 
 not surprising, but it is surely significant either of 
 a change of theory or a practical difficulty in com- 
 position, or of both of these things, that besides 
 these two only Newcomb, Akenside, Philips, Glover, 
 and Watts should be in this group. Wordsworth, 
 to be sure, is near Milton, but Tennyson, Browning, 
 and Keats use many more endstopt lines. Brown- 
 ing never approaches the percentages of Paradise 
 Lost, and Tennyson does so only in Timbuctoo. It 
 should be observed that except at the extreme ends, 
 the proportions of run-on and endstopt lines bear 
 no clear relation to each other, and that only eight 
 of the twenty-three men can be called extremists 
 in both respects. 
 
 The table of commastopt lines is in general a 
 corollary of the tables of run-on and endstopt lines, 
 but it will be observed that the poets are practically 
 all massed between 25 and 40%. That is to say, 
 from one-fourth to more than one-third of the lines 
 are neutral in character (according to the reader's 
 point of view, either mildly endstopt, or not mark- 
 edly run-on). Newcomb and Young have fewest, 
 Young because of excess of endstopt, Newcomb of 
 run-on lines. Gascoigne also has many because he 
 has so few run-on. In both Newcomb and Gas- 
 coigne the commastopt lines have to me usually the 
 force of endstopt lines, — in Newcomb because of his 
 excess of run-on lines, in Gascoigne because of an 
 equal excess of unbroken lines. Only Keats, Lan- 
 dor, and Browning have an almost equal balance of 
 run-on, endstopt, and commastopt lines; in Arnold, 
 the proportions vary a little more; but Milton is 
 extreme in all three respects. Keats, Browning, and 
 Tennyson, who have rather more run-on than end- 
 stopt lines, have a relatively large per cent of comma- 
 stopt. Inasmuch as these lines are neutral — not 
 pronounced in either directioo — this fact, along with 
 
 21 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 their fondness for unbroken lines (see p. 24) may- 
 indicate that these 19th century poets had a some- 
 what subtler ear for the delicacies of line-rhythm 
 than the others. 
 
 The fact that only Gascoigne and Surrey, the 
 earliest and least expert of our poets, have more 
 than half their lines unbroken, seems at first glance 
 to bear out the impression that the pause within 
 the line is an important feature of good blank 
 verse. A scrutiny of the list shows, however, that 
 mere quantity of internal pauses is not important, 
 for Newcomb, Philips, Somervile, Shenstone, Mallet, 
 and Watts have fewest unbroken lines, and conse- 
 quently most lines with internal pause. On the 
 other hand, all of the 19th century poets except 
 Arnold have from 36 to 44% of unbroken lines and 
 Milton has 10% more in Paradise Regained than 
 he has in Paradise Lost. 
 
 A comparison of blank verse with the heroic 
 couplet will serve to mark a few sharp differences 
 in practice, and should help to explain one or two 
 things about blank verse. The 23 writers of couplets 
 represented in the table fall into three groups ; those 
 who use under 20% of run-on lines, those who use 
 between 20 and 30%, and those who use over 30%. 
 In the first group. Pope, as might be expected, has 
 very few run-on lines, but the differences in effect 
 between the couplets of Pope, Dryden, and Chaucer, 
 are obviously not to be explained by these details of 
 versification. Except for Oldham, the men in this 
 first group have over 40% of their lines endstopt; 
 indeed, aside from Oldham, the only poets in the 
 table who have under 30% of endstopt lines are the 
 six in the last group. In the matter of run-on and 
 endstopt lines, then, the practice of the couplet is 
 exactly the reverse of that of blank verse. 
 
 Only seven writers of blank verse have more than 
 
 22 
 
LINES 
 
 40% of their lines unbroken ; only Chalkhill, Cham- 
 berlayne, Keats, and Browning have so small a pro- 
 portion of their couplet lines unbroken, so that in 
 this respect, too, the couplet and blank verse have 
 exactly opposite tendencies. As compared with the 
 heroic couplet, unbroken lines in blank verse are 
 fewer, partly because their function is served by run- 
 on lines, for roughly speaking, a decrease in the 
 pauses at the end of the line brings an increase 
 within the Hne; partly also, as is shown especially 
 by those users of the couplet who go to excess in 
 run-on lines, because the rhyme, even when it serves 
 rather as a decoration than as an aid to rhetorical 
 emphasis, marks the line-rhythm strongly. When 
 rhyme is discarded, the line-rhythm is more or less 
 subordinated to the sense-rhythms which overlay 
 it. The influence of the rhyme shows clearly both 
 in the higher proportions of unbroken lines in the 
 couplet, and in the much more constant relations 
 between run-on and endstopt lines than in blank 
 verse. 
 
 When we find blank verse like Surrey's, in which 
 the proportions of run-on, endstopt, and unbroken 
 lines are not far from those of Waller's couplets, 
 we can say at once that these details are the marks 
 of the pioneer who has not learned flexibility.^ In 
 the blank verse of Newcomb and Milton we find, 
 as we expect, many run-on and few unbroken lines. 
 But Shelley, Akenside, and Swinburne, who have 
 as many run-on lines as Milton's average, and fewer 
 endstopt lines than Paradise Lost, have distinctly 
 
 1 Gascoigne, it will be remembered, says in the 13th 
 Par. of his "Notes of Instruction," that "There are 
 also certayn pauses or restes in a verse, which may be 
 called Ceasures, whereof I would be lothe to stande long, 
 since it is at the discretion of the writer. . , ." His 
 70% of lines without internal punctuation may indicate, 
 therefore, that he used his 'discretion.' 
 
 23 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 more unbroken lines than Milton ; and Young, whose 
 blank verse has couplet proportions of run-on and 
 endstopt, has as few unbroken lines as Paradise Lost. 
 Perhaps we may charge a part of these differences 
 to varying habits of punctuation, but certainly not 
 a significant proportion, for the i8th century men 
 show the greatest diversity in their use of both 
 run-on and unbroken lines. The conventional com- 
 ment on Young — that he merely reflected the coup- 
 let habit of his day — is discredited by his small use 
 of unbroken lines in his blank verse as compared 
 with his couplets ; in his case, we can fall back upon 
 his rhetoric, his habit of pithy expression. 
 
 It should be fairly clear, it seems to me, that 
 the proportion of unbroken lines in blank verse is 
 not, as in the case of commastopt lines, so much a 
 corollary of run-on and endstopt lines as it is a 
 measure or indication of sensitiveness to line-rhythm. 
 Consequently, a relatively high percentage of un- 
 broken lines in a poet like Landor, or in the 19th 
 century men, who have a third or more of their 
 lines run-on, indicates more sensitiveness to, or 
 perhaps, emphasis upon line-rhythm than the earlier 
 men showed. I find some support for this conjec- 
 ture in the fact that Keats has more run-on and 
 fewer unbroken lines in the couplets of Endymion 
 than in the blank verse of Hyperion; and that in 
 Lamia, which has almost as many run-on lines as 
 Hyperion, he has distinctly fewer unbroken lines. 
 Browning, also, with nearly twice as many run-on 
 lines in his couplets as in his blank verse, has nearly 
 10% fewer unbroken lines in his couplets. These 
 two poets seem to have felt in their blank verse the 
 need of some compensation for the rhyme of their 
 couplets, even though in the couplets they went to 
 great lengths to subordinate the rhyme. In the cases 
 of Shelley and Wordsworth, however, a comparison 
 
 24 
 
NOTE ON PARAGRAPHS 
 
 of their blank verse with their couplets indicates that 
 they found that run-on lines in blank verse took the 
 place of unbroken lines in their couplets, although 
 the differences are perhaps not great enough to be 
 significant. 
 
 Note on Paragraphs. 
 
 One minor feature of non-dramatic blank verse, 
 partly conventional, partly an indication of the ex- 
 tent to which the various poets have observed or 
 tried to conceal the line-unit, is the practice of be- 
 ginning a paragraph in the middle of a line. Twelve 
 of the poets, in the poems cited, never begin a 
 paragraph within a line. Surrey and Gascoigne do 
 not; Milton in one instance (5a w. ^^., 1563) di- 
 vides a line among three speakers. Of the i8th cen- 
 tury men. Mallet has six instances, Young four ( i in 
 1st Bk., 3 in 9th) ; Landor has none in Gebir, though 
 in the series called Hellenics, nearly half his para- 
 graphs begin within the Hne. Of the 19th century 
 poets, Keats, Arnold, and Swinburne have none/ 
 Shelley begins seven of the 25 paragraphs of Alastor 
 in the middle of a line. In Wordsworth's Prelude, 
 the percentage of such paragraphs is 14.05 ; in the 
 Excursion it rises to 25.42. Tennyson's practice 
 varies: in St. Simeon the proportion is 31.25, in the 
 Lover's Tale and the Princess, a little over 28; in 
 the Idylls 9.17, and in Arden only 5.55. Browning 
 has but two cases in the 45 paragraphs of Pauline, 
 
 1 Swinburne's avoidance in his semi-lyric, Greek 
 tragedies of paragraphs which begin within the line 
 is in sharp contrast with his practice in Mary Stuart. 
 Of the 444 speeches in that play, 187 begin with the 8th 
 syllable of the line, 15 with the 9th, and 38 with the 
 last syllable, so that more than half of his speeches 
 begin not merely within the line, but with noticeable 
 abruptness and emphasis toward the extreme end of 
 the line. 
 
 25 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 few or none in most of his shorter poems, 27.43% 
 in the first six books of the Ring and the Book, and 
 many in Balaustion, Prince HohenstielSchwangau, 
 the Inn Album, and Ferishtah. 
 
 Milton's habit of beginning and ending his para- 
 Ixgi'aphs always with a full line may have been one 
 way of making a distinction between epic and drama- 
 tic blank verse ; even so, it is one of the items which 
 go to show that Milton frankly recognized that he 
 was writing in a regularly metrical verse-form, and 
 avoided practically all the devices which might tend 
 to conceal its character. The 19th century men, 
 on the contrary, instead of exploiting the powers of 
 blank verse as an instrument, seem inclined to ex- 
 periment with a view to finding out how nearly 
 they can reduce it to the role of a mere accompani- 
 ment. The differences in paragraph ending between 
 the Princess and the Idylls may indicate that Tenny- 
 son felt the difference between easy, only half- 
 formal narrative and the full flow of epic. Arnold's 
 avoidance of paragraphs beginning within the line 
 is in keeping with the other metrical formalisms of 
 Sohrab and RusUim, and like Swinburne's, prob- 
 ably is due to Greek models. It does not seem to 
 me sufficient to say of 19th century non-dramatic 
 blank verse merely that it shows the influence of 
 dramatic conventions and licenses, for while that 
 may be manifestly true of the greater part of Brown- 
 ing's work, because in it the clearly dramatic cast of 
 the poetry would naturally profit by whatever modi- 
 fications of blank verse the drama had found effec- 
 tive (but see comments on Browning, p. 121), it 
 does not adequately explain Wordsworth's use, or 
 the variations in Tennyson's practice. 
 
 26 
 

 ENDINGS 
 
 
 
 TABLE III 
 
 
 FEMININE AND UNSTRESSED ENDINGS 
 
 
 Fem. 
 
 
 Uns. 
 
 Akenside, 
 Glover, 
 Mallet, 
 Shenstone, 
 
 none 
 none 
 none 
 none 
 
 Akenside 
 
 none 
 
 Newcomb, 
 Thomson, 
 Philips, 
 
 I case? 
 I case 
 I case 
 
 
 
 Landor, 
 Arnold, 
 
 2 cases 
 2 cases 
 
 Glover, 
 Newcomb, 
 
 2 cases? 
 2 cases? 
 
 Cowper, 
 Swinburne, 
 
 3 cases 
 3 cases 
 
 
 
 Somervile, 
 
 Surrey, 
 
 Gascoigne, 
 
 0.14% 
 
 0-54 
 
 0-93 
 
 Cowper, 
 Mallet, 
 
 0.39% 
 
 0.62 
 
 Young, 
 Wordsworth, 
 Par. Lost, 
 
 1. 10 
 
 1-34 
 
 Thomson, 
 
 Arnold, 
 
 Blair, 
 
 1.24 
 
 1.33 
 1.95 
 
 Keats, 
 Shelley, 
 Browning, 
 Tennyson, 
 Milton, Ave., 
 
 2.04 
 2.08 
 2.15 
 
 2.33 
 
 2.8l 
 
 Watts, 
 
 Shenstone, 
 
 Philips, 
 
 2.13 
 2.21 
 2.71 
 
 Par. Reg'd, 
 
 372 
 
 Swinburne, 
 Young, 
 Par. Lost, 
 Landor, 
 
 3.06 
 3-64 
 3.8- 
 
 3-92 • 
 
 Watts, 
 
 449 
 
 Surrey, 
 Milton, Ave., 
 
 4.27 
 . 4.37 
 
 
 
 Wordsworth, 
 Par. Reg'd, 
 Tennyson, 
 
 5.65 
 5.88 
 
 
 
 Keats, 
 
 8.50 
 
 
 
 Gascoigne, 
 Browning, 
 Shelley, 
 
 9.07 
 
 9.11 
 
 10.27 
 
 Blair, 
 
 17.47 
 
 27 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Next to run-on lines, feminine endings are com- 
 monly supposed to be the favorite device for sub- 
 ordinating or softening line-emphasis. In one of 
 his latest volumes Professor Saintsbury says of the 
 extra syllable : "At the end it is often beautiful ; and, 
 whether beauty or not, is almost inevitable now 
 and then, and most useful constantly. Further, it is 
 a most powerful and important instrument of varia- 
 tion — a natural link or remedy against line-isola- 
 tion. . . ." ("Hist, of Eng. Pros." 2. 54.) Out- 
 side of dramatic verse, however, feminine endings 
 are used only sparingly. The i8th century poets 
 had definite objections to them, for the reason which 
 Dr. Johnson urged in the 88th number of the 
 Rambler — "since the narrow limits of our language 
 allows no other distinction of epic and dramatic 
 measures." Akenside, Glover, Shenstone, and Mal- 
 let, admit none at all; Newcomb has one doubtful 
 case in over 12,000 lines ;^ Thomson has one case,^ 
 and Philips one.^ Landor has two doubtful cases,* 
 and Cowper^ and Arnold*' two each. Swinburne 
 has three cases; Somervile only five. Surrey and 
 Gascoigne have eleven each, and Young has only a 
 small fraction over one per cent. Wordsworth, with 
 i-35%» has almost the same proportion as Milton in 
 Paradise Lost. The 19th century men, Keats, Shel- 
 ley, Tennyson, and Browning, have between two 
 and two and one-third per cent, each, and Milton's 
 three poems average 2.81. Watts, therefore, with 
 4.49%, and Blair, with 17.47, are extreme as com- 
 pared with the others, but even Blair comes only to 
 
 1 — ever, in 8.134; in 25 other instances of — ever at 
 the end of a line, it is printed — e'er. 
 2 — feature, Autumn, 269. 
 3 — prowess, Blenheim, 96. 
 *— iron, Bk. II, —heron, Bk. VII. 
 5 — Apollo, — inextinguishable, both in Iliad I. 
 * — estuaries, — rivers. 
 
 28 
 
ENDINGS 
 
 about the average of Shakspere's middle period, 
 and does not use more than half as many as Shak- 
 spere does in the Winter's Tale or the Tempest. In 
 the cases of practically all the poets in our list who 
 wrote plays as well as non-dramatic verse, the num- 
 ber of feminine endings in the plays is many fold 
 that in the other poems. The quantity in the drama- 
 tic verse is usually, I should say, so great as to have 
 been definitely sought for. Those poets who entirely 
 avoid feminine endings in their non-dramatic verse 
 must have gone to some trouble. But does the 
 presence of one or two per cent mean avoidance, or 
 are we to take that as a normal proportion when the 
 device in question is neither sought nor avoided? 
 The details in Milton's case indicate that he was in- 
 clined to avoid them in Paradise Lost. Browning, 
 who used them freely at first, later entirely avoided 
 them (see details under Browning, p. 121). A nor- 
 mal proportion of feminine endings would be, I take 
 it, the percentage of lines in which the poet would 
 find it easier to leave the extra syllable than to avoid 
 it. Such a proportion ( for which there is doubtless 
 some mathematical law of probabilities) would be 
 always modified in the individual poet both by his 
 habits of composition and by his theories as to the 
 beauty or advisability of feminine endings. My" own 
 conjecture is that Milton was a little more inclined 
 to avoid them than the 19th century men were, who 
 in this, as in some other matters, went a little farther 
 than Milton in subordinating the verse-form. 
 
 The 19th century poets show this tendency in 
 the quality of their extra syllables even more clearly 
 than they do in their number. In Paradise Lost, 
 Milton uses in his feminine endings some 80 words 
 and 20 endings, which in every case are relatively 
 light syllables, such as (to give those most frequent- 
 ly used) -ing (more often than any three others), 
 
 29 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 -en, -est, -er, -ed, -il, -it. In contrast with 
 Milton's practice, in the Tempest, I. ii, Shakspere, 
 although he uses for the most part syllables that are 
 light, has also such words as royalty, deafness, 
 librsiTy, royalties, confederates, tribute, midnight, 
 darkness, business, fortunes, dulness, topmast, Nep- 
 tune, torment, subject, inland, conscience and com- 
 fort. Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning as a 
 rule use light syllables, but Wordsworth uses such 
 words as moments, judgment, sadness, and timbrel; 
 Tennyson such words as ^/o.y^om evasion, eleventh ; 
 and Browning such words as a;;ni^cment, conjunc- 
 ture, England (cf. Shakspere's use in Rich. II and 
 Hen. V), falsehood, forward, godsend, household, 
 loathsome, repugnance, sunrise, tincture, threshold, 
 weakness, and zvitness. Cases like these seem to me 
 deliberate 'licenses,' borrowed from the dramatists, 
 without the dramatist's justification, and therefore 
 obtrusive out of all proportion to their actual num- 
 ber, for one such case would attract more attention 
 from readers than twenty where the extra syllable 
 was light. 
 
 A less obtrusive way of softening line-rhythm 
 than the use of feminine endings consists in end- 
 ing the line with a word of three or more syllables, 
 with the normal word accent on the antepenult — 
 words such as 'ministers,' 'questionings,' 'alchemist.' 
 This use of words is equivalent to making (or does 
 make) the last foot of the line unstressed. (See Dr. 
 Johnson's comment, p. 86.) In Milton, 4.37% of 
 the lines have these unstressed endings; the i8th 
 century poets objected to them (theoretically, at 
 least) as much as to feminine endings, and Akenside, 
 Glover, and Newcomb avoid them entirely ;^ Cowper 
 and Mallet have very few ; Thomson, Somervile, and 
 
 1 Glover and Newcomb have each two doubtful cases. 
 
 30 
 
ENDINGS 
 
 Blair between one and two per cent; Watts, Shen- 
 stone, and Philips, under three per cent. Arnold for 
 the most part avoids them, but the other 19th cen- 
 tury men use them more freely than Milton, — Keats 
 and Shelley in particular/ 
 
 Words like 'sanctuary, 'testimony,' 'secretary,' 
 which are both unstressed and feminine, occur occa- 
 sionally, but so rarely that they are obviously acci- 
 dental, and merely unavoided — clearly not sought 
 for.^ In Tennyson, for instance, the feminine and 
 unstressed endings together amount to less than 8% 
 and of this number only about one-fifteenth are both 
 feminine and unstressed;^ in Wordsworth's Pre- 
 lude, the feminine and unstressed are only one-sev- 
 enty-first of the total 8.75% ; Keats has no endings 
 which are both ; Shelley has only two.* 
 
 A comparison of the relative proportions of femi- 
 nine and unstressed endings shows that Watts and 
 Blair alone have a marked excess of feminine end- 
 ings, and that Surrey and Gascoigne in the i6th 
 century, Young in the i8th, and all of the 19th cen- 
 tury men but Arnold, have a marked excess of un- 
 stressed endings. 
 
 1 Surrey stands nearest to Milton, and Gascoigne uses 
 more than twice as many; the reason in their case is 
 partly that secondary stresses had then hardly become 
 so light as later (compare the common Elizabethan 
 scansion of *o-ce-an,' *promo-ti-on,' etc.), partly that 
 the versification of these pioneers was inelastic. I do 
 not know why Gascoigne should have twice as many 
 as Surrey. 
 
 2 The only possible exception to this statement that 
 I have come upon is Swinburne; in Mary Stuart, 22 
 out of 68 feminine endings are words like 'secretary.' 
 Although I have no figures for other plays, I think that 
 Mary Stuart is exceptional in this respect even in 
 dramatic verse. 
 
 3 Only 3 cases in the Lover's Tale, and 10 in Arden. 
 
 * In the 471 lines of the Tempest, I, ii, Shakspere has 
 only 3. 
 
 31 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Theoretically, the proportions in which feminine 
 and unstressed endings are distributed among the 
 run-on, endstopt, and commastopt lines should be 
 important. In Keat's Hyperion, where run-on, end- 
 stopt, and commastopt lines are about equally dis- 
 tributed, two-thirds of the feminine endings are 
 in endstopt lines, more than onei-fourth in comma- 
 stopt, and only about one-twentieth in run-on lines. 
 Unstressed endings are a trifle fewer in run-on lines 
 than elsewhere. In Shelley's Alastor, although run- 
 on lines are nearly five times as numerous as end- 
 stopt, only a little over one-third of the feminine 
 endings are in run-on lines — hardly so marked an 
 avoidance as Keats's, but still significant. Unstressed 
 endings are distributed in about the same propor- 
 tions as the run-on, endstopt, and commastopt lines. 
 In Tennyson's Lover s Tale, one-half the feminine 
 endings come in the two-fifths of the lines which 
 are run-on, with fewest in the endstopt. Unstressed 
 endings, show a marked preference for endstopt 
 lines, and some avoidance of run-on lines. In Enoch 
 Arden, three-tenths of the lines are run-on, and con- 
 tain not quite two-tenths of the feminine endings. 
 Unstressed endings show some avoidance of end- 
 stopt lines, with corresponding frequency in comma- 
 stopt lines. In Blair's Grave, the one poem in our 
 list in which the feminine endings are so numerous 
 as to be obviously sought for, the 17.47% are dis- 
 tributed almost exactly as the run-on, endstopt, and 
 commastopt lines are, with a very slight excess in 
 endstopt lines, and fewer in commastopt. In the 471 
 lines of blank verse in the Tempest, I. ii, there are 
 173 feminine endings — 36.73%. These are distrib- 
 uted almost exactly as the run-on, endstopt, and 
 commastopt lines are, with a slight excess in run-on, 
 taken from the endstopt. 
 
 Of these five poets, then, Blair and Shakspere, 
 
 32 
 
NOTE ON RHYME 
 
 who use feminine endings to a marked degree, 
 distribute them impartially ; Tennyson wavers a little, 
 for he seems to have a slight preference for feminine 
 endings in run-on lines in the Lover's Tale, and a 
 slight avoidance of them in Arden. Shelley pretty 
 clearly, and Keats very obviously, avoids them in 
 run-on lines. One would expect fewer feminine 
 endings in run-on lines than elsewhere, for theo- 
 retically at least they would disturb the s^ying of 
 the rhythm more than if they came in endstopt lines, 
 since, in that case, the rhetorical pause would give 
 the reader a chance to take a fresh start in his 
 rhythm. 
 
 Evidence is lacking, so far as I can find, to show 
 conscious use of any two devices in combination, or 
 any avoidance of such use. Poets who have wished 
 to break down or subordinate line-rhythm in blank 
 verse have usually done so chiefly by the use of only 
 one device. Milton, for example, has some 55% of 
 run-on lines, but hardly enough feminine endings 
 to have any marked eflfect. Blair, again, who has 
 only 25% of run-on lines, has 1747% of feminine 
 endings — less than half as many run-on lines as 
 Milton, and more than six times as many feminine 
 endings (or nearly thirteen times as many as in 
 Paradise Lost). 
 
 Note on Rhyme. 
 
 This "rimles verse," as Gascoigne called it, offers 
 opportunities both for rhetorical repetition of a word 
 or phrase and for occasional rhymes. Blair's Grave, 
 which closes with a couplet, is the only one of the 
 poems here studied which has the 'rhyme-tag' fami- 
 liar to readers of Shakspere. About Milton, Mr. 
 Bridges has this rather vague sentence : "Rhyme oc- 
 curs in Paradise Lost (see I. 146. 8. 51 ; II. 220. i ; 
 IV. 24-7), but only as a natural richness among the 
 
 33 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 varieties of speech; and it would seem that it can- 
 not be forbidden in a long poem but by the scrupu- 
 losity which betrays art." ('^Milton's Prosody," 87.) 
 In Paradise Lost^ I have noted some seventeen in- 
 stances of rhyme, such as — destroy, — joy, in 
 9. 477-8. In seventeen other cases, the same word 
 or phrase is repeated, as in 4. 20-21 : 
 
 "for within him Hell," 
 He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell," 
 
 or in 12. 202-3 : 
 
 "Before them in a Cloud, and Pillar of Fire, 
 By day a Cloaid, by night a Pillar of Fire." 
 
 These are surely mere rhetorical repetitions, of a 
 kind which one might expect to find much more 
 often. There are also about a dozen places in the 
 poem where the same word or phrase is repeated, 
 not in the next line, but in the second, as in 2. 787. 9 : 
 
 "I fled, and cry'd out Death; 
 Hell trembl'd at the hideous Name, and sigh'd 
 From all her Caves, and back resounded Death." 
 
 In another dozen instances, Milton repeats a word 
 in different form : e.g. — eyes, — eye, in 6. 847-8 ; 
 — breathed, — breathe, in 9. 193-4; — invoke, — in- 
 vokt, in II. 586-7; or — deal, — dealt, in 12. 483-4. 
 
 Some of these cases, both of rhyme and of repeti- 
 tion, link sentences, as in 4. 26-7 : 
 
 "Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings^ miist ensue. 
 Sometimes toward Eden which now in his view 
 Lay pleasant." 
 
 or in 1 1.593-4: 
 
 "The bent of nature; which he thus expressed. 
 True opener of mine eyes, prime Angel blest." 
 
 Compare these passages with two in Book VII : 
 
 1 In the number and character of its rhymes and 
 repetitions. Paradise Regained is like Paradise Lost, with 
 no change or 'relaxation' of practice. 
 
 34 
 
NOTE ON RHYME 
 
 "Be gather d now ye Waters under Heav'n 
 Into one place, and let dry land appeer. 
 Immediately the mountains huge appeer 
 Emergent." (283-6) 
 
 "By tincture or reflection they augment 
 Their small peculiar, though from human sight 
 So far remote, with diminution seen. 
 First in his East the glorious Lamp was seen, 
 Regent of day." (367-71) 
 
 In both of these last passages, the repetition seems 
 pretty clearly accidental, for in neither case does it\ 
 contribute to the eflfectiveness of the passage, and 
 it would not have been hard to avoid, since 'were 
 seen' would serve in place of the second 'appeer,' 
 and 'appear'd' in place of 'was seen.' One won- 
 ders if such instances do not indicate pauses in Mil- 
 ton's work of composition; as if the repeated word 
 or syllable were an echo of the passage read to him 
 before he took up his task for the day.^ 
 
 1 In opposition to this view, a friend observes: "Both 
 of these seem to me to promote concatenation of 
 thought. In the latter case it almost has the function 
 of 'videlicet.' The fact that the echo could easily have 
 been avoided shows that it was not accidental (in 
 the work of so careful a poet). Milton loved echoes — 
 using them, I believe, for the purpose of superadding 
 harmony to melody by the overtones accompanying 
 the echoes. My favorite examples of this are P. L. 2. 
 559-60, and 641-56." The first passage runs: 
 
 and reasoned high 
 Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate, 
 Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute. 
 
 The second is the one which begins: 
 Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet. 
 
 In these two passages, as in many others in Milton, 
 both the beauty of the echo and the conscious use of 
 it are undeniable; but it is to be observed that even 
 in the second passage ("Sweet is the breath of morn") 
 where there is a surprising amount of skilful repetition 
 of words and phrases, Milton has only three instances 
 of repetition at the ends of lines (though in no instance 
 
 35 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 The other poets, so far as I have observed, have 
 even fewer rhymes than Milton, and in those they 
 have, the first rhyme-syllable is likely to be un- 
 stressed, like this, from the beginning of Tennyson's 
 Lover's Tale: 
 
 "Filling with purple gloom the vacancies 
 Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas 
 Hung in mid-heaven," 
 
 or this from Shelley's Alastor, 159-60: 
 
 "And lofty hopes of divine liberty, 
 Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy." 
 
 Keats has four instances of repetition, Shelley two, 
 Tennyson six in Arden, and ten in the Lover's Tale. 
 In contradiction to Mr. Bridges, Professor 
 Saintsbury says of rhyme that *'in English non- 
 dramatic blank verse it is nearly fatal; but would 
 only be found out in practice." ("Hist, of Eng. 
 Prosody," 2. 227 n.) Mr. Bridges seems to imply 
 that a careful poet would leave in a few rhymes, in 
 order not to seem too careful ; Professor Saintsbury 
 seems to imply that a novice might introduce occa- 
 sional rhymes deliberately, thinking them an added 
 grace to his verse. I do not think that either critic 
 states the case precisely enough. Rhetorical repeti- 
 tion, even when emphasized by putting the repeated 
 words at the ends of lines, seems as legitimate and 
 effective in verse as in prose; but I have not come 
 
 in consecutive lines) : 'sweet' ends lines 641 and 645 ; 
 'sun' ends 642 and 651 ; 'night' and 'moon' end respec- 
 tively lines 647-8 and 655-6. That is to say: the effec- 
 tiveness of the passage does not depend upon any 
 rhyme, and the repetition of whole phrases, and even 
 of whole lines, lessens the effect which the repetition 
 at the ends of the lines usually has. If the reader will 
 compare these passages with some of Arnold's, in 
 which the repetition is definitely conscious, it will be 
 clear, I think, that Milton does not avail himself of 
 rhyme or repetition at the end of the line to enforce 
 his rhetorical devices. (See p. 119.) 
 
 36 
 
NOTE ON RHYME 
 
 upon a single instance in these poets (aside from 
 Blair's concluding couplet) where the rhyme did not 
 seem to me either accidental or careless — never a 
 definite, consciously permitted device of the poet. 
 
 37 
 
11. CiESURAS 
 
 Thus far we have been discussing details of blank 
 verse which affect chiefly the lines as units or as 
 parts of larger groups. Caesuras come next in order 
 because they serve a double function in blank verse : 
 they contribute, especially in connection with run- 
 on lines, to modify the line-rhythm, and within the 
 line itself they serve to emphasize the various ca- 
 dences and modulations. 
 
 /^ A caesura is a break within the line, and in blank 
 j verse always coincides with the end of a syntactical 
 I group or phrase. I have taken account only of those 
 marked by punctuation — and of all those so marked. 
 Ordinarily, it is true, one of two or more pauses 
 within the line is the principal one; often, too, this 
 principal one is so clearly dominant that the others 
 may be almost or entirely neglected. Ordinarily, 
 too, lines which have no internal punctuation demand 
 or may have a caesura. But it is plainly wrong to 
 assume either that every line has a caesura (although 
 the poet may make it so delicate that only a micro- 
 phone can detect it) , or that every line has only one 
 caesura of which we need to take account. Some 
 years ago I undertook to record the caesuras in some 
 2,750 lines of the Idylls, and although I believed in 
 my innocence that a caesura was as essential to the 
 line as the end of the line itself, I came upon twenty- 
 five or thirty lines in which I could not find a 
 caesura. In confining myself to caesuras which the 
 poet (or sometimes his printer) has marked by 
 punctuation, I do not assume either that caesuras 
 so marked are invariably emphatic, or that lines 
 
 38 
 

 C^SURAS 
 
 without internal punctuation have no caesuras. I 
 know that many caesuras which are marked by punc- 
 tuation are no more emphatic than many which are 
 not marked, but I confess myself unable to sift out 
 these instances. With that admission, that there are 
 unquestionable degrees of delicacy of break of 
 which I attempt no record, I believe that I have 
 eliminated from my figures my own personal equa- 
 tion, and that in keeping a record of unbroken lines 
 I have furnished any dissatisfied reader of this essay 
 with the means of estimating the precise amount of 
 my delinquency. I may add, however, that if ex- 
 amining four or five thousand lines, say, of a ten- 
 thousand line poem gives a fairly accurate idea of 
 a poet's metrical peculiarities (and I have tested that 
 time and again), then I have given a fairly accurate 
 notion of Milton's use of caesuras in Paradise Lost 
 by reporting the 8,50o_caesuras which he has marked 
 by punctuation. "Such caesuras as there are in his 
 unbroken lines — a scant thirty per cent of the whole 
 — are practically certain to be hke the others in 
 their distribution; at least I have found that my 
 own attempts to record caesuras in unbroken lines do 
 not vary materially from the proportions in lines 
 where the caesuras are marked by punctuation. 
 Moreover, in reporting unbroken lines I have indi- 
 cated what would not be distinguishable otherwise, 
 namely, the proportion of cases in which Milton, 
 for example, has made his caesural pauses noticeably 
 delicate in their effect, just as counting "strong 
 pauses" furnished a record of caesuras- which are 
 exceptionally emphatic. 
 
 Strong pauses are those breaks in the line indi- 
 cated hke endstopt lines by punctuation other than 
 a comma. Their importance, as will appear later, 
 depends rather upon their distribution than upon 
 their frequency. 
 
 39 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 If one caesura in a line serves to mark the larger 
 cadences, two or more should tend to subordinate 
 or disguise the line-rhythm. Of Milton's caesuras 
 Mr. Bridges writes ("Milton's Prosody," 24) : 
 "There are sometimes two or more breaks to a line : 
 the frequence of these with the severity of the 
 breaks, is a distinction of Milton's verse." For the 
 'severity' of the breaks, see page 56; the 'fre- 
 quence' I have tested for some of the poets, 
 with these results : 
 
 TABLE IV 
 
 Per cent of lines with 
 
 2caes. 3ormore. Total. 
 
 Young: Night Thoughts, 1-3, 5-7, 17.98 4.82 22.80 
 
 Arnold: Sohrab and Rustum 17.40 1.99 19.39 
 
 Tennyson: 7 of the Idylls 14.54 3.71 18.25 
 
 Browning: Pauline, Bp. Bloug., R. 
 
 & B., 1-2 13.42 2.05 15.47 
 
 Landor: Gebir 12.18 3.11 15.29 
 
 Wordsworth: Prelude, 1-5, Excur- 
 sion, 3-4 11.46 2.31 13.77 
 
 Keats: Hyperion 11.32 2.15 13.47 
 
 Blair: The Grave 11.60 1.69 13.29 
 
 Glover : Leonidas 11.00 1.44 12.44 
 
 Milton: Paradise Lost, 1-2, 4-5, 7-8 9.19 1.84 11.03 
 Swinburne: Atalanta and Erech- 
 
 theus 9.81 1.31 1 1.02 
 
 Shelley: Alastor 8.61 1.66 10.27 
 
 Gascoigne: The Steele Glas 4.92 0.42 5.34 
 
 Eight of these men distinctly exceed Milton in 
 'frequence' of breaks, and seven of the eight (all 
 but Glover) have three or more caesuras in more 
 lines than Milton. But the proportion of lines with 
 more than one break is not very great, for even in 
 Young, whose figures are double those of Milton, 
 under one-fifth of the lines have two caesuras, and 
 under one-twentieth have three or more. Moreover, 
 as might perhaps have been expected, in the few 
 men of whom I have record (Arnold, Keats, Shelley, 
 
 40 
 
C^SURAS 
 
 and Gascoigne), one of the two or more pauses is 
 after the 4th or 6th syllable in more than two-thirds 
 of the lines. 
 
 These lines with two or more caesuras are prac- 
 tically corollaries to the distribution of caesuras, for 
 of those who distribute their caesuras most widely, 
 Swinburne alone falls below Milton; and of those 
 who exceed Milton, Glover is the only one who falls 
 below him in the distribution of caesuras. There ap- 
 pears, too, a similar relation between lines with two 
 or more caesuras and unbroken Hues, for all of these 
 men who have more lines than Milton with two or 
 more caesuras exceed him in the proportion of un- 
 broken lines.^ 
 
 As to the first of these functions of the caesura, 
 its ability to modify the line-rhythm is greater in 
 blank verse than in other forms, as is evident even 
 in Endymion, and overwhelmingly convincing in 
 stanzas, especially in metres longer or shorter than 
 five beats. The nature of this modification is signi- 
 ficant. A comparison of the records for the 88,000 
 lines of blank verse, which form the basis for this 
 section of our study, with some 23,000 lines of heroic 
 couplets, makes it clear that neither rhyme nor 
 varying proportions of run-on and endstopt lines 
 have any effect on either the number or the distribu- 
 tion of caesuras. In the blank verse, for instance, 
 the percentage of lines with caesuras aiter the first / 
 syllable ranges from 0.78 in Milton to 6.20 in / 
 Arnold ; after the 2d syllable, from 3.89 in Cowper 
 to 13.08 in Arnold; after the 8th syllable, from 1.18 
 in Gascoigne to 12.52 in Arnold; and after the 9th 
 syllable, from 0.17 in Blair to 3.61 in Browning. 
 For the couplets, the figures run: after the ist 
 syllable, from 1.54 in Chamberlayne to 6.72 in 
 
 1 For the distribution of caesuras, see p. 52 ; for un- 
 broken lines, see p. 24. 
 
 41 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Wither; after the 2d syllable, from 3.52 in Browne 
 to 7.43 in Cowley; after the 8th syllable, from 1.26 
 in Dry den to 7.01 in Chamberlayne ; and after the 
 9th syllable, from none in Mrs. Behn to 3.69 in 
 Chamberlayne. But, although csesuras may be just 
 as numerous and just as widely distributed in 
 rhymed as in blank verse, and though neither quan- 
 tity nor distribution seems to hold any relation to 
 either run-on or endstopt lines, it is obvious that 
 all three of these things (rhymed, runron, and end- 
 stopt lines) have a considerable effect on the em- 
 phasis of the csesuras. In couplets, where the rhyme 
 enforces the line-rhythm (the rhyme is so sure to 
 mark the line-rhythm, even in very free couplets, 
 that it is not necessary here to dwell upon the added 
 effect of endstopt lines in couplets) the caesuras, un- 
 less they are marked by strong pauses, rarely count 
 in the movement of whole passages. In blank verse, 
 however, the very absence of the rhyme means that 
 the csesuras will vary in their effect on line-rhythm 
 according as the endstopt lines are numerous or 
 jfew. In Gascoigne, Surrey, and Young, for in- 
 - stance, csesuras have relatively little effect in modify- 
 ing line-rhythm, but in Milton and most of the 
 I others, csesuras do have an important effect just be- 
 ' cause the line-rhythm is so little enforced by the 
 customary devices. 
 
 In Tabled V and VI, I have for convenience in- 
 dicated csesuras as 'after' a syllable, instead of 'in 
 the middle' or 'at the end' of a foot — after even 
 syllables if at the end of a foot, after odd syllables 
 if in the middle of a foot. (I do not, however, be- 
 lieve that syllable-counting is a sound principle of 
 English verse, even for the poetry of those genera- 
 tions which certainly thought of it as syllabic.) Cse- 
 suras in trisyllabic feet I have counted as coming 
 in the "middle," whether they fall after the first or 
 
 42 
 
C^SURAS 
 
 the second unstressed syllable. The total number 
 of these caesuras in trisyllabic feet is relatively small 
 — under three per cent — but their existence has led 
 to debate if not to confusion. Caesuras after the 
 second unstressed syllable of a trisyllabic foot do not 
 seem to have caused discussion, probably because 
 the caesura is immediately followed by a stressed 
 syllable, as in 
 
 But what if he our Conqueror, whom I now / 
 
 (P. L. I. 143)' 
 or 
 
 By natural piety; nor a lofty mind (Excurs. 3.266) 
 
 I have not observed that any poet makes especial 
 use of these caesuras. In six books of Paradise Lost 
 they number 66 out of 4,123 — only 1.60% of the 
 total caesuras ; and in five books of the Prelude and 
 two of the Excursion, I found y2 out of 4,032 — only 
 1.78% of the total caesuras. 
 
 Where the caesura falls between unstressed syl- 
 lables, however, some metrists consider the first 
 syllable extra-metrical, because it looks like an ex- 
 tension to the caesural pause of the device familiar at 
 the end of the line — the feminine ending. A few 
 examples will illustrate both the eflfect of this caesura 
 and its possible explanations. 
 
 1 For she was a great lady. 
 
 And when they reached 
 
 (Pelleas and Ettarre, 118) 
 
 2 Macb. Look on't again I dare not. 
 
 Lady M. Infirm of purpose. (Macb. 2. 2. 52) 
 
 3 Half flying; behoves him now both oare and sail 
 
 (P. L, 2. 942) 
 
 4 Had best be loosed forever; but think or not, 
 
 (Merlin & V. 340) 
 
 5 The organs of her fancie, and with them forge 
 
 (P. L. 4. 802) 
 
 6 Low in the city, and on a festal day 
 
 (Merlin & Vivien, 63) 
 
 7 In equal ruin; into what Pit thou seest (P. L. i, 91) 
 
 43 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 8 Me from attempting. Wherefore do I assume 
 
 (P. L. 2. 450) 
 
 Whatever doing, what can we suffer more? 
 
 (P. L. 2. 162) 
 
 The important question is whether the unstressed 
 syllable before the caesura is extra-metrical or not. 
 In the first two lines, because the two sections of 
 the line belong to different paragraphs or to differ- 
 ent speakers, it seems more reasonable to call the 
 syllable extra-metrical than to assign it to the fol- 
 lowing foot. In lines 3 and 4, the strong pause in- 
 clines one to the same explanation, but in lines 5 
 and 6 it is certainly not hard to say simply that the 
 caesura comes in the middle of a trisyllabic foot. 
 Lines 7 to 9 may be scanned so as to bring the 
 caesura either between unstressed syllables or in the 
 middle of a dissyllabic foot, according as you em- 
 phasize the metre or the rhetoric. When read by 
 themselves, the rhetoric seems obviously dominant, 
 but when read with their context — with groups of 
 lines in which the rhythm is strongly marked — the 
 decision is not so easy. If we start with lines i 
 and 2, we may argue that lines 3 to 6 are clear ex- 
 tensions of the extra-metrical syllable to less em- 
 phatic instances, and we may point out that the un- 
 stressed syllable in the feminine ending is considered 
 extra-metrical whether it is followed by punctuation 
 or not. If we start with lines 5 and 6, however, we 
 may argue that in lines i to 4 the increased em- 
 phasis of the caesura has led us to overlook the real 
 fact, and we may point out that lines like 5 and 
 6 are in the majority — nine-tenths in Paradise Lost, 
 two-thirds in the Idylls; and in addition that, so 
 far as I have observed (I admit that my investiga- 
 tion is not exhaustive) , this *extra' syllable is never 
 a heavy syllable, like so many found in feminine 
 endings (see p. 30). Moreover, I have come upon 
 
 44 
 
C^SURAS 
 
 no line in which a caesura after an unstressed syl- 
 lable is followed by two unstressed syllables — ^that 
 is to say, I have noted no instance in which, con- 
 sidering the metre alone, the syllable before the 
 csesura must be extra-metrical. Nevertheless, I in- 
 cline to think that the dramatists looked upon this 
 type of caesura as an extension of the use of the 
 feminine ending (and we can be fairly certain that 
 John Fletcher at least thought that the redundant 
 syllables at the end of the line were extra-metrical) ; 
 that Milton was at most very sparing in using this 
 device and very careful about the character of the 
 extra syllables; and that Tennyson tended some- 
 what to the 'license' of the dramatists.^ 
 
 Another question, quite as important as that of 
 extra-metrical syllables, is: Just what part has the 
 caesura in tht Jime^oi the line ? To begin with, it 
 is worth while to point out one or two differences 
 between the caesural pause and the line-pause. The 
 
 ^ It is, to be sure, possible to avoid the term extra- 
 metrical, by saying that the foot preceding the caesura 
 is an amphibrach (x'x). That, however, is only an 
 apparent avoiding of the difficulty, for in the first place, 
 such feet occur in the line only before a caesura or at 
 the end of the line (as feminine endings), and feminine 
 endings occasionally have two redundant syllables. 
 It is just as reasonable to suppose that the extra 
 syllables are additions to the end of the line or to a 
 section of it, and not mere variations in the feet. 
 
 These caesuras have sometimes been called 'epic,' 
 but very inaptly, for, as has been often remarked, they 
 are at least as common in the drama as in the epic, 
 and they are certainly not important features of any 
 non-dramatic blank verse which I have examined. For 
 example, in six books of Paradise Lost I found only 
 52, of which 18 are doubtful cases (because they in- 
 volve the scansion of words in -able) ; in the Night 
 Thoughts I found none at all; in three books of the 
 Prelude I found 3, and in two books of the Excursion only 
 two; and in four of the Idylls I found only 38. 
 
 45 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 line-pause is clearly metrical but has a strong effect 
 upon syntax and rhetoric in that (even in the 
 drama) the line-pause rarely is made to cut into 
 the midst of a grammatical or syntactical phrase; 
 when it does so we have a 'light' or a 'weak' ending, 
 and these endings, it may be observed, are the last 
 devices by which the dramatists minimised the 
 difference between verse and prose. In five-beat 
 verse at least, the pause at the end of the line has 
 no place in the time of the verse, although its 
 strength or lightness may contribute to the rap- 
 idity or slowness of a passage. 
 
 The caesural pause, on the other hand, has both 
 rhetorical and metrical functions. Its metrical im- 
 portance is more obvious in alexandrines and sep- 
 tenaries than in the five-beat line. Its rhetorical 
 
 /importance is evident when we recall that the caesura 
 invariably corresponds (in serious verse) to a break, 
 however slight, between grammatical or syntactical 
 groups. Its effect upon the time of a verse is like 
 that of retardo in music. For example, in a line like 
 
 ! the always quoted 
 
 Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of 
 death (P. L. 2. 621) 
 
 the six caesuras call for a slower reading of the line 
 than would be given to 
 Of happiness and final misery.^ (P. L. 2. 563) 
 
 But — and this is the important point — both lines 
 have five beats ; in other words, the caesura does not 
 
 1 Coventry Patmore is the only critic I know of who 
 maintains that the line-pause of the five-beat line is 
 equivalent to an extra foot. 
 
 2 1 do not forget that in both these lines the quality 
 and the collocation of the syllables have as much effect 
 on the movement of the lines as the presence or ab- 
 sence of csesuras, but these considerations do not affect 
 my present point. 
 
 46 
 
C^SURAS 
 
 affect either the number of beats or the number of 
 syllables used to fill the time of those beats — is not 
 used as equivalent to a rest in music, but only to 
 modify the rate of delivery. In the Princess, III, 42, 
 Tennyson has this line : 
 
 "Why — these — arc — men" ; I shuddered ; "and you know 
 it." 
 
 Here we have the usual five beats upon alternate 
 syllables, but I doubt if any one would have found 
 fault if Tennyson had made each of his dashes count 
 as a, rest and had ended his line with "shuddered," 
 thus: 
 
 " — Why — these — are — men" ; I shuddered. 
 
 But I have found not one instance in non-dramatic 
 blank verse where the csesural pause counts in the 
 time of the line by serving as a rest. (I do not 
 mean to say that such lines are unknown, or un- 
 desirable, or impossible ; I merely record that in the 
 poets here discussed I have found no line which 
 I could scan that way. Perhaps I may add that in 
 this matter as in some others, I am not concerned 
 to maintain the entire absence of such lines ; the im- 
 portant fact is that they are very few.) The only 
 lines I have found in non-dramatic blank verse which 
 call for rests to fill out the time are the very rare 
 nine-syllable lines, in which the time is made up, 
 not by a c?esural pause, but by the line-pause. (For 
 comments on monosyllabic feet, see p. yy). 
 
 In blank verse, then, the metrical importance of 
 the caesura seems to me almost entirely due to its 
 rhejori^ah "function- -of-^nd^i^adngjogical^ 
 rhythms. In this constant accommodation between 
 rhetoric and metre, or, to put it in other words, in 
 this superimposing of the irregular prose rhythm 
 upon its common denominator, the regular metrical 
 rhythm, we have the same opportunity for delicate 
 
 47 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 charm that we shall find later in the effort to fit 
 combinations of syllables to the arbitrary time of 
 the metre. (See p. 68.) The importance of the 
 csesural pause in blank verse is not likely to be 
 overestimated, but the necessity of its presence as an 
 essential part of practically every line has always 
 been overemphasized by the metrists. Happily, in 
 this as in so many other things, the poets have not 
 always been able to make their practice agree with 
 their precepts, even when they thought they were 
 observing them most closely. 
 
 TABLE V 
 
 CAESURAS I 
 
 Tot. C^suras. 
 Poet Forms Ll. Tot. Mid. End. 
 Milton, Paradise Lost and Paradise Re- 
 gained 12628 oSii J4.00 66.00 
 
 Surrey, Aeneid, Books II and IV "2611 ii6g 18.82 BloS" 
 
 Gascoigne, The Steele Glas 1179 459 17.6s 82.35 
 
 Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination 1999 1339 48.80 51.20 
 
 Blair, The Grave 767 575 28.00 72.00 
 
 Glover, Leonidas ... 7321 5722 53.80 46.20 
 
 Mallet, The Excursion, and Amyntor and 
 
 Theodora 2383 2254 32.13 67.87 
 
 Somervile, The Chase, B'ield Sports, Hobbinol 3560 3085 18.39 81.61 
 
 Thomson, The Seasons 5422 3815 34.34 65.66 
 
 Young, The Night Thoughts, Books I to 
 
 VII S902 5823 42.12 57.88 
 
 Cowper, The Task 5185 3262 42.99 57.01 
 
 Landor, Gebir 1733 1260 50.39 49.61 
 
 Keats, Hyperion 883 636 40.00 60.00 
 
 Shelley, Alastor 720 522 31.41 68.59 
 
 Wordsworth, Excursion; the Prelude, Books I 
 
 to VII 13020 10257 45.77 54.23 
 
 Arnold, Sohrab and Rustum 902 825 33.00 67.00 
 
 Browning, Pauline, Bp. Blougram, R. & B., 
 
 I, II, III, VI 8750 6831 ^1.51 48.49 
 
 Tennyson, The Idylls of the King 11322 8127 46.14 53.86 
 
 Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon, and Erech- 
 
 theus 2350 1580 56.13 43.87 
 
 The total lines number 880^7. Mid. means percentage of caesuras at 
 
 the middle of feet. End. means the percentage at the end of feet. 
 
 48 
 
C^SURAS 
 
 TABLE VI 
 C^SURAS II 
 
 Poet 
 
 Percentage of C^suras After 
 
 Milton 
 
 Surrey 
 
 Gascoigne.. 
 Akenside. . . 
 
 Blair 
 
 Glover 
 
 Mallet 
 
 Somervile . . 
 Thomson.. . 
 
 Young 
 
 Cowper 
 
 Landor .... 
 
 Keats 
 
 Shelley 
 
 Wordsworth 
 
 Arnold 
 
 Browning . . 
 Tennyson . . 
 Swinburne.. 
 
 T.OO 
 
 4.61 
 4-57 
 2.53 
 4.34 
 3-32 
 2.75 
 1.84 
 6.97 
 5.46 
 1.62 
 
 5-39 
 3.00 
 2.87 
 6.61 
 6.78 
 7.48 
 6.92 
 8.67 
 
 11.20 
 
 13-94 
 6.12 
 9.04 
 8.05 
 6.65 
 5.64 
 7.36 
 
 10.32 
 6.19 
 
 12.22 
 
 11.80 
 9.19 
 
 8.55 
 
 14.30 
 
 8.85 
 
 9-39 
 10.50 
 
 10.06 
 3-93 
 3.05 
 5-75 
 347 
 4-85 
 5-37 
 2.85 
 3-74 
 7.10 
 9.81 
 
 10.80 
 9.77 
 5.55 
 7.45 
 9.00 
 
 10.35 
 
 11.60 
 
 7.02 
 
 II. 19 
 
 4.87 
 
 3-92 
 
 20.01 
 
 10.08 
 
 25.23 
 
 14.81 
 
 8.20 
 
 13.70 
 
 15.86 
 
 14.65 
 
 14.36 
 
 12.42 
 
 7.85 
 
 15.92 
 
 9.00 
 
 16.39 
 
 11.02 
 
 11.51 
 
 24.98 
 13.60 
 5.88 
 21.21 
 35-30 
 11.83 
 26.39 
 38.37 
 25.19 
 
 17.37 
 22.25 
 15.08 
 21.54 
 24.90 
 16.50 
 21.09 
 13.10 
 13.61 
 8.41 
 
 10.83 
 
 4.79 
 
 3.26 
 
 19.85 
 
 9.91 
 
 18.71 
 
 8.25 
 
 4.63 
 
 7.75 
 
 11.55 
 
 15.42 
 
 17.77 
 
 14.77 
 12.64 
 13.08 
 7.80 
 13.67 
 
 13-39 
 26.07 
 
 9-48 
 3-76 
 3-05 
 4.10 
 6.08 
 7.58 
 5.00 
 8.03 
 6.00 
 
 I'V 
 6.89 
 9.12 
 5.18 
 
 10.91 
 9.90 
 
 13.70 
 8.94 
 9.52 
 
 12.42 
 
 0.87 
 0.68 
 0.65 
 0.59 
 0.17 
 1.66 
 0.88 
 0.77 
 2.14 
 2.15 
 1.44 
 1.90 
 1.25 
 2.49 
 1.87 
 0.36 
 3.61 
 
 3-25 
 1.58 
 
 In only one trivial point do all the 19 men in 
 the list agree — in all of them the caesura after the 
 9th syllable is least used. In only 15 of them does 
 the caesura after the ist syllable hold 8th place; the 
 exceptions are Gascoigne, Blair, and Thomson, who 
 were rather fond of beginning lines with exclama- 
 tions; and Swinburne, who was fonder than the 
 others of running a line over just one syllable into 
 the next. Only Swinburne, Tennyson, and Brown- 
 ing, however, manage to get more than 10 per cent 
 of their caesuras into those two places, although 
 Thomson comes near them. 
 
 In his "Notes of Instruction," Gascoigne said of 
 the caesura, "In mine opinion ... in a verse of 
 tenne it will be placed at the ende of the first foure 
 sillables," and it will be observed that he lived up 
 
 49 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 to his opinion more rigidly than any one else in our 
 list. In opposition to Gascoigne, Professor Corson 
 ('Trimer of English Verse," 195) thinks that the 
 pause after the 6th syllable is the normal caesura, 
 for he calls it "a. secondary theme to the primary 
 5x'." So far as our 19 poets are concerned, in 9 
 of them the caesura after the 4th syllable comes first, 
 and in only 7 does the pause after the 6th syllable 
 come first. Milton, who clearly preferred the pause 
 after the 6th syllable (and whose verse was the basis 
 for Professor Corson's statement), is followed by 
 Akenside, Blair, Somervile, and Cpwper in the i8th 
 century, and by only Shelley and Arnold in the 19th. 
 On the other hand, Gascoigne and Surrey are fol- 
 lowed by Mallet, Thomson, and Young in the i8th 
 century, and by Keats, Wordsworth, Browning, and 
 Tennyson in the 19th, so that Professor Corson's 
 dictum is certainly wrong, if he meant it to cover 
 the general practice of the poets, or even that of 
 the greater poets. The reason why these four 19th 
 century men have not followed Milton is, I suspect, 
 not a definite preference for the pause after the 4th 
 syllable, but the result of a constant effort to avoid 
 the obvious, a fear of monotony, an unwillingness 
 to do as Milton did and recognise that the beaten 
 path has many advantages of smoothness and 
 frmiiliarity.^ 
 
 1 Of 14 writers of couplets, only Oldham, Crashaw, 
 and Sandys have more strong pauses after the 6th 
 syllable than after the 4th; only Randolph, Shelley, 
 and Cowley have anything like an even distribution 
 between the 4th and the 6th. Six of them, including 
 Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope, have more than 
 twice as many strong pauses after the 4th syllable as 
 after the 6th. These statements are based on only 
 some 13.600 lines, but together with the blank verse, 
 they indicate that the division into 2-3 is distinctly 
 more common than that into 3-2. The tendency of 
 the English alexandrine to break exactly and regularly 
 
 50 
 
C^SURAS 
 
 Akenside and Lander are the only men in whose 
 verse the pause after the 4th syllable is not either 
 first or second. In 15 of the men — all but Gas- 
 coigne, Glover, Browning, and Swinburne — the 
 pause after the 6th syllable is either first or second ; 
 but in only 13 are there more caesuras after both the 
 4th and the 6th syllables than elsewhere. Although 
 only 8 men agree in making the pause after the 5th 
 syllable 3rd in order, the tendency to mass the 
 pauses in the middle of the line is shown by the fact 
 that only 6 men — Swinburne, Arnold, Browning, 
 Landor, Tennyson, and Wordsworth — all modern — 
 have under half their caesuras in the three middle 
 places. Moreover, although only these six men last 
 mentioned, and Glover, have under 40% of their 
 pauses after the 4th and 6th syllables, the tendency 
 of the five-beat iambic rhythm to divide into 2-3 or 
 3-2 groups as against an equal division after the 
 5th syllable is marked, in the bigger poets as in 
 the lesser, for Swinburne, Landor, and Glover are 
 the only men who have more caesuras at any two 
 other places than after the 4th and 6th syllables. 
 
 The diversity of practice is shown by a compari- 
 son of the places which come first, second, and 
 third. In Mallet, Thomson, Young, and Words- 
 worth, the order is 4, 6, 5 ; in Milton, Blair, and 
 Somervile, it is 6, 4, 5 ; in Cowper and Shelley it is 
 6, 4, 7; and in Keats and Tennyson, 4, 6, 7. The 
 average of the whole nineteen gives 4, 6, 5, with 7 
 in 4th place. No two others agree, except that 4, 
 5, 6, in varying orders have the first three places 
 in nine of the men.^ 
 
 in the middle is well known; the 2-3 formula for the 
 five-beat line may be similarly inherent in the structure 
 of the line, 
 
 1 Professor Mayor ("Chaps, on Eng. Metre," 209, of 
 2d ed.) is right in saying that "the pause after the 4th 
 
 51 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 In the relative proportions of caesuras at the mid- 
 dle and at the ends of feet, Milton is followed pretty 
 closely by Blair, Mallet, Thomson, Keats, Shelley, 
 and Arnold — that is, not by Wordsworth, Browning, 
 or Tennyson, the three most voluminous of the 19th 
 century poets. Surrey, Gascoigne, and Somervile 
 form a group with more than four-fifths of their 
 pauses at the ends of feet; Akenside and Landor 
 come very near an even division, but Glover, Brown- 
 ing, and Swinburne are the only ones who have 
 distinctly more at the middle than at the ends of 
 feet. These figures, again, indicate the tendency 
 of the iambic line to break at the ends of feet. In 
 Akenside, Glover, and Swinburne, the balance in 
 favor of pauses at the middle is due to an excessive 
 fondness for the pause after the 7th syllable. 
 : Although Milton has 47.50% of his caesuras after 
 I the 4th and 6th syllables, he has more than ten per 
 1 cent in each of five places — after 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 — and is 
 i followed in this by Young, Landor, Keats, Brown- 
 ing, Tennyson, and Swinburne. (Blair, Shelley, 
 Wordsworth, and Arnold just miss belonging in this 
 list.) Of these men, only Tennyson and Browning 
 follow Milton exactly ; Swinburne has his high per- 
 centages after 2, 4, 5, 7, 8; Young and Keats (and 
 Blair) after 2, 4, 5, 6, 7; (Shelley's are after 2, 4, 6, 
 7, 8 ; Wordsworth's after 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ; Landor is 
 
 seems to be Tennyson's favourite," for Tennyson has 
 nearly 8% more there than anywhere else; but when 
 he adds that Browning 'prefers' that after the 5th and 
 7th, he is somewhat in error, for in Browning, although 
 his order is 4, 5, 6, 7, the percentages vary too little 
 to establish any marked preference. About Swinburne, 
 however, Professor Mayor is clearly within bounds 
 when he says that Swinburne used the pause after the 
 7th syllable in his Erechtheus "twice as often as any 
 other pause," for in that poem the pause after the 7th 
 syllable reaches 36.67%, as against 12.69% after the 
 5th syllable, its nearest competitor. 
 
 52 
 
CAESURAS 
 
 unique in having over ten per cent in each of six 
 places, after 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Gascoigne, who has 
 over ten per cent only after 2 and 4, and Somervile, 
 who has over ten per cent only after 4 and 6, have 
 the most limited distribution of caesuras; Surrey 
 comes next with more than ten per cent only after 
 2, 4, and 6 ; Arnold has over ten per cent only after 
 4, 6 and 8, and is thus the only poet of ability who 
 distributes his caesuras chiefly at the ends of feet. 
 The six who mass their caesuras most solidly (in only 
 two or three places) are Gascoigne and Surrey — 
 pre-Shaksperian ; Thomson, Blair, Mallet, and Som- 
 ervile — all 1 8th century men, and all but Thomson 
 negligible. The facts here set forth furnish inter- 
 esting confirmation of one of the oldest axioms in 
 the criticism of blank verse, namely, that its excel- 
 lence is largely determined by the distribution of 
 pauses.^ 
 
 A simple mode of comparison for the various, 
 pauses is to note how the men follow or vary from\ 
 Milton. Milton has almost exactly one-fourth of ^ 
 his pauses after the 6th syllable; in this he is ex- 
 ceeded or approximated by only Blair, Mallet, Som- 
 ervile, Thomson, and Shelley. Milton has 22.52% 
 after the 4th syllable; in this he is materially ex- 
 ceeded by five men, and approximated by five others, 
 so that eight fall distinctly below him. After the 
 3rd, 5th, and 7th syllables, he has about 10% 
 each ; Tennyson is the only other poet who has those 
 figures for all three places ; though Blair has for the 
 5th and 7th, and Arnold for the 3rd and 5th syl- 
 lables. While seven men have more than Milton 
 after the 2d syllable, only Shelley, Arnold, and Swin- 
 burne have distinctly more after the 8th syllable, 
 
 1 Although much punctuation increases the total 
 number of caesuras in Young's case, it does not affect 
 the proportions of their distribution. 
 
 53 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 and only Landor, Wordsworth, Browning, and Ten- 
 nyson Gonie near Milton's figures. After the 9th 
 syllable all the moderns except Arnold have from 
 two to four times as many caesuras as Milton, and 
 every one of the eighteen poets has more than he 
 after the ist syllable. 
 
 Gascoigne and Surrey, with 61.65% and 52.60% 
 of their caesuras after the 4th syllable, have broken 
 all records for monotony of pause. Their nearest 
 competitor is Somervile, with 38.37% and Blair with 
 35.30%, both after the 6th syllable., Gascoigne, Sur- 
 rey, Mallet, Somervile, and Thomson are the only 
 men with more than 25% after the 4th syllable, and 
 Blair, Somervile, Mallet, and Thomson the only 
 ones with more than 25% after the 6th syllable. 
 Akenside has about 20% each after the 4th, 5th, 6th, 
 and 7th syllables, but Glover with 25.23% is the 
 only one who has more pauses after the 5th syllable 
 than elsewhere. After the 7th syllable, Swinburne 
 has 26.07%, iTiore than twice as many as he has 
 anywhere else; his only rivals after the 7th syllable 
 are Akenside, Glover, and Landor, with from 18 to 
 20%. 
 
 On the whole, then, taking mere proportions of 
 caesuras, without reference to their possible relations 
 to other technical devices, surprisingly few of the 
 men have followed Milton's lead in the details of 
 distribution, though the 19th century men have fol- 
 lowed him in distributing over five or six places, 
 instead of massing at two or three as Surrey and 
 Gascoigne did. The i8th century men, though 
 neither so free nor so successful in their distribu- 
 tion as the 19th century men, had — to an extent they 
 are not often given credit for — both a fondness for 
 experiment, and success in avoiding in their blank 
 verse the technical peculiarities of the couplet. The 
 later men have been much more inclined to follow 
 
 54 
 
C-^SURAS 
 
 Milton in distributing caesuras than to imitate his 
 bold massing at the places where they would nor- 
 mally fall unless the poet took special pains to avoid 
 those places. It is not too much, I think, to suggest 
 that Milton has the advantage over his 19th century 
 successors in that he is not chargeable, as they are, 
 with preciosity — with avoiding the solider virtues 
 of the instrument in favor of its showier, more 
 startling nimblenesses. 
 
 The caesuras which I have taken account of are 
 punctuated by marks varying from commas to 
 periods, and naturally those marked by strong 
 pauses will count for more than the others. In the 
 case of Paradise Lost it is instructive to put side 
 by side the distribution of the total number of 
 caesuras and of the strong pauses : 
 
 Mid. End, 12 3 456 789 
 
 Caesuras.. 34.00 66.00 1.00 8.89 10.06 22.52 11. 19 24.98 10.82 9.48 0.87 
 
 (I) 
 Str.Pauses31.91 67.64 0.17 5.98 8.23 24.70 13.37 2962 9.89 7-34 0.25 
 
 The significant thing is that the strong pauses tend 
 more than the caesuras to the middle of the line, for 
 after the 4th, 5th, and 6th syllables, Milton has 
 67.69% of his strong pauses, as against 58.69% of 
 caesuras in general. Newcomb, the only other writer 
 of blank verse whose distribution of strong pauses 
 I have noted, masses 72.58% after the 5th, 6th, and 
 7th syllables (he is like Akenside, Glover, Landor, 
 and Swinburne in his frequent use of the pause after 
 the 7th syllable), and 57.08% after the 4th, 5th, and 
 6th syllables. I^he scanty records which I have for 
 the distribution of strong pauses in heroic couplets 
 confirm this tendency toward the middle of the 
 line. In 13,653 lines of couplets by 14 poets, the 
 percent of strong pauses after the 4th, 5th, and 6th 
 
 1 These percentages I have compiled from the table 
 in Corson's "Primer of English Verse," 194-5. 
 
 55 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 syllables averages 70.16, with a range of from 50 
 in Shelley's Epipsychidion to 87.50 in Denham's 
 Cooper's Hill. Omitting Marvell and Shelley (the 
 only ones who fall below Milton's percentage), the 
 average is 73.74 — not so much above Milton as one 
 might expect. Because of this massing of strong 
 pauses near the middle of the line, the caesuras near 
 the ends are not often marked by strong punctua- 
 tion ; in other words, the caesuras near the ends of the 
 Hne are used chiefly for the subtler modulations. Al- 
 though this tendency of the five-beat iambic line to 
 break most often and most 'severely' at the middle 
 is strong, it is well to bear in mind that one pro- 
 nounced pause in the less usual places is as emphatic 
 as a score in the middle, so that a poet who indulged 
 very freely in strong pauses near the ends of the 
 line would betray a mannerism, as Swinburne does 
 in Mary Stuart (cf. p. 25, note). 
 
 Mr. Bridges claims for Milton's verse as a dis- 
 tinction the 'severity' of the breaks ("Milton's 
 Prosody," 24). Milton's 'distinction' in this respect 
 is at least not marked, for although he has strong 
 pauses in 23.31% of his lines, Wordsworth has 
 them in 21.17% of his lines, Newcomb in 25.78%, 
 Young in 30%, and Browning in Pauline, and 
 Paracelsus, in 36.64%. Milton's strong pauses, 
 moreover, occur in only about six-twentieths of the 
 lines which have caesuras; in Newcomb, in about 
 thirteen-fortieths, in Wordsworth in seven-twenti- 
 eths, in Young in nine-twentieths, and in Brown- 
 ing in about twelve-twentieths. In the couplets of 
 Dryden, Waller, Pope, and Chapman, the lines with 
 strong pauses amount to about two-, three-, four-, 
 and five-twentieths respectively of the lines which 
 contain caesuras. These proportions, as already said 
 (cf. p. 42), bear no relation to the percent of end- 
 stopt lines in either couplets or blank verse, for al- 
 
 56 
 
C^SURAS 
 
 though Pope and Dryden have almost the same per- 
 cent of endstopt Hnes, Pope has nearly twice as 
 many strong pauses as Dryden. In blank verse, 
 Young and Browning, who have the highest percent- 
 ages of end-stopt lines, have also the greatest num- 
 ber of strong pauses. However, unless my evidence 
 is inadequate and therefore misleading, the differ- 
 ence between the proportions of strong pauses in 
 couplets and in blank verse points clearly to the far 
 greater emphasis of the line-rhythm in the couplet. 
 When the distribution of caesuras is compared 
 with the proportions of unbroken lines, I find a rela- 
 tion which may be accidental, though it does not 
 seem so. Landor, the only one who has more than 
 ten per cent of caesuras at each of six places, has 
 more unbroken lines than any one but Surrey and 
 Gascoigne. Of the six others who have ten per cent 
 in each of five places, Milton and Young have about 
 29% of their lines unbroken, Browning has 36%, 
 and Keats, Tennyson, and Swinburne over 40%. 
 Whether there is any fundamental connection be- 
 tween these two things I am not sure ; at least it is 
 obvious that the men who distributed their pauses 
 most widely were also the ones who learned best 
 the value of long cadences. 
 
 57 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 TABLE VII 
 
 Poet 
 
 Pkrckntage of Total and 
 After 
 
 'Run-on' C.i^suras 
 
 Milton 
 
 Surrey 
 
 Gascoigne,.. 
 Akenside — 
 
 Blair 
 
 Glover 
 
 Mallet 
 
 Somervile. 
 Thomson — 
 
 Young 
 
 Cowper 
 
 Landor 
 
 Keats 
 
 Shelley 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Arnold 
 
 Browning — 
 Tennyson. .. 
 Swinburne .. 
 
 4.61 
 
 c 
 4.57 
 
 G.46 
 0.42 
 
 89 
 
 10.06 
 
 2-53 
 
 c 
 
 4 34 
 
 3 32 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 1.84 
 
 c 
 
 6.97 
 
 0.15 
 
 4 
 0.34 
 
 0.29 
 
 5 
 0.13 
 
 0.16 
 
 5.46 
 
 c 
 
 1.62 
 
 0.44 
 0.13 
 
 13.94 
 
 
 
 6.12 
 
 9.04 
 
 ] 
 8.0s 
 
 3 
 6.65 
 
 I 
 564 
 
 2 
 7.36 
 
 2 
 10.32 
 
 I 
 6.19 
 
 5.42 
 3 
 316 
 
 0,65 
 
 2 
 
 2.76 
 
 1. 91 
 
 '3.65 
 
 5-39 
 
 I 
 3.00 
 
 c 
 2.87 
 
 c 
 
 6.62 
 
 I 
 
 5.78 
 
 I 
 
 7.48 
 
 
 
 6.92 
 
 8.67 
 
 0.62 
 7 
 
 0.76 
 I 
 1. 13 
 
 0.76 
 
 11.80 
 
 9.19 
 
 8.5: 
 14.30 
 
 9-39 
 
 2 
 
 10.50 
 
 1.90 
 2.69 
 
 3 
 
 2.41 
 2 
 
 1.54 
 
 '2.78 
 2 
 
 4.28 
 3 
 
 2. Si 
 
 ;s.36 
 
 '3-96 
 
 3 
 
 ,5-69 
 
 3 
 
 2.S9 
 
 2.31 
 
 3-93 
 3.05 
 
 5-75 
 4 
 
 3.47 
 c 
 
 4.85 
 
 2 
 
 5-37 
 
 2.85' 
 
 I 
 
 3-74 
 
 7io 
 
 I 
 9-8i 
 
 7-04 
 0.68 
 
 0.65 
 
 o.6q 
 2.5] 
 •77 
 1.84 
 [.65 
 
 1-23 
 
 10.80 
 
 4 
 
 9-77 
 
 5-55^ 
 7-44'' 
 
 900 
 
 10. 3S^ 
 
 11.60 
 
 5 
 
 7-02 
 
 6.68 
 
 3 
 4.12 
 
 '3-2S 
 i 
 
 4.19 
 3 
 
 3-39 
 
 '3.6, 
 
 3 
 
 5-47 
 
 91 
 
 77 
 
 9.48 
 
 3-76 
 
 7.16 
 
 1.62 
 
 3-o; 
 
 c 
 
 4.10 
 
 2 
 
 6 08 
 
 7-58' 
 
 0-43 
 3 
 2-39 
 
 0.54 
 
 •59 
 
 1.72 
 
 0.17 
 
 0.15 
 
 S-oo 
 8.03 
 6.00 
 7^77^ 
 
 6.89' 
 4 
 
 9.12 
 4 
 
 5.18 
 
 1 
 
 10.91 
 
 9.90 
 
 ( 
 
 13^70 
 
 7 
 
 8.94 
 3 
 
 9.52 
 
 5.08 
 
 2-39 
 4.92 
 
 3 
 
 3-6i 
 7 
 2.79 
 
 V87 
 J 
 
 '4.76 
 i 
 
 1.72 
 [ 
 
 6. SI 
 
 6.68 
 7-39 
 
 376 
 2 
 
 4-73 
 2 
 
 Q.OS 
 
 66 
 
 0.87 
 ^0.48 
 
 77 
 
 0.42 
 
 0.61 
 
 90 
 
 .61 
 
 .58 
 
 0.45 
 ) 
 1.19 
 
 '0.31 
 
 0.95 
 
 '..05 
 3 
 
 0.24 
 [ 
 
 1.46 
 
 0.63 
 
 In this table, the first figure in each column is the per- 
 cent of caesuras of all kinds which fall after that particular 
 syllable. The second figure in each column is the percent 
 of caesuras which, after the ist, 2d, and 3d syllables, come 
 after a run-on line, and after the 7th, 8th, and 9th syllables, 
 come in a run-on line. For example, in Milton, the caesuras 
 after the ist S3dlable number 1.00%, of which nearly half 
 are 'run-on'; the caesuras after the 8th syllable number 
 9.48%, of which about seven-ninths are 'run-on.' The 
 divisor for both sets of figures is the total number of 
 caesuras. (See the 2d column of Table V.) 
 
 58 
 
C^SURAS 
 
 We come now to the most important relation of 
 csesuras to line-rhythm — their use in connection with 
 run-on lines. Caesuras near the ends of the line 
 are likely to be more emphatic than others, as we 
 have seen, because of their relatively unusual posi- 
 tion. These caesuras become vastly more emphatic 
 when they come near the end of a run-on line, or 
 at the beginning- of a line which follows a run-on 
 line. Run-on lines in which the caesura is either 
 unmarked by punctuation or falls after the 4th, 5th, 
 or 6th syllable number about one-half of the total 
 run-on lines in nine of the men — Milton, Surrey, 
 Thomson, Cowper, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, 
 Browning, and Tennyson. In five — Gascoigne, 
 Akenside, Blair, Mallet, and Somervile — consider- 
 ably more than one-half are of this kind ; in the 
 other five — Glover, Young, Landor, Arnold, and 
 Swinburne — considerably under one-half. That is, 
 to put the matter from the opposite point of view, 
 in Gascoigne and four minor i8th century men, only 
 about one-third or less of the run-on lines have their 
 use emphasized by coming before pauses in the first 
 three places or after pauses in the last three. In 
 nine men, including most of the big ones, about 
 one-half of the run-on lines are used in connection 
 with these emphatic caesuras. As for the other five 
 — a curious list — in Glover and Young, two-thirds, 
 and in Landor, Arnold, and Swinburne about three- 
 fourths of the run-on lines are so used. 
 
 The relation of these emphatic caesuras to the 
 others is also important. It will be remembered that 
 only six men — Swinburne, Arnold, Browning, Lan- 
 dor, Tennyson, and Wordsworth — have under 50% 
 of their caesuras after the 4th, 5th, and 6th syllables ; 
 and that the others have in those middle places from 
 S4 to 73%. Of those six men who have more than 
 half their caesuras at the six end places in the line, 
 
 59 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 three — Landor, Arnold, and Swinburne — are the 
 men who have three-fourths of their run-on lines 
 in connection with these emphatic caesuras. 
 
 The table of caesuras in or after run-on lines 
 shows several interesting things, some of them sig- 
 ' nificant. In only Milton and Arnold is the sum of 
 I, 2, 3 about the same as the sum of 7, 8, 9; in all 
 the others the sum of 7, 8, 9, is distinctly the larger. 
 In Blair and Keats the sum of 7, 8, 9 is almost twice 
 that of I, 2, 3 ; and in five others — Young, Thomson, 
 Akenside, Glover, and Swinburne — the sum of 7, 8, 
 9, is more than twice the sum of i, 2, 3. Obviously 
 the poets have found it easier, or have thought it 
 more effective to run-on a line after the last few 
 syllables than to run it on only a few syllables into 
 the next. This conclusion grows even more obvious 
 when we compare these figures for what I may call 
 'run-on' caesuras with the total number of caesuras 
 after i, 2, and 3, and 7, 8, and 9. Of these total 
 caesuras, ten men have more after i, 2, and 3 than 
 after 7, 8, and 9, six of them — Surrey, Gascoigne, 
 Thomson, Keats, Arnold, and Tennyson — consid- 
 erably more ; and yet all but Milton and Arnold have 
 a marked excess of *run-on' caesuras after 7, 8, 
 and 9. To be sure, Akenside, Glover, and Swin- 
 burne, who have the greatest excess of total caesuras 
 after 7, 8, and 9, are among the seven who have the 
 most *run-on' caesuras after 7, 8, and 9; but the 
 other four — Blair, Thomson, Young, and Keats — 
 have more total caesuras after i, 2, and 3, than after 
 7, 8, and 9. 
 
 It will be remembered that our nineteen poets 
 agreed in having fewer caesuras after the 9th syllable 
 than elsewhere; only six of them — Blair, Landor, 
 Keats, Wordsworth, Arnold, and Swinburne — have 
 fewer 'run-on' caesuras after the 9th syllable than 
 after the ist; Surrey, Gascoigne, and Akenside have 
 
 60 
 
C^SURAS 
 
 about the same in both places; the remaining ten 
 have more after the 9th syllable than after the ist. 
 Of Milton, Professor Saintsbury once wrote ("Eliz. 
 Lit.," 327) : "No device that is possible within his 
 limits — even to that most dangerous one of the 
 pause after the first syllable of a line which has *en- 
 jambed' from the preceding one — is strange to him, 
 or sparingly used, or used without success." The 
 'success' of Alilton's use of this device will be 
 readily granted; as to the 'sparingly,' the first ten 
 men chronologically have fewer of these pauses than 
 Milton, although Surrey and Thomson have almost 
 as many ; but all of the 19th century men, including 
 Landor, have more than Milton, — Landor, Words- 
 worth, and Arnold more than twice as many, and 
 Swinburne almost nine times as many. 
 
 The tendency to run-on the line from a caesura 
 near the end is made plain if we look at the matter 
 from a slightly different angle. Of the caesuras after 
 the 1st syllable, Swinburne alone has more than 
 half *run-on'; of those after the 2d syllable, only 
 Milton and Shelley have more than half 'run-on'; 
 and of those after the 3d syllable, only seven men 
 have more than half 'run-on.' But, of the caesuras 
 after the 7th, 8th, and 9th syllables, eleven, twelve, 
 and nine men respectively have more than half in 
 run-on lines. 
 
 Since the pause after the 7th syllable is, on the 
 average, the most frequently used of the six minor 
 ones, it is not surprising that fourteen of the men — 
 all but Surrey, Somervile, Young, Arnold, and 
 Tennyson — ^have more 'run-on' caesuras after the 
 7th syllable than elsewhere. Eight of them show 
 a striking preference for this 'run-on' caesura; 
 Blair, Cowper, Landor, Shelley, and Swinburne have 
 twice as many as elsewhere ; Keats has three times 
 as many as after the 2d or 3d syllables ; Glover nearly 
 
 61 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 three times as many as after the 8th ; and Akenside 
 more than three times as many as after the 3rd 
 syllable. 
 
 In blank verse, the percentages of 'rim-on' 
 C3esuras after the ist, 2d, 8th, and 9th syllables are 
 16.16, 33.84, 55.33, and 44.08. For the 18,000 Hnes 
 of heroic couplets the corresponding percentages 
 are 6.12, 22.38, 37.39, and 51.72. Even after we 
 have allowed for the fact that run-on lines average 
 only about half as many in couplets as in blank verse, 
 we find that here again is emphasized in a minor de- 
 tail the technical 'shackle' of rhyme, for at the be- 
 ginning of the line the couplets fall considerably 
 below blank verse in their use of *run-on' caesuras, 
 and approximate it at the end of the line. In blank 
 verse, the caesuras near either the beginning or the 
 end of the line tend to modify the line-rhythm, al- 
 though (as we may see from the percentages just 
 given) this modification comes more easily — or at 
 least more often — near the end of the line. In the 
 couplet, a 'run-on' caesura near the beginning of 
 the line not only tends to reduce the emphasis of the 
 first rhyme-syllable, but thereby lessens the effect of 
 the second one, as in : 
 
 He ceas'd; but left so pleasing on their ear 
 
 His voice, that list'ning still they seem'd to hear. 
 
 (Pope: Odys. 13. i) 
 
 'Rurfc-on' caesuras near the end of the line, on the 
 contrary, bring the rhyme-syllables somewhat closer 
 together, and thus re-enforce the effect of the second 
 one, as in : 
 
 Not always actions show the man; we find 
 Who does a kindness is not therefore kind 
 
 (Pope: Moral Ess., Ep. i) 
 or 
 
 'T is with our judgments as our watches, — none 
 Go just alike, yet each believes his own. 
 
 (Pope: Ess. on Crit. i) 
 
 62 
 

 \ 
 
 C^SURAS 
 
 This effect is not entirely lost even where the second 
 line has a caesura near the beginning, as in : 
 
 Yet while my Hector still survives, I see 
 My father, mother, brethren, all, in thee. 
 
 (Pope: II. 6. 544-) 
 
 The tendency of both blank verse and couplets to 
 have more marked caesuras near the end of the line 
 than at the beginning is not an evidence of similarity 
 but of difference, for in blank verse these caesuras 
 modify line-rhythm, in the couplet they increase 
 rhyme-emphasis. 
 
 63 
 
III. FEET 
 
 In the course of this discussion it has often been 
 assumed that Hnes of verse are divided into feet and 
 that those feet are iambic. It is now necessary to 
 take up in some detail the question of feet, their 
 varieties, and the conventions of their use in non- 
 dramatic blank verse. As a basis for the discussion, 
 it is well to begin with what seem to me principles 
 so fundamental as to be axiomatic, but which we 
 do not always have clearly in mind. The whole 
 question of feet in iambic verse has long been 
 clouded by anxious and sometimes belligerent dis- 
 cussion as to how we are to scan certain lines. It 
 happens that many of these queer lines, though not 
 all, are taken from the drama, where, I maintain, 
 dramatic requirements subordinate, or modify, or 
 sometimes even destroy the verse pattern.^ More- 
 over, the distinctly puzzling lines are relatively few, 
 and may be owing to one or more of half a dozen 
 things which do not involve fundamental principles 
 of verse-structure. For one thing, they may be, 
 according to their context, carelessnesses, to be ex- 
 
 1 It has been suggested by a friend that the drama 
 ought to be the best place to study blank verse, be- 
 cause the very fact that the poet is concerned primarily 
 with the demands of the drama should leave his verse 
 less modified by his probably inadequate theories of 
 what blank verse ought to be. This idea sounds 
 plausible and suggestive, but it seems to me untenable 
 simply because, as even Shakspere shows, in proportion 
 as the dramatist becomes interested in his play, his 
 blank verse tends to lose most of the things which 
 make it unmistakably verse. 
 
 64 
 
FEET 
 
 plained by saying that the poet was so governed by 
 the swing of his metre that he forced into it sets of 
 syllables which do not readily justify their arrange- 
 ment to all his readers. Or, they may be deliber- 
 ate discords; or, again, experiments which to some 
 of us are regrettable failures, to others triumphs 
 of technical skill. In any case, however, these lines 
 are exceptional, so exceptional that we shall scarcely 
 profit by looking for rules comprehensive enough to 
 include them all, especially when we recall that 
 "poetic license" — that is, the liberty to ignore a rule 
 on occasion — has been a recognized, though ill-de- 
 fined, privilege of the poet ever since blank verse 
 came into use in England. I am sure that in many 
 a case the poet would either have us "ask the Brown- 
 ing Society," or say bluntly, "I chose to do it that 
 way." 
 
 The lines which would fairly come under one or 
 other of these explanations form the irreducible resi- 
 duum which is inevitable in any product of fallible 
 human effort. But a great many lines which are 
 puzzling at first glance, explain themselves, if we 
 can get at the simple underlying principle, too often 
 hidden by its Protean manifestations. It will help 
 us at the outset to recall some of the things common 
 to poetry and prose. 
 
 To begin with, I suppose it will be granted that 
 the ultimate secret of effectiveness in prose Hes in 
 the proper distribution of emphasis, and that the 
 various rules of rhetoric are only specific applications 
 of the general principle. Inasmuch as good poetry 
 is also effective composition, it would be strange if 
 the laws of its effectiveness were not also in some 
 wise dependent on the proper distribution of em- 
 phasis. To be sure, poetry has methods and effects 
 which are peculiarly its own, and it is interesting 
 to see how these modify, and are modified by, the 
 
 65 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 ordinary laws of rhetoric; but just now we are 
 looking for points of resemblance. 
 
 Blank verse, as we have already seen, is like prose 
 in that its sentence length and paragraph length are 
 not definitely affected by the structure of the verse. 
 Moreover, even a cursory reading shows us that 
 Wordsworth and Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, 
 for example, have not found it necessary to use a 
 syntax that is materially different from that of the 
 prose of their time. In prose, a persistent clinging 
 to the normal order in sentence after sentence is 
 monotonous, and therefore inexperienced writers en- 
 deavor to change this normal order for the sake of 
 variety. The experienced craftsman, however, finds 
 that any variation from the normal order or syntax 
 attracts attention, and that unless the emphasis so 
 gained is justified, there is an actual loss. In short, 
 the practised writer of prose avails himself of the 
 conspicuousness of variation from the normal sen- 
 tence in order to get the desired emphasis. The in- 
 stances cited by Professor J. W. Bright^ of ex- 
 traordinary pronunciations (w«-governed, pr e-cist\y, 
 /c-rusalem, and re-markable) are exactly cases in 
 point. The ordinary, normal pronunciation fails en- 
 tirely to give them the emphasis desired, so the re- 
 sort is at once to a variation from the normal, violent 
 and marked in proportion to the need for emphasis, 
 and justified by that need,^ 
 
 1 "Proper Names in Old English Verse," in Proc. 
 M. L. A., XIV, 347-68. 
 
 2 Professor J. B. Mayor, in his "Chapters on English 
 Metre," 2d ed., p. 219, says: "The typical or standard 
 line of each pure metre consists of so many perfectly 
 regular feet with a marked pause at the end of the 
 line, but with no other pause, at least none of such a 
 nature as to clash with the metre by dividing the feet. 
 Since a series of such typical lines would be found 
 intolerably monotonous, the skill of the versifier is 
 
 •66 
 
FEET 
 
 In the order of the words of its sentences, also, 
 the best blank verse of the past century does not 
 differ from the best prose. Milton's verse is the only 
 obstacle to making my statement general, but even 
 Milton is only an apparent exception, for his speech 
 was not deliberately perverted to fit his verse, but 
 was the natural, unaffected expression of the man 
 who had for so many busy years been Latin secre- 
 tary to Cromwell. Precisely in this fact do we find 
 the reason why Milton's verse, which sounds so easy 
 and natural, has not been successfully imitated, for 
 to no Englishman but Milton has Milton's speech 
 been really native. In short, all our good blank 
 verse is like good prose in its syntax and its word- 
 order. 
 
 Blank verse is unlike prose in that, in addition to 
 the larger and irregular rhythms found in serious 
 and elevated speech, it has a regular rhythm of foot 
 and line. The foot rhythm is filled normally by an 
 unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, and 
 as a rule the word-accents and the metrical accents 
 coincide. Obviously, a long succession of such feet 
 would be as monotonous as a succession of sentences 
 
 shown by the manner in which he reconciles freedom 
 with law — i.e., by the amount of variety he is able 
 to introduce without destroying the general rhythmical 
 effect." That he does not mean that variety is sought 
 by the poet for its own sake, is shown by his state- 
 ment on page i8. apropos of caesural pauses near the 
 ends of the verse, that "the very fact that such a 
 rhythm is usually avoided makes it all the more effec- 
 tive, when the word so isolated is felt to be weighty 
 enough to justify its position." One of his quotations 
 from Swinburne will show its ineffectiveness when un- 
 justified: 
 
 Pride, from profoundest humbleness of heart 
 Born, self-uplift at once and self-subdued 
 Glowed, seeing his face whose hand had borne such 
 part. (Marino Faliero, Dedication) 
 
 67 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 built on exactly the same plan. It seems just as 
 obvious that any marked variation in the feet would 
 attract attention. The most satisfactory statement 
 of the way in which this variation comes about is 
 that of Mr. T. S. Omond : 
 
 ''If periods constitute rhythm, they must do so by 
 uniform succession. Syllables do not supply this 
 absolute recurrence; their order of succession is 
 changeful, capricious. They need to be contrasted 
 \ with underlying uniformity. That substratum seems 
 \afforded by time. Isochronous periods form the 
 units of metre. Syllabic variation gets its whole 
 force from contrast with these, is conceivable only in 
 relation to these." ("Study of Metre," 4.) 
 
 "Syllables exist before verse handles them, and 
 are not wholly amenable to its handling. They can- 
 not be coaxed to keep exact time, and of course can- 
 not be chopped or carved into fragments. From 
 this very inability, poets in their unconscious inspira- 
 tion draw beauty. They delight us by maintaining 
 va continual slight conflict between syllables and time. 
 It must not go too far, or the sense of rhythm per- 
 ishes, and the line becomes heavy, inert, prosy. But 
 within limits the contest is unceasing." ("Metrical 
 Rhythm," 21.) 
 
 "Accentual scansionists nearly always minimise 
 the difference between verse and prose. For, taking 
 English syllables by themselves, there is really no 
 difference. The difference — a real and true one — 
 lies in the setting. Verse sets syllables to equal time- 
 measures, prose to unequal." (lb. 24.)^ 
 
 The important point here is that just because syl- 
 lables "cannot be coaxed to keep exact time," the 
 
 1 For a more recent discussion than Mr. Omond's, 
 and an equally admirable one, see Chapters IV and V 
 of Professor Raymond M. Alden's "Introduction to 
 Poetry," New York, 1909. 
 
 68 
 
FEET 
 
 time is more or less completely filled by syllables. 
 Let us apply this to blank verse, and see how it helps 
 us to understand some details better than we have 
 understood them. Even the ten syllables which go 
 to make up the ordinary heroic line vary in their 
 importance so much that more than one prosodist 
 has tried to indicate their varying weight by mark- 
 ing them o, I, 2. It is easy to find lines in which 
 beyond doubt the five even, syllables carry both 
 metrical and logical stress, and yet one line moves 
 quickly, another slowly, and although in both the 
 five stressed syllables are indubitably stressed, the 
 stresses are not all of equal weight. We have, there- 
 fore, even in perfectly regular lines, as Mr. Omond 
 says, "a continual slight conflict between syllables 
 and time." From the standpoint of rhetoric, these 
 slight variations in the weight of syllables furnish\ 
 one of the most important and most delicate ways/ 
 of securing the nicest distribution of emphasis. 
 
 The simplest variation from the normal line con- 
 sists in the substitution of a trisyllabic foot — the 
 slipping in of an extra, unstressed syllable. In some 
 generations (notably in the i8th century) this extra 
 syllable was elided and indicated by an apostrophe, 
 although "apostrophation," as Professor Saintsbury 
 contemptuously calls it, was protested against at 
 least two hundred years ago.^ In many cases we 
 cannot say positively that the apparent extra syllable 
 is not slurred or elided, for it constantly happens 
 
 1 In 1709, Dr. Wm. Coward wrote, in his "Poetica 
 Licentia discuss'd" : "I am of opinion that Dactyls and 
 other Feet, as Anapests, etc., ought to be allow'd in 
 English Metre, though Mr. Dryden restrains all to 
 Dissyllables. For it's very plain, that none please the 
 Fancy that offend the Ear (as the Dispensarian Poet 
 says). And the Words, Delicate, Moderate, Crucible, 
 Generous, run much better than DeVcate, Mod'rate, 
 Cruc'ble, Gen'rous, to make 'em English Spondees." 
 
 69 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 that our knowledge of sow such words as "ghmmer- 
 ing" or ''several" are spelled leads us to think of 
 them as having three syllables, when likely enough 
 we pronounce only two, or two and a fraction — for 
 both the semi-vocalic liquids and what the phone- 
 ticians call the *'on-glide" contribute delicately but 
 perceptibly to "fill the time." (To many people, 
 "flower," for example, looks like two syllables, but 
 "flour" like only one; so with "higher" and "hire.") 
 These trisyllabic feet are usually called anapests or 
 dactyls, and although Mr. Omond recognises clearly 
 that the three syllables are read in what he calls 
 "duple time," I do not think that any one has hitherto 
 pointed out that these anapests which we find in 
 blank verse are nearly always of a kind not charac- 
 teristic of triple time measures. A standard anan 
 pestic line is Byron's 
 
 The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold. 
 
 If we compare this with Tennyson's 
 
 Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, 
 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 
 And murmuring of innumerable bees (Princess, VII) 
 
 we see that in Tennyson's lines the two unstressed 
 syllables are of unequal weight, that one of them is 
 almost negligible in pronunciation, whereas in By- 
 ron's line the two unstressed syllables are clear and 
 distinct, and approximately equal in value, f Byron 
 even crowds in or slurs a third unstressed syllable 
 in /rian came down/.) It makes no material dif- 
 ference in the effect of Tennyson's lines whether 
 you practically elide the lighter syllables, or merely 
 pronounce them rapidly — in either case the passage 
 gets its desired effect of hurry. Writers of non- 
 dramatic blank verse have confined their trisyllabic 
 feet to this particular type of anapest, which it may 
 
 70 
 
FEET 
 
 be worth while to call a 'duple time' anapest. Of 
 course there are instances of the full three syllables, 
 but I know of no writer of blank verse who does 
 not in the main observe this convention.^ 
 
 'Duple time' anapests, then, though frequent, arj^ >/ 
 as a rule not sought for, but merely not avoided-/^ 
 cases like "amorous/' "delicate," and the like, where 
 it is easier to slip in the extra syllable than, to change 
 the word or the rhythm. The proportion of such 
 substitutions, I feel pretty sure, is about what might 
 be expected of poets who neither seek variety for 
 its own sake, nor avoid it when it offers naturally. 
 Such passages as the three lines from Tennyson ■. 
 quoted above, where we are sure both of the artful- 
 ness and of the effectiveness, are exceptional. In 
 passages where the movement of the thought is slow, 
 anapests are likely to be few ; where the thought 
 or the- mood is light and rapid, anapests are likely 
 to come of themselves, though not to so great an 
 extent as one might think, for the reason that a 
 trisyllabic foot is only one of many ways of securing 
 rapidity of movement. 
 
 Inasmuch as anapests do not involve any shift 
 of accent, trochees, which do, seem therefore more 
 marked variations from the normal iambus. When . 
 the trochee comes at the beginning of the line, how-.^ 
 ever, it does not break the swing of the verse verW 
 much, for the almost unavoidable pause at the enci 
 of the preceding line keeps the two stresses from 
 
 1 Coleridge's anapestic substitutions in iambics oc- 
 curred, it will be remembered, not in blank verse, but 
 in four-beat couplets. But the anapests of Christahel 
 are, to my ear, in triple time, and the dissyllabic feet 
 (even the occasional monosyllabic ones) are not iambs 
 but "slowed" anapests. Therefore I suspect that the 
 practical limitation of blank verse to "duple time" ana- 
 pests is not merely a convention, but a fundamental 
 necessity. 
 
 71 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 coming abruptly together.^ For this reason trochees 
 in the first foot are much more numerous than those 
 in all the other places put together. Many dissyl- 
 lables, such as present participles, when they come 
 at the beginning of the line, are obviously trochaic. 
 But many other possible trochees may just as rea- 
 sonably be slightly stressed iambs, or so neutral 
 that we say they have 'hovering' or 'distributed' ac- 
 cent, or occasionally they may even be spondees — 
 according to how the reader chooses to distribute the 
 emphasis. These recognisable gradations between 
 obvious trochees and obvious iambs are just like the 
 differences already pointed out in regular iambs — 
 they are delicate adjustments of syllables to an ar- 
 bitrary rhythm. These adjustments, it may be re- 
 marked, are so delicate that attempts to tabulate 
 
 1 1 assume the most severe condition — a trochee fol- 
 lowing a run-on line in which the final syllable is clearly- 
 stressed, as in: 
 
 with notice of a hart 
 
 Taller than all his fellows (Marriage of Geraint, 149!) 
 or 
 
 his quick instinctive hand 
 
 Caught at the hilt. (lb. 209-10) 
 
 On the other hand, where the preceding line is stopt, as in : 
 As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, 
 Running too vehemently to break upon it (lb. 77-8) 
 
 or where it ends in an unstressed or feminine ending, as in : 
 
 and in April suddenly 
 
 Breaks from a coppice (lb. 338-9) 
 
 or, 
 
 and I see her 
 
 Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur's hall (117-8) 
 
 an initial trochee can hardly be said to break the swing 
 of the rhythm at all. Initial trochees after stopt lines 
 are, I think, most common. 
 
 72 
 
FEET 
 
 them result chiefly in recording the reader's elocu- 
 tion.^ 
 
 Trochees in iambic verse are essentially casei 
 where the logical and metrical stresses do not coini 
 cide, and, especially after the first foot, are sure tp 
 attract attention just because they result in striking 
 variations from the normal rhythm or from the 
 normal pronunciation. In such cases, words and 
 rhythm clash, and one must yield, or at least be 
 modified by the other. As a rule the metrical accent 
 yields, because the break in the swing of the verse 
 fits the sense, as in 
 
 The prince's blood/spirted/upon his scarf 
 
 (Marriage of Geraint) 
 
 or 
 
 Long lines of cliff/breaking/have left a chasm 
 
 (Enoch Arden) 
 
 or 
 
 1 In one of his "Chapters on English Metre" (2d ed., 
 pp. I57f.), Professor J. B. Mayor takes up Surrey's 
 blank verse, and in contradiction to J. A, Symonds, who 
 thought Surrey averse "to any departure from iambic 
 regularity," thinks his verse full of trochees. For my- 
 self, I think Symonds right and Professor Mayor 
 wrong, for I am as much impressed by the dominance 
 of the metrical rhythm in Surrey as I am by its subor- 
 dination in the plays of Shakspere's last period. But 
 the important thing here is not which of the two critics 
 is right; it is that the balance between the syllables and 
 the rhythm is so uncertain that acute and candid critics 
 find in it a basis for radical disagreement. I am quite 
 sure that I am confessing neither conceit nor eccentri- 
 city but only a common experience, when I say that 
 I have never yet seen a page of verse scanned exactly 
 as I should scan it. The truth is that this very pos- 
 sibility of giving even the trifling details of the melody 
 an individual interpretation that makes them peculiarly 
 our own, is one of the charms of verse made possible 
 by the "continual slight conflict between syllables and 
 time." 
 
 73 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Sang, and the sand/danced at/the bottom of it. 
 
 (Balin & Balan) 
 
 It has been contended, notably by Professor J. W. 
 Bright, that we do not find trochees in iambic verse 
 except at the beginning cf the hne or after a pause. 
 What such prosodists would do with lines like these 
 I do not know; to scan 'spirit^(i' or 'danced af 
 seems to me preposterous/ 
 
 / Instances in which the metrical accent seems to 
 (dominate, and the word accent to yield, are relatively 
 not numerous, and are important mainly because 
 they give rise to misconceptions. These instances, so 
 far as I have observed, are of two kinds only. In 
 the first kind the metre does not really dominate, but 
 only appears to do so to modern readers. I mean in- 
 stances in which words have changed their accent, 
 as in Shakspere. These instances call for mention 
 here only because to our ears there is a clash between 
 the word and the rhythm, in which the rhythm wins, 
 and because we often sacrifice the proper emphasis 
 by ignoring the old pronunciation. A glaring ex- 
 ample, to my mind, is Juliet's cry 
 
 I have no joy of this contract to-night. 
 It seems to me that a shift of the metrical stress 
 to make it correspond with the modern word-accent 
 (as I have heard capable actresses recite the line) 
 positively spoils the sense. Keep the rhythm and 
 
 1 It is possible to scan these lines with a 'rest' before 
 the medial trochee, thus : 
 
 The prin/ce's blood/ x spirt/ed upon/his scarf, 
 
 and it is also possible to maintain that, when a medial 
 trochee brings two stressed syllables together, the 
 juxtaposition of itself creates a pause; but it is to be 
 noticed that the foot which is thus made up of a rest 
 and a stressed syllable is invariably followed by a 
 "duple time" anapest. In non-dramatic blank verse, at 
 least, I have found ho such lines as 
 
 The prince's blood/ x dropped/upon/his scarf. 
 
 74 
 
FEET 
 
 joy gets the emphasis it needs; change the rhythm, 
 and contract stands out in uncalled-for prominence. 
 The second kind, also found chiefly in the older 
 poets, consists of lines which are, to say the least, 
 puzzling and uncertain. In Surrey, for instance, as 
 already said, I think the rhythm dominated, and 
 therefore that such lines as 
 
 Worship was done to Ceres the goddess, 
 and 
 
 Unto the son of Venus the goddess, 
 
 were meant to be perfectly regular. (The matter 
 would be much simpler if we were discussing ballad 
 measures instead of blank verse.) I am not so cer- 
 tain about 
 
 That now in Carthage loitereth reckless. 
 
 There are a number of such lines in Surrey, so many 
 that they point either to the dominance of the rhythm 
 or else they are the result of deliberate artistic ex- 
 periment. The latter view is conceivable, although 
 many details of his verse show him to have been a 
 very conservative pioneer (cf. p. 92). Granting, 
 however, that these instances are experiments ; other 
 poets have been shy about following Surrey's lead. 
 In Milton, Mr. Bridges finds only three instances 
 of a trochee in the fifth foot : 
 
 Beyond all past example and future (P. L. x. 840) 
 
 Of thrones and mighty seraphim prostrate (vi. 841; 
 
 and the better known 
 Which of us who beholds the bright surface. 
 
 (P. L. vi. 472) 
 
 However Milton intended us to read these lines, one 
 thing is evident : they are unusually striking instances 
 of the "conflict between syllables and time.'' In this 
 very fact, indeed, probably lies the reason why such 
 
 75 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 lines are few, although Mr. Bridges thinks /suris-Ct 
 "a very beautiful inversion," In modern blank verse 
 I have noted no such cases at all, although I do not 
 doubt that some may be found. In Tennyson, very 
 rarely, we find a double trochee at the end of the 
 line, as in: 
 
 Down the low turret stairs palpitating (Princess) 
 
 At least one critic, I suppose, would insist upon 
 scanning /palpitating. To my ear, /palpitating is 
 less startling than the instances just quoted from 
 Milton, because the two trochees together have much 
 the effect of a feminine ending.^ 
 
 These lines from Surrey, Milton, and Tennyson 
 are, it seems to me, clear illustrations of the fact 
 that such violent wrenchings of the word accent as 
 /goddess have grown rarer and rarer in our blank 
 verse. The explanation of the change is not merely 
 that there has been growth in taste or skill, but that 
 there has been an increasing subordination of the 
 rhythm. Surrey, I am sure, set his words to rhythm, 
 as he might have set them to music; Tennyson, at 
 the other extreme, makes his rhythm an accompani- 
 ment to his words. 
 
 These variations from the normal iambus bear 
 only one noticeable relation to the caesural pause. 
 Occasionally, initial trochees (and dactyls) are em- 
 phasized by a caesura after the 2d syllable, or, to 
 put it the other way, the caesura is emphasized by 
 the trochee ; but such instances are relatively few. 
 [In five books of Paradise Lost, there are 35 trochees 
 
 1 Abbott and Seeley, in "English Lessons," sec. 138, 
 actually scan "jto-irs" in order to make a feminine end- 
 ing. Here, too, it is possible to allow a 'rest' after 
 "stairs"; but in this as in every other instance I can 
 find, the 'rest' is an alternative merely, and not an 
 indisputable phenomenon, as in "Break, break, break," 
 and many other lyrics. 
 
 76 
 
FEET 
 
 and 9 dactyls marked by a caesura — in 1.13% of 
 the lines ; in the Night Thoughts the figures are 95 
 and I, or 0.98% ; in the Prelude^ 66 and 10, or 
 0.95%; and in the Idylls 175 and 13, or 1.66%. 
 The proportion of caesuras after the 2d syllable em- 
 phasized by trochees or dactyls ranges from about 
 one-seventh in Paradise Lost to about one-fourth^ 
 in the Idylls. (Dactyls, which bear the same rela-' 
 tion to trochees that anapests do to iambs, in blank 
 verse almost never come after the first foot, and are 
 even more certain than anapests to have one of the 
 unstressed syllables very light.) 
 
 Since a trochee, except in the last foot, is usually 
 followed by an iamb, the combination x x may have 
 several distinct cadences. The most common one 
 is often called a choriambus: 
 
 The sound . . . 
 
 -• X X > 
 
 Smote on her ear. (Geraint and Enid) 
 
 But, according to the punctuation or the division of 
 words, this arrangement of syllables may seem to 
 divide in one or two other ways, for example : 
 
 she saw 
 
 > X X - 
 
 Diist,/and the points/of lances (Geraint and Enid) 
 and 
 
 ^ X X ^ 
 
 Thus— /and not else/. (Gareth and Lynette) 
 
 or 
 
 -- X X >• 
 
 Dyeing it;//and/his quick instinctive hand. 
 
 (Marriage of Ger.) 
 
 These last two ways give monosyllabic feet as well 
 as anapests and dactyls which seem to have triple 
 rather than duple time. There is another possible 
 monosyllabic foot occasionally found in non-drama- 
 tic blank verse, in such lines as Tennyson's 
 Laid widow'd of the power/w/his eye, 
 
 77 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 or Shakspere's line in Julius Ccesar, 
 
 As fivt./ drives /oni fire, so pity pity. 
 
 I have already spoken of the instances — very rare 
 in non-dramatic verse — of indubitable syncopation, 
 of nine-syllable lines, with accent on first and last 
 syllables, in which the monosyllable (at beginning 
 or end of line, as you choose) is helped out by the 
 line-pause. In these nine-syllable lines there does 
 seem to be something which corresponds to a 'rest' ; 
 in the other instances, however, it is to be noted 
 that the monosyllable is not left to take up the time 
 of a foot either by itself or by means of a 'rest,' 
 but is compensated for, either by adjoining trisyl- 
 labic feet, or by a monosyllable so full in sound, so 
 capable of extension, as to fill at least part of the 
 time of the missing syllable.^ 
 
 Whatever may be the practice in other measures, 
 therefore, non-dramatic blank verse scrupulously 
 (avoids monosyllabic feet in which the remaining time 
 of the foot is filled out by a 'rest.' It is important 
 |to notice, in the instances here cited, that the possible 
 differences of opinion are not about what syllables 
 are stressed and what ones unstressed, but only 
 about the almost purely academic question as to just 
 where in those arrangements of syllables we are to 
 mark the feet. It is sufficient, I think, to point out 
 that a simple shift of accent affords a considerable 
 opportunity for delicate adaptation of the movement 
 of the line to the mood or feeling.^ 
 
 1 In the lines last quoted, the reader may easily test 
 this point by substituting "strength" for Tennyson's 
 "power," and "heat" for Shakspere's "fire." 
 
 2 It seems hardly necessary to mention that a caesura 
 in the middle of an iambic foot may be considered to 
 give the effect of an amphibrach plus a monosyllable. 
 Such refinements only multiply categories without add- 
 ing to our understanding of the situation. 
 
 78 
 
FEET 
 
 The variations from the normal order of un- 
 stressed plus stressed syllables, which we have been 
 discussing, are among the ways in which the poets 
 get many of the time-sequences, or cadences, of 
 verse. If these cadences were solely variations in 
 the arrangement of stressed and unstressed sylla- 
 bles, it would be possible to describe and tabulate 
 them, and we should have one more metrical detail 
 which could be reported upon with precison. But 
 these cadences are also a result of the varying collo- 
 cations of syllables which not only differ among 
 themselves in weight and force, but which in addi- 
 tion vary according to their collocation with other 
 syllables — so that we constantly find gradations 
 which reduce and sometimes obliterate the distinc- 
 tion between stressed and unstressed syllables. 
 However, these cadences are not peculiar to blank 
 verse either in their character or their use, but are 
 common to most English metres and even to much 
 prose — they are properties of groups of syllables, 
 regardless of whether those groups occur in prose 
 or verse. Therefore, in the present condition of our 
 knowledge of the rhythms of English speech, I think 
 I have done all that is necessary as well as all that 
 is feasible, in calling attention to them and in point- 
 ing out the few respects in which, so far as I can 
 see, their use in non-dramatic blank verse has con- 
 ventional limitations. 
 
 79 
 
IV. TONE-QUALITY 
 
 One other matter calls for discussion here chiefly 
 because it is often and wrongly assumed to be a 
 part of the technique of blank verse. In moving as 
 we have in this study from the larger, more tangible 
 features of blank verse to its more elusive, less 
 measurable qualities, it may seem to many that we 
 are at last getting a little nearer the heart of the 
 mystery. In one sense that is true, for we are com- 
 ing to details which help to distinguish the poet from 
 the mere versifier — but, as I think, they are not pri- 
 marily details of prosody, although they may be 
 found at their best in poetry because verse is an 
 instrument of expression which encourages the very 
 highest skill in arranging words and syllables so as 
 to convey most precisely and delicately whatever 
 shade of thought or feeling the writer wishes to 
 put on record. But that effort toward exact expres- 
 sion, we need to remind ourselves, is a problem of 
 general rhetoric — a matter of prose as well as of 
 verse. 
 
 The last refinement of verse, the highest reach of 
 melody, seems to lie in tone-quality. One of the 
 most obvious manifestations of tone-quality — rhyme 
 — is peculiar to verse, but as we have seen, is in 
 blank verse either rare and accidental, or is reduced 
 to a merely rhetorical function of repetition. Two 
 other phases of tone-quality, alliteration and asso' 
 nance, have structural functions in some verse- 
 forms; but while they are frequent both in blank 
 verse and in prose, they are not essential or even 
 
 80 
 
TONE-QUALITY 
 
 invariable components of either, and poets and read- 
 ers alike seem to agree that they must not be so 
 obtrusive as to suggest structural purpose. 
 
 There is another phase of tone-quality, however, 
 more subtle than these, and just as certainly effec- 
 tive, which is often called 'tone-color.' When first 
 heard, the term sounds definite and self-explanatory, 
 but its precise content is difficult to fix, and it is 
 easily confused with other things. It is properly 
 applied, as sufficiently descriptive of one effect of 
 the collocation of sounds, to that part of the total 
 impression which we apprehend immediately and 
 without analysis. (I am speaking now of the pro- 
 cess of apprehension, and do not mean to imply that 
 tone-color defies analysis, although no satisfactory 
 studies of it have yet appeared.) The collocation 
 of sounds, it should be noted, by facilitating or re- 
 tarding the utterance of syllables, contributes to, 
 is perhaps the main source of, the ''continual slight 
 conflict between syllables and time." Tone-color, 
 however, although it does effect variations in the 
 rhythm, does not determine the time, and conse- 
 quently is not a structural element of verse. 
 
 Although tone-color is present in varying degrees 
 in prose as well as in verse, we are more likely to 
 expect or demand it in poetry, just because the man 
 who writes in verse thereby announces an artistic 
 intention, whereas the writer in prose may profess 
 to be only a plain, blunt man, and no orator. Mr. 
 Swinburne perhaps had tone-color in mind when 
 he declared that all good poetry must "sing" — surely 
 he did not mean that all good poetry must be lyrical, 
 but only that it must have melody. We have some- 
 thing of this sort in mind, by implication at least, 
 when we discriminate between a poet and a versifier 
 or rhymester. It might be supposed that blank 
 verse, just because its structure includes neither 
 
 8i 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 rhyme, assonance, nor alliteration, would either 
 tempt poets to enrich it with some of the devices 
 of tone-color, or would lend itself especially well 
 to the display of tone-color. So far as I have ob- 
 served, however, tone-color, as an almost invariable 
 accompaniment of poetry, is found in blank verse, 
 but not to any exceptional degree.^ 
 
 Tone-color, then, may be some particular charm 
 of utterance, characteristic of the individual, like 
 Chaucer's 'liquidity' of diction (as Matthew Arnold 
 called it), or M^ton^s_spngrity ; it may be almost 
 inseparable from one or more other things — for in- 
 stance, the 'happy phrase' involves both aptness of 
 idea and attractiveness of sound (tone-color), and in 
 the happiest instances the expression and the thing 
 expressed seem inextricably blended. But it is 
 necessary to discriminate carefully between details 
 like these and such things as for instance the dis- 
 tribution of caesuras, which indicate mastery of 
 technical details peculiar to the particular verse- 
 form — in this case, blank verse. 
 
 ^ One use of the phase 'tone-color' might be seri- 
 ously misleading if we attempted to apply it to blank 
 verse. The term is used in music as equivalent to 
 'timbre,' that quality of sound which enables us to tell 
 one musical instrument from another. Obviously, blank 
 verse has no 'timbre' and is not distinguished from 
 other verse-forms in that way. It would, to be sure, 
 hardly be confused with many other verse-forms, but 
 the basis of discrimination is not tone-color, but the 
 tempo, or the rhyme-scheme, or the line-length, or all 
 three in combination. 
 
 82 
 
V. SUMMARY AND COMMENT 
 
 Blank verse, as we have seen, is characterised, as 
 compared with other verse- forms, by a minimum of i-"^ 
 requirements. Its positive characteristics are only 
 two — iambic feet and five-beat lines. It is without 
 rhyme or stanza-form, the first of which affects 
 sentence-length and structure, the second paragraph- 
 length. Because of this freedom, it may take on a 
 very wide range of rhetorical styles without suffer- 
 ing any essential change or suppression of its struc- 
 tural details. Consequently, the absence of rhyme, 
 which is the most obvious feature of blank verse, 
 is also by far the most important one, for although 
 a decided change in sentence-length or structure 
 will affect the proportions of run-on and endstopt 
 lines, it will not change their character or function. 
 The rhetorical differences between the blank verse 
 of Milton and of Young, for example, show metri- 
 cally in contrasting proportions of run-on lines, and 
 of endstopt lines, but do not change their character. 
 In the couplets of Pope and Keats, on the other 
 hand, a similar rhetorical difference means similarly 
 different proportions of run-on and endstopt lines, 
 but it also changes the rhyme from its structural 
 function of marking the sense to a decorative one 
 of marking the line-rhythm. Because of this free- 
 dom with which blank verse adapts itself to widely 
 different rhetorical styles, it can be used to express 
 almost any mode of treatment or feeling, without 
 raising questions as to its technical suitability. Com- 
 
 83 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 pare this adaptability with the demonstrably limited 
 range both of material and treatment to which the 
 'strict' heroic couplet is suited. 
 
 From this structural flexibility of blank verse it 
 happens that we have no 'formal' or 'standard' type 
 of blank verse, as we have, for example, of the 
 'strict' heroic couplet. This strict couplet is to be 
 found in every generation from Shakspere down, 
 not sporadically but constantly, and in form as 
 'severe' as Pope's. But blank verse has no well-de- 
 fined, clearly recognisable technique, which would 
 enable one to say that Cowper's, for instance, was 
 more or less 'correct' than Milton's, or Words- 
 Iworth's than Tennyson's. Again, we cannot say of 
 'any blank verse that its author shows remarkable 
 'skill in bending the verse-form to serve a theme or 
 treatment apparently alien to its use, in the sense in 
 which we can point out Dryden's management of 
 the heroic quatrain in his Annus Mirabilis. More- 
 over we can rarely assert with technical exactness 
 that a poet has in his blank verse revealed hitherto 
 unexpected capabilities of the form, as we can of 
 Shelley's use of the Spenserian stanza in the Revolt 
 of Islam; and on the other hand we cannot often 
 clearly demonstrate that in technical respects any 
 poem in blank verse has found the form most ex- 
 quisitely adapted to its expression, as we can of 
 Pope's couplets, or Byron's Don Juany or Tennyson's 
 In Memoriam. For clearly technical reasons — chiefly 
 the opportunity for dialogue which will sound like 
 real speech, without risking the oratorical or de- 
 clamatory effect of the couplet — blank verse is of 
 all our verse-forms, the most exactly suited to the 
 drama; but I doubt if we can say of any non- 
 dramatic poem that it ought not to have been 
 written in blank verse, or that its form was ill- 
 chosen, as we can of Owen Meredith's Lucile. In 
 
 84 
 
SUMMARY AND COMMENT 
 
 blank verse the trouble is almost certain to be with 
 the poet and not with his choice of blank verse. 
 
 In the twenty-three poets we have studied, the 
 percentages of run-on and endstopt, or even of un- 
 broken lines, seem accidents of technique rather 
 than indications of treatment or measures of skill. 
 For example, we found that Philips and Newcomb 
 were the men who used more run-on Hues than Mil- 
 ton; that Young used more endstopt lines than 
 Pope did in his couplets ; that Surrey and Gascoigne 
 had more unbroken lines than the rest. In the coup- 
 let, on the contrary, the proportions of 'run-on' 2d 
 lines furnish an accurate measure of 'strictness' or 
 'looseness.' ('Strictness' and 'looseness' I use here 
 in their accepted sense, to indicate whether the 
 couplet is characteristically stopped or free; the 
 terms have no implication now, as they perhaps had 
 at first, of either praise or blame.) That is to say, 
 these devices which undoubtedly affect the flexibility 
 of the verse, do not in blank verse have 'standard' 
 proportions within sufficiently narrow limits either 
 to make any one of them by itself a sure measure 
 of the poet's skill, or to establish 'types' of blank 
 verse. The reason is that the absence of rhyme 
 makes these various devices less emphatic and more 
 interdependent than in the couplet. The caesuras, 
 on the other hand, gain in emphasis by the absence 
 of the rhyme, and though such figures as could be 
 gathered showed that blank verse does not tend 
 much more than the couplet to distribute its caesuras, 
 their distribution is more important in the movement 
 of the verse, just because they are not subdued by, 
 the stronger line-rhythm which the rhyme gives.. 
 These two things together — the reduced emphasis 
 of run-on and endstopt lines, and the increased 
 importance of pauses within the line — combine to 
 make the poet's distribution of his caesuras the one 
 
 85 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 detail which serves most nearly as a measure of his 
 mastery of the technique of blank verse. 
 
 In spite of the wide field for individual expression 
 offered by blank verse in the poets we have studied 
 we have found a considerable number of conven- 
 tions, some of them merely traditional, others based 
 on the limitations of the form. Unstressed endings, 
 we saw, were either avoided or used very little by 
 all the men but Browning. The men who avoided 
 them also excluded them from their couplets and 
 looked upon them as a defect in heroic verse whether 
 it rhymed or not. They believed with Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson that "The music of the English heroic line 
 strikes the ear so faintly that it is easily lost, unless 
 all the syllables of every line co-operate together; 
 this co-operation can only be obtained by the preser- 
 vation of every verse unmingled with another as a 
 distinct system of sounds," although these writers 
 of blank verse did not altogether agree with John- 
 son that "this distinctness is obtained and preserved 
 by the artifice of rhyme." 
 
 In view of this theory of the "faintness" of the 
 music of the English heroic line, some of the con- 
 trasts between the practice of these poets in dramatic 
 and non-dramatic verse are especially illuminating. 
 Light and weak endings — an nth power of the un- 
 stressed ending — which are a familiar device of the 
 drama, are almost unknown in non-dramatic verse. 
 Feminine endings, an important feature of dramatic 
 verse, are either entirely avoided in non-dramatic 
 verse, or are but little used (except by Blair). More- 
 over, Milton entirely, and the others in the main, 
 use as feminine endings only words or phrases in 
 which the unstressed syllable is very Hght ; whereas, 
 in the drama, the unstressed syllable is frequently 
 heavy. Considering that Arnold alone gets a definite 
 and calculated eflFect by avoiding feminine endings, 
 
 S6 
 
SUMMARY AND COMMENT 
 
 and that the other moderns do not excUide the heavy 
 unstressed syllable, I suspect that the poets have 
 looked upon feminine endings in non-dramatic verse 
 rather as a convenient 'license' than as a positive 
 artistic device. In non-dramatic verse, too, the so- 
 called "epic" caesuras, which are akin to feminine 
 endings, are little used as compared with the drama ; 
 and lines shorter or longer than five beats are 
 avoided. Practically all the possible alexandrines 
 (and they are surprisingly few in number) can be 
 explained as having two trisyllabic feet, or feminine 
 endings with two unstressed syllables. The anapests 
 and dactyls are almost always 'duple time' feet, and 
 possible monosyllabic feet (except the very rare nine- 
 syllable lines) are invariably accompanied by com- 
 pensating anapests or dactyls. I cannot say whether 
 or not longer and shorter lines in the drama will 
 finally be explained as due to careless revision by 
 the author or others, but in our present texts they 
 are vastly more numerous than in non-dramatic 
 verse. I do not know, either, whether or not 'duple 
 time' anapests and dactyls are characteristic of all 
 blank verse. In any case these items show that 
 the absence in non-dramatic blank verse of features 
 which mark and strengthen the rhythm has mini- 
 mised the use of devices which in other measures 
 vary the rhythm, but in blank verse tend to sub- 
 merge it. Moreover — though the point needs further 
 study — ^the poets seem to have been about equally 
 careful of the iambic rhythm and of the five-beat 
 line. 
 
 Although this study does not pretend to be a his- 
 tory, it does make clear a few changes in the prac- 
 tice of blank verse between Milton and Swinburne. 
 On the whole, after Milton, endstopt and unbroken 
 lines and feminine endings increased; and run-on 
 lines grew materially fewer. There are fewer cae- 
 
 87 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 suras at the ends of feet, and consequently more at 
 the middle of feet ; there are not only more caesuras 
 near the ends of the line, but more of them are em- 
 phasized, especially by connection with run-on lines. 
 These decreases in run-on and increases in endstopt 
 and unbroken lines look like an attempt to empha- 
 size line-rhythm, but all the other changes tend in 
 varying degrees to subordinate the line-rhythm. 
 Still there has been no radical change from Milton's 
 day to ours ; the 'development' of non-dramatic blank 
 verse has meant only experiments in the delicacies 
 of manipulation. This attention to the subtler ef- 
 fects, this 'sophistication' if you v^ish, in making the 
 rhythm less marked has brought it about that more 
 feet retain their neutral character, has made varying 
 collocations of sounds contribute their ease or diffi- 
 culty of pronunciation to a somewhat more percep- 
 tible shading of the tempo, to something more 
 tangibly quantitative than before. I am sure that 
 in Surrey the rhythm was dominant, that in Milton I 
 it was stronger than in the moderns. In Surrey and I 
 Milton we can find, if not parallels, at least approxi- 
 mations to such dominance of rhythm over logical 
 stresses as in 
 
 On the light fantastic toe, 
 or 
 
 Where an army in battle array had marched out. 
 
 In modern blank verse at any rate the contrast be- 
 tween stressed and unstressed syllables has grown 
 less sharp. The change is obvious, but I cannot say 
 how far it is a result of the practice of blank verse, 
 and how far blank verse shares it with modern 
 English verse in general. 
 
 What I have said in the last few pages should 
 serve to correct a few common misconceptions as to 
 the importance of particular details of technique. 
 The most serious and widespread is the general no- 
 
 88 
 
SUMMARY AND COMMENT 
 
 tion, contained by implication in many obiter dicta 
 about this or that poet's 'mastery/ that blank verse 
 has many secrets peculiar to itself. We have seen 
 that this notion is generally the result of a failure 
 to discriminate carefully between details of technique 
 peculiar to blank verse, and those common to most 
 good verse or even to most effective composition 
 whether in verse or prose. The chief correction of 
 details is that in the case of both run-on lines and 
 feminine endings we have somewhat overestimated 
 their importance in determining the movement of 
 the verse. Neither device is used so often or is so 
 necessary as is often assumed. 
 
 John Milton, as I have shown, with the exception 
 of run-on lines, used less often than the moderns 
 the various devices for subordinating the rhythm. 
 Both historically and technically it is interesting that 
 Milton's treatment of his verse and the tightening 
 of the couplet came in the same generation and were 
 due to the same causes. Indeed there is something 
 ironic in the fact — usually overlooked — that the very 
 details of technique which contribute most to the 
 modern reader's pleasure in Milton's verse are pre- 
 cisely the details which are most clearly attributable 
 to the generation in which Milton wrote — that the 
 same generation and the same tendencies should 
 have produced both that particular type of couplet 
 which the 19th century Romanticists most repro- 
 bated, and the blank verse epic which they most 
 unanimously and sincerely admired. Technically, 
 also, it is characteristic of the differences between 
 the two verse-forms that blank verse took the im- 
 pression of Milton's technique exactly as it took the 
 impression of his rhetoric, without establishing a 
 standard 'type' of blank verse in the sense in which 
 Dryden and Pope established the vogue of a type 
 of couplet. 
 
 89 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Milton's verse has three especial qualities, two of 
 which have been often commented upon. The first 
 t-<)f these is his Latin sonority, his 'tone-color/ which 
 I have tried to show is not a quality peculiar to blank 
 verse. The second is his distribution of strong 
 (.-pauses, which has been somewhat overestimated ; 
 Milton does distribute his pauses widely and skil- 
 fully, but not demonstrably more than some other 
 men. The third, which has not hitherto been clearly 
 recognised, but which contributes greatly to the 
 /effectiveness of the other two, is his keeping care- 
 / fully to a more obvious rhythm than the later men. 
 ' (It is well to bear in mind that I am here pointing 
 out technical differences of attitude and treatment, 
 which help to explain differences of product, but 
 which do not necessarily involve any question of 
 the relative excellence of the product.) In just this 
 open recognition of the rhythm lies, it seems to me, 
 not only the chief difference between Milton's blank 
 verse and that of the later poets, but also its chief 
 technical distinction. It explains why Arnold's 
 Sohrah and Riistum, which is the only poem we 
 have studied in which the technical details are so 
 formal as to have a suggestion of artificiality, is also 
 the only poem which approaches the imposing stateli- 
 ness of Paradise Lost. It means that in this straight- 
 forward use of the conventional movements of the 
 verse-form. Paradise Lost has something in common 
 with the minuet and the oratorio. It means that 
 Milton frankly accepted the fact that he was using 
 a mode of expression which is not that of ordinary 
 life any more than an oratorio is, and that he used it 
 for precisely that reason — that it is not like ordinary 
 speech. Consequently, where the moderns seem 
 most often concerned with the ars celare artem, Mil- 
 ton seized upon the differences between his medium 
 of expression and everyday speech, and made them 
 obvious sources of effectiveness. 
 
 90 
 
VI. THE INDIVIDUAL POETS ^ 
 
 Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of: 1547, Aeneid, 
 II, IV. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 
 201 1 20.18 52.41 27.41 51-26 0.54 427 
 
 Tot. Percentage of caesuras after 
 
 Cses. Mid. End. i 2 3 
 
 1 169 18.82 81.18 4.61 11.20 3.93 
 
 456789 
 
 52.60 487 1360 4.79 3.76 0.68 
 
 Gascoigne, George: 1576, The Steele^ Glas. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fem. Uns. 
 
 1 179 17.64 28.15 5421 70.56 0.93 907 
 
 Tot. Percentage of caesuras after 
 
 Caes. Mid. End. 123 
 
 459 17.55 82.35 457 1394 305 
 
 4 5 6 789^ 
 
 61.65 3.92 5-88 3.26 3.05 0.65 
 
 Surrey and Gascoigne are alike in having less than 
 one-fifth of their lines run-on, although even that 
 proportion is distinctly greater than in the couplets 
 of Waller, Dryden, Pope, or even Chaucer. Surrey, 
 who was translating narrative, has many more end- 
 stopt lines than Gascoigne, who wrote satire, which 
 is presumably sententious. Gascoigne got from his 
 very large proportion of commastopt lines the flexi- 
 bility, as compared with the couplet, of tying a whole 
 bundle of parallel lines with one sentence. For ex- 
 ample, the 14th paragraph, which begins: "This is 
 the cause beleve me now, my Lorde," has 18 parallel 
 
 1 The poets are arranged as nearly as may be in the 
 order in which they wrote. 
 
 91 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 lines all in one sentence — 3, feat of rhetoric that, 
 however much beyond measure it may be, the coup- 
 let would hardly permit. Gascoigne has more com- 
 mastopt lines and many more unbroken lines than 
 any one else, and these two details of metre are 
 clearly due to his sentence-structure.^ In these 
 two men, whose verse is sometimes almost painfully 
 inelastic and uninspired, the relations of metrical 
 technique and rhetoric are somewhat less mistak- 
 able than in the work of more capable artists. Both 
 men show a naively mechanical counting of syllables, 
 and leave the impression that they commonly 
 wrenched stresses and word order to fit the metre; 
 certainly they show very little deftness in securing 
 a natural undercurrent of rhythm.^ 
 
 Both poets use very few feminine endings (only 
 II each), and these are all light syllables such as 
 -ed, -er, -ish, -eth, -ing; Surrey once ends a line 
 with — redoub, instead of — redouble. 
 
 Surrey has ten rhymes, one quatrain (2. 1019-22), 
 and two rhetorical repetitions (2. 462-3; 2. 1033-4). 
 Gascoigne has 9 rhymes, and one repetition ; in ad- 
 dition he has — past, — passe ; and — see, — seas. 
 
 Both poets show the stiffness of their versifica- 
 tion by having more than half of their caesuras after 
 the fourth syllable, and more than four-fifths at the 
 ends of feet. 
 
 1 There are over a dozen passages in The Steele Glas 
 in which a series of lines begin with the same word, 
 and are parallel in structure. This device is not neces- 
 sarily either vicious or ineffective; witness Shakspere's 
 Sonnet 66: "Tir'd with all these." 
 
 2 Some of Surrey's wrenchings to fit the measure are : 
 Minerva, M'merve; Achille, Menelae, Fyrrhus; Anchise, 
 and Anchises; 'lieved for believed; Moonlight, offspring, 
 children, bloodshed, goddess, season, palace, virgin, 
 phrensy. 
 
 In Gascoigne, -i-on, -i-ence, -i-or, are invariable 
 scansions. 
 
 92 
 
Tot. 
 
 
 Cses. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 9844 
 
 34-00 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 22.52 
 
 II. 19 
 
 JOHN MILTON 
 
 Milton^ John: 1667, Paradise Lost; 1671, Para- 
 dise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 Paradise Lost ^ 
 
 10558 58.36 16.91 24.73 28.92 1.4- 3-8- 
 Paradise Regained 
 
 2070 44.78 22.85 32.37 3932 372 5.70 
 Samson Agonistes 
 
 1758 41.41 27.24 31.25 49.09 10.29 6.31 
 
 3 Poems 2 14386 54.41 18.89 26.70 32.88 2.81 4.37 
 In Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, — 12,628 
 lines :^ 
 
 Percentage of caesuras after 
 End. I 2 3 
 
 66.00 i.oo 8.89 10.06 
 
 6789 
 24.98 10.83 948 0.87 
 
 The most interesting item about Milton's verse 
 is the steady drop from poem to poem in the pro- 
 portion of run-on lines, accompanied by an equally 
 marked increase in endstopt lines. The differences 
 between Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes 
 are very likely due to the change from long formal 
 speeches to relatively vivacious dialogue. The great- 
 est change, however, is between Paradise Lost and 
 Paradise Regained, and this shift in Milton's prac- 
 tice, in connection with the fact that in both Paradise 
 
 ^ In the different books of Paradise Lost, the pro- 
 portions vary irregularly, though the run-on lines never 
 fall to 50%, and the endstopt lines never rise above 
 20%. The relation between run-on and endstopt lines 
 is not marked, except that Books I and II, which have 
 5 or 6% more run-on lines than any other book, have 
 2% fewer endstopt than the others. 
 
 2 In the 792 blank verse lines of Camus, 1634, the 
 figures are: run-on, 40.90; endstopt, 18.43; commastopt, 
 40.67; unbroken, 54.29; feminine endings, 8.30; un- 
 stressed endings, 13.25. 
 
 3 The separate figures for the two poems are so nearly 
 alike that it does not seem worth while to add them to 
 the already burdensome number. 
 
 93 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Lost and Paradise Regained the run-on lines are 
 most frequent, and endstopt lines fewest in the ist 
 Book, perhaps implies that Milton's theory, strong 
 at the outset, yielded somewhat as the poet warmed 
 to his work. If we may assume that Milton thought 
 run-on lines a chief grace of blank verse, and end- 
 stopt lines the greatest bar to continuous melody, 
 then it would seem that he found his original pro- 
 portions difficult to maintain. This hypothesis may 
 seem a little more plausible when we remember that, 
 although Shelley and Swinburne use nearly as many 
 run-on lines as Milton did in Paradise Lost, and 
 fewer endstopt, Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, and 
 Tennyson use noticeably fewer run-on and more 
 endstopt lines. Commastopt lines which, as already 
 explained, serve on occasion either as run-on or end- 
 stopt, but are certainly more subdued in their effect 
 than either, are more frequent in Paradise Regained 
 and Samson Agonistes than in Paradise Lost. Only 
 Young, Philips, and Newcomb have a smaller pro- 
 portion of commastopt lines than Milton's average, 
 and only Newcomb fewer than Paradise Lost. 
 
 Milton's use of unbroken lines increased rather in 
 proportion to the decrease in run-on than to the in- 
 crease in endstopt lines. ^ This increase also is curi- 
 ously in accord with the practice of the later poets, 
 for Shelley, Tennyson, Swinburne, Browning, 
 Wordsworth, and Keats, all have a somewhat larger 
 proportion of unbroken lines than even Paradise 
 Regained. Here again, it seems that there may have 
 been some conflict between Milton's theory and his 
 practice. 
 
 In Paradise Lost, feminine endings occur in less 
 than 1.4% of the lines — there are only 146 in the 
 
 1 Nearly one-fifth of the unbroken lines in Samson 
 Agonistes are short lines, so that the increase over Para- 
 dise Regained is not significant. 
 
 Q4 
 
JOHN MILTON 
 
 whole 10,558 lines — but in Paradise Regained this 
 percentage is more than doubled, and in Samson 
 Agonistes rises to over 10%. In the two earlier 
 poems, feminine endings are certainly not frequent 
 enough to make their presence a ma,rked feature of 
 the verse, and even in the Samson Agonistes the 
 amount is small for dramatic verse. 
 
 For his feminine endings Milton almost invariably 
 chose words in which the extra syllable was light — 
 such words as these from Bk. XII: as^i^ming, rtsid- 
 ing, rather, Tdihevnacle, Testimony repre^^w^ng, 
 Cerew^wies, Spirit (twice), merits. Except for four 
 cases, toward the end of Bk. X, Milton does not 
 use feminine endings in Paradise Lost in which the 
 extra syllable is a pronoun, although he does admit 
 such endings 8 times in Paradise Regained, and over 
 50 times in Samson Agonistes. Mr. Bridges^ gives 
 two lines from Paradise Lost, which he reduces to 
 five beats by making the last two syllables extra- 
 metrical. In Samson Agonistes, however, as Mr. 
 Bridges points out, there are a number of lines which 
 are at least more easily scanned with six beats than 
 with five. 
 
 Of unstressed endings also, Milton used more and 
 more, although even 6.31% in Samson Agonistes is 
 hardly evidence of any special fondness for the de- 
 vice. Their entirely haphazard occurrence in the 
 various books of Paradise Lost, together with their 
 relatively small number, indicates, I think, that Mil- 
 ton at best took no pains to avoid them, as some of 
 his successors expressly did. 
 
 In each successive poem we find Milton using 
 fewer run-on, somewhat more endstopt, many more 
 unbroken lines, and noticeably more feminine and 
 unstressed endings. These facts are hardly debat- 
 able; the reasons or inferences are less certain. 
 
 1 "Milton's Prosody," p. 2 : — society, — satiety. 
 95 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Paradise Lost is pretty generally more esteemed, and 
 certainly better known, than Paradise Regained. 
 Are we to assume that Milton's verse deteriorated? 
 It is j>erhaps wiser to say that in Paradise Regained 
 Milton had, for him and under the circumstances, a 
 less happy subject, and that the relative popularity 
 of the two poems does not rest to an appreciable 
 extent on matters of verse technique. The fact that 
 Samson AgonisteSy the third poem, is quasi-dramatic 
 instead of epic, affords some basis for suggesting 
 that the last two poems were the work of a virtuoso 
 who knew that in Paradise Lost he had done one 
 thing admirably, and who would rather experiment 
 than duplicate the performance. Again, the fact 
 that these changes in versification correspond to the 
 order in which the poems were written, seems at 
 first glance to confirm the importance of metrical 
 tests in fixing chronology, and suggests comparison 
 with Shakspere. There is a certain parallel between 
 the two men, although we need to remember that 
 Shakspere began writing blank verse when he was 
 about twenty-five, and stopped before he was fifty; 
 whereas Milton wrote all three of his poems within 
 eight or ten years, and after he was fifty. In the 
 plays written about 1600 we find Shakspere's verse 
 at its highest efficiency as an easy, flexible medium 
 of expression, "a clear unwrinkled song," almost 
 free from metrical puzzles and vagaries. Thereafter, 
 Shakspere seems more and more to have experi- 
 mented with his verse, with no loss of mastery, with 
 perhaps snatches of more thrilling magic, but with 
 only rare and brief returns to the clear straightfor- 
 ward fluency of Tzvelfth Night or of Julius Ccesar. 
 Milton's history is like Shakspere's only in this, that 
 Paradise Lost is certainly freer from metrical puz- 
 zles and licenses than are the two later poems.^ 
 1 These comparisons, it should be understood, are of 
 
 96 
 
JOHN PHILIPS 
 
 Philips, John : 1701, The Splendid Shilling, 143 
 lines; 1705, Blenheim, 493 lines; 1708, Cyder, 1465 
 lines. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 3 Poems 2101 61.25 13.04 25.71 17.41 I ^ 2.71 
 Splendid Shilling, 
 
 143 44.05 18.15 37.80 50.34 
 Blenheim 493 64.90 10.95 24.15 15.21 
 Cyder 1465 61.70 13.24 25.06 14.94 
 
 Although both The Splendid Shilling and Blen- 
 heim are almost too short to give a sound basis for 
 inference, the increase in run-on lines and the de- 
 crease in endstopt and unbroken lines are more 
 marked than similar changes in any other poets 
 except Browning and Tennyson — men who wrote on 
 various themes during fifty years each. It is a little 
 remarkable that Newcomb and Philips, who are 
 among the earliest followers of Milton in our list, 
 should be the only ones to materially outdo him in 
 their use of run-on lines. 
 
 Watts, Isaac: 1709, A Sight of Christ, 73 lines; 
 To Sarissa, 80 lines; True Courage, 52 lines; The 
 Dacian Battle, 225 lines; Elegiac Thoughts on the 
 Death of Anne Warner, 99 Hues; To Mitio, I, II, 
 361 lines.2 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fem. Uns. 
 6 Poems 890 47-30 17-86 34.84 449 2.13 
 
 There is not enough of Watts' blank verse to 
 make it important; it is of interest only because his 
 
 facts of metrical technique, and their explanation and 
 application are both complicated by many other con- 
 siderations, such as in Shakspere a change of mood and 
 interests, an increasing subordination of verse to the 
 demands and opportunities of dramatic presentation, 
 and in Milton a possible flagging of interest or of 
 energy in Paradise Regained and a change from epic to 
 Greek choral drama in Samson Agonistes. 
 
 1 Blenheim, 96, — ^prowess. 
 
 2 Part III of To Mitio is Pindaric. 
 
 97 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 percentage of feminine endings, small as it is, has 
 been surpassed by but two men, Blair and Browning. 
 New COMB, Thomas: 1723, The Last Judgment 
 of Men and Angels. A poem in 12 books, after 
 the manner of Milton. 
 
 LI. Run, End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 Bks. 1,3, 5,7,9, II 
 
 6426 70.18 11.99 17-83 1739 
 Entire poem, 
 
 12383 "^ I ? 1 2 ? 
 
 In Bks. I, 3, 5, 7, 9, II Strong pauses after 
 
 Tot. Mid. End. i 2 3 
 
 1626 59-94 40.01 0.73 . 4.18 7.01 
 
 456789 
 13.96 22.38 20.04 29.76 1.83 0.06 
 
 Newcomb and his poem are all but unknown to- 
 day; he is not mentioned even by the special histo- 
 ries of his period, although the DNB gives him a 
 fraction of a column, and one kindly antiquarian 
 reports that he was ''descended on his mother's side 
 from the poet Spenser." As late as 1757, he pub- 
 lished ''Mr. Hervey's Contemplations on a Flower 
 Garden, done into blank verse (after the manner 
 of Dr. Young)," which was reprinted, with addi- 
 tions, in 1764. He does not deserve revival, al- 
 though as I recall his poem after several years it 
 was not unpleasant reading, — perhaps because it 
 was a beautiful folio printed in large type on un- 
 usually good paper. 
 
 Newcomb is extreme in all the details of his verse, 
 for he has more run-on lines than any one else, and 
 fewer endstopt, commastopt, and unbroken lines, 
 and he has only one feminine ending and two un- 
 stressed — all three doubtful cases. Judging from his 
 
 1 This — ever (8.134) is probably a mistake of the 
 printer, for in 25 other instances at the end of a line 
 it is printed — e'er; and — over is similarly printed — o'er 
 24 times. 
 
 98 
 
JAMES THOMSON 
 
 strong pauses, he is the earUest of the men here 
 studied to exploit the caesuras after the 5th and 7th 
 syllables, following Glover closely in the former, 
 and going even beyond Swinburne in the latter. 
 Aside from these caesuras, Newcomb allowed him- 
 self only the liberty of run-on lines, but of these 
 he made such extreme use that his endstopt and 
 commastopt lines together are no more numerous 
 than the endstopt lines cf Browning, Thomson, or 
 Gascoigne, and fall below those of Keats, Landor, 
 Arnold, or Blair. Newcomb shows, however, that 
 a man in Pope's day could write a very long, didactic 
 poem entirely free from either couplet structure or 
 its common rhetorical accompaniment of antithesis. 
 
 Thomson, James: 1726-30, The Seasons, 5423 
 lines; The Hymn, 118 Hues; 1727, To the Memory 
 of Sir Isaac Newton, 209 lines ; 1729, Britannia, 299 
 lines; To the Memory of Congrevc, 166 lines; 
 i7S4-^> Liberty, 3378 lines; 1738, To the Memory 
 of Lord Talbot, 371 lines. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 The Seasons 5423 30.00 28.72 41.28 32.67 
 6 Poems, 9964 i ^ 1.24 
 
 Tancred and Sigismunda, Acts I, III & V 
 
 1412 lines 37.25 2 
 
 1 Autumn, 269, — feature. Thomson has such evasions 
 of feminine endings as: 
 
 Wide o'er his isles the branching Oronoque (Summer, 834) 
 
 and 
 
 All is the gift of industry, — whate'er (Autumn, 141) 
 
 2 Once Thomson has — howe'er, but also in i. 4 
 — never, in a run-on line, though it is possibly a mis- 
 print. He admits such endings as — period, in i. 2; — 
 interest, — wMwerous, Sicily, in consecutive lines in 
 I. 4. 
 
 99 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 In The Seasons: 
 
 Tot. Percentage of caesuras after 
 
 C^s. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 End. 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 3815 
 
 34.34 
 
 65.66 
 
 6.97 
 
 7.36 
 
 3.74 
 
 Per cent 
 
 'run-on' 
 
 
 0.44 
 
 2.41 
 
 1.65 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 26.84 
 
 1370 
 
 25-19 
 
 7.75 
 
 6.00 
 
 2.14 
 
 
 
 
 4.50 
 
 3.61 
 
 1.18 
 
 Mr. J. H. Millar says of Thomson: "His blank 
 verse can boast a novelty of construction and an 
 originality of cadence unrivalled for more than a 
 century. It is not the blank verse of the Elizabeth- 
 ans, nor is it the blank verse of Milton, although, 
 as Mr. Raleigh has pointed out, it is not without 
 strong reminiscences of the latter. It is something 
 sui generis/' ("The Mid-Eighteenth Century," 
 1902, p. 184-5.) I confess that I do not understand 
 what Mr. Millar means by "novelty of construction" 
 or "original cadences," as applied to the technique 
 of Thomson's blank verse. It has neutral propor- 
 tions of run-on, endstopt, commastopt, and unbroken 
 lines, and avoids feminine and unstressed endings. 
 It has, like Milton's verse, almost exactly two- 
 thirds of its caesuras at the ends of feet; it carries 
 just a little farther Milton's massing of caesuras after 
 the 4th, 5th, and 6th syllables, with a consequent 
 reduction in the other percentages, except after 
 the I St and 9th syllables. After the ist syllable, 
 although Thomson has nearly seven times as many 
 pauses as Milton, none of the increase is in *run-on' 
 caesuras; after the 9th syllable, Thomson's 1.18% of 
 'run-on' caesuras is rivalled only by Landor, Words- 
 worth, Browning, and Tennyson. That is to say, 
 the one point in which Thomson may be said to 
 have gone beyond Milton in the direction of freedom 
 is in doubling Milton's percentage of Vun-on' cae- 
 
 100 
 
DAVID MAL'LET^ 
 
 suras after the 9th syllable; in all other respects, his 
 technique shows a marked reaction toward the 'cor- 
 rectness' of his age. At the same time, his poems 
 are not mere unrhymed couplets, but real blank 
 verse, as genuinely so as Milton's in all that dis- 
 tinguishes blank verse from rhymed measures. 
 Nevertheless, the popularity of The Seasons — which 
 did so much to establish the vogue of blank verse, 
 although they by no means 'introduced' it — was due 
 then as now not to their being blank verse, but to 
 their contents, to their fresh and unmistakably genu- 
 ine attitude toward nature. Consequently, while 
 Thomson is important in the history of English 
 Romanticism, I cannot see that he contributed any- 
 thing to the development of blank verse beyond the 
 mere fact of using it almost exclusively. 
 
 Mallet, David: 1728, The ExcursioUy 977 lines; 
 1747, Amyntor and Theodora, or, The Hermit, 1406 
 lines. 
 
 Run. End. Com. Unb. Fem. Uns. 
 
 35.62 20.69 4369 21.31 none 0.62 
 
 Percentage of caesuras after 
 
 End. 123 
 
 67.87 2.75 6.65 5.37 
 
 6789 
 
 26.39 8.25 5.00 0.88 
 
 Mallet shows the disapproval in which his genera- 
 tion held the feminine ending by twice writing — o'er 
 at the end of a line. In the mechanical details of 
 his versification he copies his friend Thomson fairly 
 well, but without success in other ways. It seems 
 hardly necessary to add that aside from this I found 
 Mallet's verse exceptionally uninteresting. 
 
 SoMERviLE, William: 1735, The Chase, 2073 
 lines; 1740, Hohhinol, 1201 lines; 1742, Field Sports, 
 286 lines. 
 
 lOI 
 
 Poems 
 
 Tot. 
 
 C^s. 
 
 LI. 
 23.83 
 
 Mid. 
 
 2254 
 
 4 
 29.90 
 
 32.13 
 14.81 
 
ENGLISH'BLANK VERSE 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 3 Poems 35.60 51.96 20.70 27.34 20.05 0.14 1 1.65 
 Tot. Percentage of caesuras after 
 
 Caes. Mid. End. i 23 
 
 3085 18.39 81.61 1.84 5.64 2.85 
 
 456789 
 28.55 8.20 38.37 4.63 8.03 0.77 
 
 In the small number of caesuras in the middle of 
 feet, Somervile is the only poet like Gascoigne and 
 Surrey, but he differs from them in having more 
 than half his caesuras in the last four places, as com- 
 pared with Surrey's one-fourth, and Gascoigne's 
 one-eighth. Somervile has nine rhymes, apparently 
 accidental; but no cases of rhetorical repetition. 
 
 Glover, Richard: 1737, Leonidas, 7321 lines; On 
 Newton, 475 lines; 1739, London, or the Progress 
 of Commerce, 590 lines. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fem. Uns. 
 
 3 Poems 8386 36.60 16.00 47.50 35.60 none 2 2 
 In Leonidas : 
 
 Tot. Percentage of caesuras after 
 
 Caes. Mid. End. i 23 
 
 5722 53.80 46.20 3.32 8.05 4-85 
 
 456789 
 
 18.71 25.23 11.83 18.71 7-58 1.66 
 
 In his exclusion of unstressed and feminine end- 
 ings Glover is like Newcomb and Akenside. He 
 seems also like Akenside in that his run-on lines 
 jump from 35% in Leonidas to 50.5 in London, 
 and his endstopt lines drop from 16 to 13, but even 
 this change does not bring him to the proportions 
 with which Akenside started. He differs from 
 
 ^5 cases: — covert, — perish, — melancholy, in The 
 Chase; — Ganderetta. — misfortune, in Hahbinol. He 
 twice has — o'er at the end of run-on lines, and follows 
 Milton and Spenser in using 'submiss' for 'submissive.' 
 
 2 The possible unstressed endings are — Diomedon, 
 in Leonidas, 5. 169, and 8. 775. In London, 44, — Elbe may- 
 be a feminine ending; Glover has — o'er at the ends of 
 lines at least eight times. 
 
 102 
 
RICHARD GLOVER 
 
 Akenside in that the proportion of unbroken lines 
 increases somewhat. Glover, like Newcomb, was 
 one of the earliest of the poets here discussed to 
 have more caesuras in the middle than at the ends 
 of feet; — the only others are Landor, Browning, 
 and Swinburne. Glover also, instead of distributing 
 these medial pauses concentrated them in two places, 
 for he and Newcomb and Akenside are the only 
 ones who have more than 20% of their pauses after 
 the 5th syllable, and only Newcomb, Akenside, and 
 Swinburne have more than he after the 7th syllable. 
 Leonidas is now known by name only — and de- 
 servedly — as a stock example of longwinded, in- 
 sipid mediocrity. One reason is the change of taste ; 
 readers are now not often charmed, as many i8th 
 century readers really were, by the irreproachable 
 elegance of 
 
 -the grove 
 
 Fann'd by the breath of zephyrs, and with rills 
 From bubbling founts irriguous. 
 
 Some details of its versification, however, have con- 
 tributed both to its reputation in its own day and 
 to its utter flatness now ; these are the absence of 
 feminine and unstressed endings, and the large num- 
 ber of caesuras after the 7th syllable, all of which 
 help to emphasize the line-rhythm, especially the 
 last, for example : 
 
 -Asia's host 
 
 Shrunk back. 
 
 Unmann'd by wonder. 
 Among those clifts. 
 
 103 
 
 ■Back he steps, 
 -From his nest 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Young, Edward: 1742-5, The Night Thoughts. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 The Night Thoughts 
 
 9783 1550 58.15 26.35 29.20 1. 10 3.64 
 Univ. Passion, (heroic couplets) 
 
 2497 6.60 63.03 30.35 43.08 
 The Revenge (or Zanga), Acts I, III & V, 
 
 1 152 lines 25.781 
 
 Night Thoughts, I-VII, 5902 lines: 
 
 Tot. 
 
 
 
 Percentage 
 
 of caesuras after 
 
 Caes. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 End.' 
 
 I 
 
 2 3 
 
 .o^^^^, 
 
 42.12 
 
 57.88 
 
 5.46 
 
 10.32 7.10 
 
 'Run-on' 
 
 caesuras, 
 
 
 0.13 
 
 1.54 1.23 
 
 4 
 
 5 ^ 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 9 
 
 23.92 
 
 1586 
 
 17.37 
 
 11.55 
 2.67 
 
 7.77 2.15 
 2.79 0.61 
 
 Young's small use of run-on and excessive use of 
 endstopt lines may seem to bear out the frequent 
 assertion that his blank verse has "constantly the 
 run of the couplet." To be sure, Young has more 
 endstopt lines than either Dryden or Pope, but he 
 has more run-on Hnes than Chaucer. Chaucer, in- 
 deed, seems to me an admirable illustration of the 
 way in which a quality of style (in Chaucer's case, 
 'liquidity' of diction) is more clearly responsible 
 for the 'run' of the poetry than any technical matter 
 of versification. Young carried his practice of sen- 
 tentious, antithetic expression very far, but to me 
 his blank verse does not read like couplets — certainly 
 not like his own couplets.^ Young's blank verse 
 has more than twice as many run-on lines as his 
 
 1 In The Revenge, — ever occurs often as an ending, 
 but always in endstopt lines; in 5. i, — o'er comes in an 
 endstopt line. 
 
 2 In Bartlett, of 56 quotations from the Night 
 Thoughts, only 9 are distichs; in the first 56 from Pope, 
 all but 9 are couplets or groups of couplets, and except 
 for the phrase "Order is Heaven's first law," all of the 
 9 are second lines, where the rhyme clinched the 
 thought. 
 
 104 
 
EDWARD YOUNG 
 
 couplets, slightly fewer endstopt and commastopt 
 lines, and only about two-thirds as many unbroken 
 lines. Technically, the run-on and unbroken lines 
 are the significant items, for they show the 'pull' of 
 the rhyme in the couplets and the freedom which 
 its absence gives to blank verse. I am not sure that 
 blank verse did not offer Young more opportunity 
 than the couplet for the sententious manner, weighty 
 without polished brilliance, and I find some support 
 for this in Young's very excess of endstopt lines, 
 even as compared with Pope. The couplet, in the 
 hands of a poet seeking apophthegms, tends very 
 strongly to bring the point of a statement at the end 
 of every couplet, even if the statement does not re- 
 quire the full twenty syllables. Blank verse, on the 
 other hand, does not demand regular spacing of 
 points, and is for that reason somewhat freer. In- 
 stead of the regularity of pause characteristic of the 
 couplet, we find in Young's blank verse frequency 
 of pause — a frequency not the result of punctuation, 
 but of pithy expression. Technically, then, Young's 
 blank verse is of interest because it illustrates how 
 far an extreme habit of rhetorical expression may 
 reflect itself in the verse without being in the least 
 a result of any demands made by the verse-form 
 itself. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that I have not found 
 in Young the singing qualities that mark many 
 smaller poets than he, nor often the dazzling polish 
 of Pope; but I have been surprised to find, amid a 
 good deal of tumid pomposity, constant evidences 
 of thought and care, constant minor felicities of 
 idea and phrase, which go far toward explaining 
 his great and long-continued popularity. 
 
 105 
 

 LI. 
 
 
 767 
 
 Tot. 
 
 
 Caes. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 575 
 
 28.00 
 10.08 
 
 4 
 21.56 
 
 ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Blair, Robert: 1743/ The Grave. 
 
 Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 
 2530 36.76 39.94 35-99 17-47 i-95 
 
 Percentage of caesuras after 
 
 End. I 2 3 
 
 72.00 4-34 9-04 3-47 
 
 6789 
 
 35-30 9.91 6.08 0.17 
 
 Metrically Blair's interest for us is that he alone 
 of the poets in our list used feminine endings with 
 a freedom approaching that of the drama. In five 
 cases out of the 134 the extra syllable is a mono- 
 syllable; and in line 235 he has — flattery, and in 
 line 675 — witnesses. Indeed, unless we count one 
 three-beat line (661) and the final couplet, the only 
 liberty Blair makes use of is the feminine ending. 
 Only Surrey, Gascoigne, and Somervile exceed him 
 in the proportion of caesuras at the ends of feet, and 
 he and Somervile are alone in having more than a 
 third of their caesuras after the 6th syllable. Both 
 these details make for stiffness of versification, but 
 it is surprising to see how far they are counter- 
 balanced by the feminine endings and the fairly 
 large proportion of unbroken lines. I have been 
 unable to learn anything about either his aims or 
 his models. His versification shows that he could 
 not have studied Milton closely, and that the Grave 
 owes to the Night Thoughts only their demonstra- 
 tion that there was an audience for poems on such 
 themes. Blair's letter to Watts is not necessary to 
 free him from the charge of imitating Young. 
 
 Akenside, Mark : 1774, The Pleasures of Imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 1 Dennis notes that in "a letter dated Feb. 25th, 
 1741-2, Blair in transmitting the MS. of the poem to 
 a friend states that the greater portion of it was com- 
 posed several years before his ordination ten years 
 previously." ("Age of Pope," 84, note.) This friend was 
 Isaac Watts. 
 
 106 
 

 LI. 
 
 
 1999 
 
 Tot. 
 
 
 Caes. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 1339 
 
 48.80 
 
 i. 
 
 5 
 
 19.86 
 
 20.01 
 
 MARK AKENSIDE 
 
 Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 56.27 12.75 3098 41.47 none none 
 Percentage of caesuras after 
 End. I 2 3 
 
 51.20 2.53 6.12 5.75 
 
 6789 
 
 21.21 19.85 4.10 0.5Q 
 
 Akenside used very few trisyllables of any sort 
 at the ends of lines, and in his avoidance of both 
 feminine and unstressed endings he followed strictly 
 the canons of the i8th century. In the proportion 
 of run-on and endstopt lines, he is close to Shelley, 
 and not far from Milton and Wordsworth. In the 
 proportion of unbroken lines, Akenside follows 
 Wordsworth and Shelley in using noticeably more 
 than Milton. 
 
 The figures for the individual cantos of the Pleas- 
 ures of Imagination show a slight increase in run-on 
 lines from 54.14 to 57.66, and a somewhat more 
 pronounced decrease of endstopt lines from 16.78 
 to 11.84. When Akenside revised his poem some 
 years later, these tendencies were both confirmed, as 
 the figures show : 
 
 Revision: Canto I, 1757 734 55-31 10.62 34.07 36.92 
 
 Canto II, 1765 705 63.68 10.21 26.11 36.87 
 
 Canto III, 1770 540 65.37 9.25 25.38 3574 
 
 Canto IV, 1770 170 45.88 7.05 47.07 27.06 
 
 Omitting Canto IV, which Akenside left unfinished, 
 this revision shows that Akenside, beginning with 
 almost as large a percentage of run-on lines as Mil- 
 ton had in Paradise Lost, and with an even smaller 
 per cent of endstopt lines, steadily increased the one 
 and decreased the other, thus exactly reversing Mil- 
 ton's experience. This extreme use of run-on lines 
 and avoidance of endstopt ones seems to be slightly 
 reflected in the decrease of unbroken lines, but even 
 then Akenside has more unbroken lines than Milton. 
 Akenside, however, is curiously near both Milton 
 
 107 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 and Wordsworth in all the matters of the table. 
 His merit as a poet is certainly not great; his de- 
 fects are just as certainly not in the matters of tech- 
 nique which we have thus far considered. It might 
 be inferred from this that poetic excellence is not to 
 be found in technique and that therefore a study of 
 Milton's prosody is of little value. On the contrary, 
 it is very useful to compare the work of Milton with 
 that of such men as Akenside, because the compari- 
 son helps to make clear what might otherwise be 
 uncertain, namely, that Paradise Lost is great, not 
 so much because Milton recognized certain limita- 
 tions and opportunities of his metre (as, for in- 
 stance. Pope did in his use of the heroic couplet), 
 but rather because blank verse so well reflects all 
 the various excellences of sonority and rhetoric. In 
 short, the prime advantage of blank verse as a ve- 
 hicle for English poetry is that it offers fewer tech- 
 nical restrictions than any other verse form we have, 
 and therefore expresess more precisely and deli- 
 cately, with least refraction, the numberless qualities 
 of thought, feeling, and vocabulary which are poetic. 
 Shenstone, William : Love and Honour, 325 
 lines ; The Ruined Abbey, or, The Effe-cts of Super- 
 stition, 383 lines ; Economy, 649 lines. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 3 Poems, 1357 4502 2439 30.59 21.29 none 2.21 
 
 Shenstone's nearest approach to a feminine end- 
 ing is — friar, in the Ruined Abbey; in Economy, 
 3. 74, he has — e'er. One line from Economy 
 
 The cloud-wrought canes, the gorgeous snuff-boxes, 
 
 obviously imitated from Shakspere, illustrates both 
 the avoidance of a feminine ending, and the much 
 more important fact that real poetry is always some- 
 thing more than metre and idea, — that it is a matter 
 
 108 
 
WILLIAM COWPER 
 
 of cadence, of a felicitous collocation of sounds as 
 unmeasurable as it is unmistakable. 
 
 CowPER, William: 1785, The Task, 5185 lines; 
 1791, The Iliady Bks. I, VI, XI, and XII, 3004 lines. 
 
 
 LI. 
 
 Run. 
 
 End. Com. 
 
 Unb. 
 
 Fem. Uns. 
 
 2 Poems 
 
 8189 
 
 48.55 
 
 24.32 27.13 
 
 37.01 
 
 3 ' 0.39 
 
 In The Task : 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tot. 
 
 
 Percentage of ( 
 
 caesuras 
 
 i after 
 
 Caes. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 End. 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 3262 
 
 42.99 
 
 57-01 
 
 1.62 
 
 6.19 
 
 9.81 
 
 'Run-on' 
 
 caesuras. 
 
 
 0.21 
 
 2.78 
 
 6.68 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 21.67 
 
 14.65 
 
 22.25 
 
 15.42 
 
 6.89 
 
 1.44 
 
 
 
 
 10.82 
 
 4.87 
 
 0.45 
 
 Cowper's Task is like Gray's Elegy and Gold- 
 smith's Deserted Village in that, although the feeling 
 is at least mildly Romantic, the diction and the 
 handling of the metre follow the Classic mode. In 
 all of them the words are precisely chosen and fitted 
 together with a nice appreciation of the total effect. 
 To modern readers the unfailing 'correctness' of the 
 result occasionally sounds formal, or so restrained 
 as to seem conventional and somewhat lacking in 
 sincerity, conviction, intensity, or whatever word 
 best describes that expression of emotional matters 
 or attitude which we have been trained to look upon 
 as the essence of poetry. In all three poems we are 
 likely to be most impressed by the carefulness of 
 the workmanship ; — in The Task more than in the 
 others by its extreme neatness. This effect is helped 
 by Cowper's observance of i8th century metrical 
 conventions ; The Task has no feminine endings and 
 
 ^ Two in Iliad, I, — Apollo, — inextinguishable; one 
 possible instance in The Task, VI: "Sacred to neatness 
 and repose, the alcove." But Cowper elsewhere clearly 
 scans "alcove," which seems to have been the current 
 pronunciation. See the "Oxford Dictionary." 
 
 109 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 only 17 unstressed. In The Task and in the Iliad 
 the percentages of run-on and endstopt lines vary 
 but little in the different books — little as compared 
 with Paradise Lost or the Idylls of the King — and 
 the reason probably is that The Task at least has 
 less variety of tone or treatment than the other 
 poems. In the other details of his verse Cowper 
 keeps to a mean which may be called 'golden,' but 
 which does not distinguish his verse from that of 
 many others. In Cowper, as in Wordsworth, one 
 is tempted to say that the absence of rhyme contrib- 
 uted much to the quietness of tone, without obtru- 
 sive cleverness or wit; but one recalls that during 
 these years George Crabbe was using the 'strict' 
 couplet for equally straightforward, quiet, unpre- 
 tentious studies in realism. The truth is that inas- 
 much as Cowper was both a genuine poet and an 
 unusually accomplished craftsman, his blank verse 
 is admirable without being notable for any especia. 
 qualities of technique peculiar to the verse-form. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage: 1798, Gehir. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fem. Uns. 
 ^7Z^ 3542 32.60 31.98 44.10 21 392 
 Tot. Percentage of caesuras after 
 
 Caes. Mid. End. i 2 3 
 
 1260 50.39 49.61 5.39 12.22 10.80 
 
 'Rnn-on' caesuras, 1.27 4.28 4.12 
 
 456789 
 13.17 14.36 15.08 17.77 912 T.90 
 
 9.84 4.76 1. 19 
 
 In the distribution of run-on, endstopt, and com- 
 mastopt lines, Landor anticipated Keats, Arnold, 
 and Browning in dividing them almost equally; in 
 his avoidance of feminine and unstressed endings 
 he is like most of the other i8th century poets. In 
 
 1 Book IT, — iron; Book VIl, — heron. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 the distribution of his caesuras he has, like Akenside 
 and Browning, an almost equal number in the middle 
 and at the ends of feet; Glover, Browning, and 
 Swinburne are the only ones beside Landor who 
 have more at the middle than at the ends of feet. 
 Landor is the only one, however, who has io% or 
 more of his caesuras in each of six places (after 2d 
 to 7th syllables), and he comes near having 10% 
 after the 8th syllable also. He differs from Swin- 
 burne — the only other poet who has more caesuras 
 after the 7th syllable than elsewhere — in showing 
 no strongly marked preference for any particular 
 pause. However, five-sevenths of his run-on lines 
 are used in connection with his *run-on' caesuras. 
 Like these details, in contributing to the smoothness 
 of the effect, is his use of unbroken lines, in which 
 he is exceeded only by Surrey and Gascoigne. The 
 details of Landor's versification are, therefore, re- 
 markable for their evenness of distribution, — for 
 the careful avoidance of excessive or even consider- 
 able use of any one device. The result should be, 
 theoretically, great delicacy of modulation ; as a 
 matter of fact, I must confess that I am not es- 
 pecially taken with Gehir, though the fault may lie 
 with me or with the theme, and not with Landor's 
 handling of it. 
 
 Wordsworth, William : 1800-May, 1805, The 
 Prelude; 1809-13, The Excursion. 
 
 LI. 
 
 Run. 
 
 End. 
 
 Com. 
 
 Unb. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 Uns. 
 
 The Prelude 7923 
 
 4991 
 
 16.98 
 
 3319 
 
 39.73 
 
 1.61 
 
 7-15 
 
 The Excursion, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 8850 
 
 48.09 
 
 20.81 
 
 31.10 
 
 36.98 
 
 1.02 
 
 430 
 
 2 Poems 16773 48.94 19.00 32.06 37.22 1.34 5.65 
 
 3 Poems in couplets, 
 
 1280 27.65 40.85 31.50 5Q.6o 
 T795-6, The Borderers, Acts I & III, 
 1066 lines, 24.01 
 
 III 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 In the Excursion, and the Prelude, Books I to VIT. 13020 
 
 lines : 
 
 Tot. 
 Caes. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 Percentage 
 End. I 
 
 of 
 
 caesuras after 
 2 3 
 
 10257 
 
 'Run-on' 
 
 4 
 
 19.27 
 
 45-77 
 caesuras, 
 
 5 
 15.92 
 
 54.23 
 
 6 
 16.50 
 
 6.61 
 I-13 
 7 
 13.08 
 8.77 
 
 
 8.55 7.45 
 3.96 4.19 
 
 9-90 1.87 
 6.68 1.08 
 
 The proportions of run-on lines in the different 
 books of the Prelude vary over 25%, but in the 
 Excursion only 5.44% ; and the Prelude is like Para- 
 dise Lost in having its highest percentages in Books 
 I and II. The variation in the endstopt lines (Pre- 
 lude, ^.^7%; Excursion, 5.34%), is much less than 
 that of the run-on lines. On the whole, however, 
 the figures for the two poems are surprisingly alike. 
 
 The feminine endings in the Borderers differ from 
 those in the other poems both in quantity and in 
 kind. In the Borderers we find such cases as — Os- 
 vvald, — outlsLWs, — moonWght, — tn^elve-month, — 
 churchyard, — spendthriit, — ploughsha.rts; and 
 such others (if alexandrines, they are the only kind 
 Wordsworth uses) as — discoz^eries, — philosophy, 
 — .y«/fering, — innocent, — tyranny, — murderer, — 
 governors, and — perilous. 
 
 Metrically the interest of these two poems lies in 
 their demonstration that the 'flexibility' and 'adapta- 
 bility' of blank verse are due entirely to the fact 
 that it makes fewer and simpler demands than any 
 other of our verse-forms. Undoubtedly the two 
 poems are poetic in mood and substance, and there- 
 fore are properly given metrical form, but their 
 blank verse seems to me to be reduced to its lowest 
 terms, to be as nearly pedestrian as anything could be 
 that was not bald prose. I find in it very rarely the 
 sonorous music of Milton or the brilliant proofs of 
 technical mastery which are on every page of Ten- 
 
 112 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 nyson. In some moods, therefore, I find the blank 
 verse very disappointing — be it carefully noted that 
 I am not speaking of contents — for in so many lines 
 the cadences are mechanical, and the expressions 
 are so often prosaic that I get chiefly an impression 
 of crude verse written by a tyro. At other times, 
 however, the very slightness of the difference which 
 makes it verse instead of prose is the chief source 
 of my pleasure in it. Beyond a doubt Wordsworth 
 could not have given the material of these poems 
 such acceptable expression in any other English 
 verse-form, for blank verse alone is sufficiently 
 achromatic to transmit, untouched and uncolored, 
 these naive revelations of a soul so astoundingly 
 unhumorous, and yet perhaps on that account the 
 more obviously sincere and lofty and thoughtful and 
 gentle. 
 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe: 1815, Alastor. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 
 720 58.05 12.91 29.04 39.58 2.08 10.27 
 1821, Epipsychidion (couplets) 
 
 604 39.90 28.31 31.79 44-86 
 Aug., 1819, The Cenci, Acts I, III & V, 
 
 1488 lines, 11.35 
 
 In Alastor: 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tot. 
 
 Percentage 
 
 of 
 
 caesuras 
 
 after 
 
 Css. Mid. 
 
 End. I 
 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 522 31.41 
 
 68.59 2.87 
 
 
 9.19 
 
 5-55 
 
 *Run-on' caesuras, 
 
 0.76 
 
 
 5.36 
 
 3-25 
 
 4, 5„ 
 
 6 7 
 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 23.56 7.85 
 
 24.90 12.64 
 
 
 10.91 
 
 2.49 
 
 
 10.34 
 
 
 6.51 
 
 0.95 
 
 As one reads Alastor it seems much what might 
 be expected from so determined a rebel against con- 
 ventions, literary and otherwise, but the details of 
 the versification do not reveal Shelley's iconoclasm. 
 The percentage of run-on lines is almost exactly 
 that of Paradise Lost, though the endstopt lines are 
 fewer; there are somewhat more feminine endings 
 
 113 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 than in Paradise Lost, but hardly more than half as 
 many as in Paradise Regained, and none of Shelley's 
 have a pronoun as a final syllable. And yet Alastor 
 reads with a rush; it is almost as sinuously rapid 
 as the beginning of the Revolt of Islam; it has an 
 effect of speed that is rare in Paradise Lost. The 
 secret is surely not in the use of blank verse, or in 
 Shelley's handling of it; it is very clearly, it seems 
 to me, a matter of the poet's individuality, a habit 
 of collocation of sound which produces precisely the 
 same effect whether the poet is using blank verse, 
 as here, or couplet, as in Epipsychidion, or even the 
 bulky Spenserian stanza, as in the Revolt of Islam 
 or Adonais. 
 
 Although Shelley does not seem to avoid feminine 
 endings in run-on lines as much as Keats did, he 
 writes — "where'er and — "whene'er" in run-on lines, 
 and — "forever," which he uses three times, occurs 
 twice in endstopt lines, and once in a commastopt 
 line. That Shelley's avoidance of feminine endings 
 in run-on lines in Alastor is deliberate is shown by 
 his practice in the Cenci, where more than two-fifths 
 of his feminine endings are in run-on lines. More- 
 over, in the Cenci, Shelley does occasionally use 
 feminine endings in which the unstressed syllable is 
 a pronoun, and in two or three instances "not." 
 
 114 
 
JOHN KEATS 
 
 Keats, John: Dec, i8i8-Sept., 1819, Hyperion, 
 a Fragment. 
 
 LI Run. End. Com. 
 
 Unb. 
 
 Fern. Uns. 
 
 883 34.00 32.00 34.00 
 
 4340 
 
 2.04 8.5- 
 
 Nov.-Dec, 1819, Hyperion, 
 
 
 
 a Vision,! 506 39.32 25.09 35-59 
 
 49.01 
 
 1.18 8.89 
 
 Mar., 1818, Endymion 
 
 
 
 (heroic couplets) 
 
 
 
 3905 47.11 28.04 24.85 
 
 34.57 
 
 
 Aug.. 1819, Lamia 
 
 
 
 (coups.) 708 32.47 31-36 36.17 
 
 38.13 
 
 
 1819, Otho, Acts I, HI & V, 1 194 
 
 
 9.21 
 
 In Hyperion, a Fragment: 
 
 
 
 Tot. Percentage of caesuras 
 
 after 
 
 Cses. Mid. End. i 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 636 40.00 60.00 3.00 
 
 11.80 
 
 9.77 
 
 *Run-on' caesuras, 0.62 
 
 2.51 
 
 2.67 
 
 4567 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 20.28 12.42 21.54 14.77 
 
 5.18 
 
 1.25 
 
 7.54 
 
 1.72 
 
 0.31 
 
 Keats, Landor, Arnold, and Browning — as has 
 already been said — are the only poets in the list who 
 have an almost equal distribution of run-on, end- 
 stopt, and commastopt lines. The first three of these 
 men were notable admirers and imitators of Greek 
 thought and feeling. Landor and Arnold were dis- 
 tinctly anti-Romantic in the austerely formal severity 
 of their style, and Keats clearly belongs with them 
 in the general restraint of his blank verse, at least. 
 The Vision, which is still more fragmentary than 
 the Fragment, is not materially different from it in 
 its proportion of run-on and endstopt lines, and is 
 certainly not extreme when compared with the 47% 
 of run-on lines in the couplets of Endymion. Hy- 
 perion has only 2% of feminine endings, as against 
 3.43% of feminine rhymes in Endymion, and of 
 
 1 Between 60 and 70 lines are substantially the same 
 as in the Fragment, 
 
 115 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 these i8 instances, only one conies in a run-on line, 
 while in two other run-on lines, Keats has written 
 — ta'en and — o'er.^ Perhaps it is mere accident that 
 in the Fragment Keats has no endings like — sanc- 
 tuary, which are both feminine and unstressed, 
 for three of the six in the Vision are of this kind. 
 Keats's restraint in the use of the devices which tend 
 to subordinate or obscure the line-rhythm is em- 
 phasized by the large number of unbroken lines, in 
 which he is exceeded only by Gascoigne, Surrey, 
 and Landor. Here again comparison with his coup- 
 lets is interesting, for in Endymion only 34.57% of 
 the lines are unbroken. The increased number of 
 unbroken lines in his blank verse was, I suspect, a 
 partial compensation for the loss of the line em- 
 phasis which rhyme gives. 
 
 Keats's poetry, although written within a very 
 brief period, showed a constant growth in restraint. 
 H his using blank verse only toward the close of 
 his life was accidental, then the differences between 
 Endymion and Hyperion are largely chronological, 
 and independent of the actual verse-form. How- 
 ever, it should be remembered that the Romantic 
 movement in the first quarter of the 19th century — 
 while it can hardly be said to ha\e brought back 
 blank verse, for that had been done at least three- 
 quarters of a century earlier — brought in a riot of 
 stanzas, some new, but mostly old ones handled in a 
 way and with effects hardly dreamed of before. The 
 variety of experiments in rhyme and stanza in Ten- 
 nyson's first volume, as compared with the bulk of 
 
 1 The poets in our list practically always avoid end- 
 ing a line with — taken, or — ever. Shakspere, on the 
 contrary, who uses "taken" and "ta'en" some 90 times 
 apiece, has — ta'en at the end of a line ten times but 
 — taken nine times. In a hasty search in Bartlett'.* 
 "Concordance," I found no instance of — e'er at the 
 end of a line, but 29 instances of — ever. 
 
 116 
 
JOHN KEATS 
 
 the product of his last fifty years, illustrates this 
 search for beautiful and splendid effects, and also 
 the untamed, youthful determination to be "differ- 
 ent." That this unpruned exuberance, which char- 
 acterises Keats's early work, should have shown 
 itself in rhyme and stanza was almost certainly not 
 accidental, for as compared with the warm color and 
 luxuriously decorative rhymes in the 'loose' couplets 
 and in the elaborate stanzas which Keats had used 
 earlier, his blank verse was almost as severe and 
 classical as a bit of Greek sculpture. 
 
 In Hyperion^ in none of the feminine endings is 
 the unstressed syllable a pronoun, but in Otho — a 
 rather depressing piece of hack-work — almost one- 
 fifth are of that kind. It will be noticed, however, 
 that in Otho Keats was more sparing of feminine 
 endings than Shelley, Wordsworth, or Tennyson 
 were in their plays. 
 
 Because Hyperion was an avowed imitation of 
 Milton, it has unfortunately occasioned a good deal 
 of undiscriminating criticism. In the mere details 
 of versification, Cowper, for example, is much 
 nearer Milton than Keats is, but surely no one would 
 think of calling The Task Miltonic. Keats himself 
 wrote to Reynolds the well-known sentences: *'I 
 have given up Hyperion — there were too many Mil- 
 tonic inversions in it — Miltonic verse cannot be 
 written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour 
 . . . Upon my soul 'twas imagination — I cannot 
 make the distinction — every now and then there is 
 a Miltonic intonation — but I cannot make the di- 
 vision properly." That the poem is far from Mil- 
 tonic in the details of its technique is evident; as 
 compared with Paradise Lost, Hyperion has only 
 three-fifths as many run-on lines, nearly twice as 
 many endstopt, one-third more unbroken, and twice 
 as many feminine and unstressed endings. Al- 
 
 117 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 though the distribution of caesuras is on the whole 
 not noticeably different, Keats has only about half 
 as many *run-on' caesuras as Milton, and in the 
 proportions of them after the various syllables he 
 never equals Milton. The "Miltonic intonations," 
 then, are not matters of blank verse technique but of 
 rhetoric and style. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew : 1853, Sohrab and Rustum. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern, Uns. 
 902 28.00 35.07 36.93 29.38 21 1.33 
 
 Tot. 
 
 
 Percentage of 
 
 caesuras after 
 
 Cses. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 End. 
 
 I 
 
 2 3 
 
 825 
 
 33.00 
 
 67.00 
 
 6.78 
 
 14.30 9.00 
 
 un-on 
 
 caesuras, 
 
 
 1.21 
 
 569 3-39 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 9 
 
 18.00 
 
 9.00 
 
 21.09 
 
 7.80 
 3-27 
 
 1370 0.36 
 7.39 0.24 
 
 In its studied formality and its avoidance of the 
 ordinary devices of blank verse, Sohrab and Rustum 
 is almost as remarkable as In Memoriam with its 
 monotonously cadenced stanza.^ Unstressed end- 
 ings are noticeably few, for the other 19th century 
 poets use from two to eight times as many, and 
 Arnold alone of his group takes pains to avoid femi- 
 nine endings. Moreover, he has fewer unbroken 
 lines than any other 19th century poet ; Shelley, who 
 comes nearest, has ten per cent more. Although 
 Arnold seems like Milton and a number of others 
 in having only about one-third of his caesuras in the 
 middle of feet, he is the only one who has over 10% 
 of his caesuras after the 2d, 4th, 6th, and 8th syl- 
 lables, and only there. 
 
 ^ — estuaries and — rivers; — iron and — precipices arc 
 probably not feminine endings. 
 
 2 See "The Stanza of In Memoriam," in Modern Lan- 
 guage Notes, Dec, 1906. 
 
 118 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 That Arnold's versification is as formal as his 
 rhetoric is evident when we compare his use of 
 elaborate, formal similes with the effect of rhyme 
 which his habit of repetition gives. Seven times 
 he repeats a word, as in: 
 
 And, from the fluted spine atop, a plume 
 
 Of horsehair waved, a scarlet horsehair plume. 
 
 Again we find : 
 
 And Rustum followed his own blow, and fell 
 To his knees, and with his fingers clutch'd the sand; 
 And now might Sohrab have unsheathed his sword. 
 And pierced the mighty Rustum while he lay 
 Dizzy, and on his knees, and choked with sand; 
 But he looked on, and smiled, nor bared his sword. 
 
 In a passage near the end, Sohrab asks to be taken 
 back to Seistan, and Rustum promises with almost 
 a repetition of Sohrab's words, so that the line-end- 
 ings " — Seistan, — me, — friends, — earth, — bones, 
 — all" of Sohrab's speech are echoed by Rustum's 
 " — Seistan, — thee, — friends, — earth, — bones, — 
 all." Only rhymeless verse would lend itself to such 
 a device, but the device is rhetorical, not metrical.^ 
 Arnold has only two cases of actual rhyme, but in 
 both, the rhymes link sentences. 
 
 1 If Rustum's six lines had followed Sohrab's imme- 
 diately, one might find in the two speeches a sugges- 
 tion of the sestina, but even the sestina does not repeat 
 the rhyme words in the same order. 
 
 119 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 Browning, Robert: 
 
 Ll. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 
 1832, Pauline 1031 46.66 20.42 32.92 43.35 5.00 3.30 
 
 1835, Paracelsus 3813 48.00 30.00 32.00 35.64 10.00 4.30 
 
 1837, (Strafford), 1 2202 5.72 4,31 
 
 1841 (Pippa Passes) 772 9.71 5.70 
 
 1842, (K. Victor & K. C). 1622 8.20 6.70 
 
 1843, (Return of Druses) . . 738 (Acts 1 & V) 9.87 5.40 
 
 1843, (Blot in 'Scutcheon) 1313 4.11 6.32 
 
 1844, (Colombe's Birthday) 760 (Acts 1 & V) 6.31 9.60 
 1846, (Soul's Tragedy), 1.. 402 (Act II is prose) 8.45 4.72 
 
 1846, (Luria) 2 1821 4.22 7.79 
 
 '4-'5- Transcendentalism. 52 17.30 55.76 26.94 51.92 none 3.84 
 
 How it Strikes a Con- 
 temporary. 116 20.69 38.78 40.53 50.86 0.86 6.90 
 
 Artemis Prologizes.. 121 47.15 20.66 32.19 46.28 none 10.00 
 
 Epistle of Karshish.. 312 31.41 40.06 28,53 4Q-35 0.96 11. 21 
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi 380 23.94 42.63 33.42 38.42 1.57 3-94 
 
 Andrea del Sarto — 267 18.72 48.31 32.97 28.46 none 5.24 
 The Bishop Orders 
 
 His Tomb 120 21.16 34.16 40.68 50.00 none 5.82 
 
 Bp. Blougram'sApol. 1014 26.72 44.18 29.10 38.26 0.18 8.00 
 
 Cleon 353 26.06 39.09 34.85 40.00 none 8.78 
 
 1853, (In a Balcony) 919 2^ 6.20 
 
 1864, Death in the Desert 687 i9-6S 34-64 45-71 39-57 none 5.00 
 1864, Caliban upon Sete- 
 
 bos 297 18.85 36-3& 44-79 34-oo none 2.60 
 
 1864, Mr. Sludge, the Me- 
 dium cai040 26.50 36.15 42.35 21.53 0.76 7.88 
 
 '68-9, The Ring and the 
 
 Book 20973 30.53 29.47 40.00 40.16* 0.13 8.26 
 
 1871, Balaustion's Adv — ca28oo 30.35 37-32*32.33 32.89 35 9.03 
 
 1871, Prince Hohen.-Schw. 1005 36.71 32.50 30.76 37.31 none n.90 
 
 1873. Red Cot. N't Cap C 1030 33.49 34-27 32-24 40.67 0.29 17.57 
 
 (ist Section) 
 
 1875, Aristophanes' Apol. 1008 29.16 32.83 38.01 35.41 2 ^ 18.05 
 
 1875, The Inn Album 3080 42.53 35-^4 21.63 28.24 2^ 9.41 
 
 1876, Cenciaja 300 47.33 28.66 24.01 40.33 i^ 21.66 
 
 1884, Ferishtah's Fancies. 1612 41.18 33.12 25.70 28.22 none 10.98 
 
 1889, Imperante Augusto. 163 30.06 46.50 23.44 32.51 none 10.42 
 
 1889, Development 115 25.21 40.00 34-79 29.56 none 13.91 
 
 24 Poems 41689 33.24 31.85 34.91 
 
 24 Poems< 31307 36.05 
 
 33 Poems 52238 2.15 9.11 
 
 10 Poems (down to '46) .. . 14474 6.58 
 
 23 Poems (after '46) 37764 0.16 
 
 Sordello, l-IIl (cplts.).... 3036 59.68 16.04 24.28 28.52 
 
 In Pauline, Bp. Blougram, R. & B., I, II, III, VI, 8750 lines : 
 
 Percentage of caesuras after 
 Tot. 
 
 Caes. Mid. End. 123 4 56789 
 6831 51.51 48.49 7-48 8.85 10.35 17.42 16.39 13.10 13.67 8.94 3-6i 
 
 'Run-on' caesuras: 0.76 2.59 3.61 4.33 3.76 1.46 
 1 Titles in ( ) are plays. 2 Fem. endings in Act 1, 7.44%; Act II, 
 
 4.78; Act III, 4-50; Act IV, 1.18; Act V, 2.67. 3 — Norbert, —echo. 
 
 * For Bks. I-VI, 10382 lines. s — diest, —irrevocable (twice). ^ — 
 
 hierarchy, —seven. ^ — adversary, —cignofedel. * —Croce. * In six 
 passages, 88 lines of stichomythy. 
 
 120 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Browning's first poems, Pauline and Paracelsus, 
 are not equalled by any later long poem in their 
 proportion of run-on lines. In the Ring and the 
 Book, the proportion varies in the different books 
 from 27.17 to 33.41, although in the later books the 
 percentage grows sHghtly smaller. In four poems, 
 all rather short, the percentage of run-on lines falls 
 below 20. Although Browning's endstopt lines vary 
 from 20 to over 55%, it will be noticed that the 
 average of 31.85 is not far from the mean. 
 
 The unbroken lines vary in proportions almost 
 as much as the run-on and endstopt, with a tendency 
 on the whole, though with exceptions, to have man> 
 unbroken lines when the run-on lines are few. As 
 in the case of Tennyson, the only other poet in our 
 list who wrote much blank verse through a long 
 period of time, the differences in metrical details 
 are of mood and treatment rather than of chron- 
 ology. 
 
 In the matter of feminine endings alone does 
 Browning seem clearly to have changed his habit. 
 His plays are not different from his non-dramatic 
 verse in this, unless we argue that both their dates 
 and their use of feminine endings are significant. 
 I feel pretty sure that the number of feminine end- 
 ings in the plays is purely a matter of date, for 
 their number tends on the whole to decrease, and in 
 Luria the percentage visibly falls off from act to act. 
 After 1846, feminine endings practically disappear, 
 so that, as we can judge from the usage of other 
 poets, Browning must have definitely avoided them. 
 On the other hand, as apparently an irregular com- 
 pensation, unstressed endings which, as compared 
 with the other poets, he never avoided, grow in his 
 latest poems so much more numerous than in any 
 other poet, that it seems obvious that he at least 
 experimented with them as a metrical device. He is 
 
 121 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 the only poet in our list of whom we can say this 
 with any assurance. 
 
 As compared with Tennyson's blank verse, that of 
 Browning shows a considerably wider range of 
 metrical experiment. It is not necessary to argue 
 that this difference of practice is to the credit or the 
 discredit of either poet, but it may point to a funda- 
 mental difference in their method of treatment. 
 Tennyson for the most part wrote narrative; prob- 
 ably even the monologue form of such shorter poems 
 as St. Simeon^ Ulysses, Tithonus, or Lucretius, was 
 affected in its general metrics by the poet's narrative 
 habit. Browning, needless to say, was dramatic in 
 his habit, even though his characters spoke unceas- 
 ing monologue. Now, this mental attitude of 
 Browning's, along with his admitted subtlety of 
 thought-processes if not of thought itself, and along 
 with his apparent carelessness and perversity, means 
 that he was often more interested in forcing his 
 instrument to express his thought than he was in 
 bringing out the richest, fullest, or clearest tones 
 of the instrument. Throughout, Browning's work 
 seems like that of Shakspere's later periods, where 
 a predominant interest in thought did not imply 
 either neglect of or ignoring of form, but only the 
 finished technician's experimenting — a tendency 
 which Tennyson did not exhibit, in his blank verse 
 at least, to such an extent as Browning did. In a 
 very general way, then, the larger differences be- 
 tween Browning and Tennyson show in their versi- 
 fication. 
 
 As for Browning — and I am speaking now as a 
 student of metrics — I find myself more and more 
 protesting at the falsity of the dictum of a late 
 brilliant and paradoxical critic who concluded a 
 wonderful page about Meredith with: "Meredith is 
 a prose Browning. And so is Browning." The 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Ring and the Book, which long repelled me by its 
 length and substance, has proved on acquaintance 
 as wonderful in its blank verse as in other respects, 
 and I cordially endorse Professor Corson's declara- 
 tion: "And it is always verse — although the reader 
 has but a minimum of metre consciousness." ("Pri- 
 mer of Eng. Verse," 22^.Y 
 
 1 Because Browning wrote the 20,000 lines of the 
 Ring and the Book in two years, as compared with the 
 nine years which Milton spent on the 10,000 of Paradise 
 Lost, or the fifty years through which Tennyson was 
 writing the 11,000 lines of the Idylls,^ one might expect 
 Browning's work to show less variation than the others 
 between the different books. As the accompanying 
 table shows, however, the percentages in all the men 
 vary much less than one might expect. The reasons 
 are probably two: first — especially in the case of 
 Browning and Milton — that the poems in question were 
 the work of mature, thoroughly practised men; the 
 other, that there is much less variety either of mood 
 or treatment between the different parts of the same 
 poem than there is between these particular poems and 
 others by the same men. Range of percentage in 
 
 Run. End. Unb. 
 The Ring and the Book, 6.25 11.22 12.03 
 
 Paradise Lost, 14.88 7.87 13.31 
 
 The Idylls of the King, 7.39 12.15 19-63 
 
 123 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord: 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 
 1827, Timbuctoo,! 
 
 248 58.46 14.91 26.63 49-59 2.82 9.27 
 
 1828, The Lover's Tale, 
 
 1459 41.94 18.71 39-35 44-14 3-97 6.44 
 1842, St. Simeon, 
 
 220 26.81 31.36 41.83 36.81 none 5.45 
 1842, Ulysses, 
 
 70 42.85 28.57 28.58 37.15 none 5.71 
 1847, The Princess, 
 
 3144 40.07 24.33 35-6o 34-70 1.36 (i.^^ 
 i860, Tithonus, 
 
 'jd 31.57 27.63 40.80 56.07 none 5.26 
 1864, Enoch Arden, 
 
 911 30.29 27.77 41.94 46.00 4.61 5.92 
 1868, Lucretius, 
 
 280 47-85 14.64 37-51 41-78 2.14 8.57 
 1835-85, The Idylls, 
 
 11321 33.61 26.88 39.51 44.96 2.34 5.39 
 
 9 Poems, 17729 35.91 25.42 38.67 42.94 2.37 5.88 
 1875, Queen Mary, I. 4, 5; H- 3; IV. 2, 3, 
 
 1220 lines 21.00 
 
 1879, Becket Prol. I. i ; II. i ; IV. 2, 779 
 
 lines, 22.85 
 
 The two plays, 1999 lines, 21.76 
 
 In the Idylls, 11321 lines: 
 
 Tot. Percentage of caesuras after 
 
 Cses. Mid. End. 123 
 
 8127 46.14 53.86 6.92 9.39 11.60 
 
 'Run-on' caesuras, 0.84 2.31 5.47 
 
 456789 
 21.39 11.02 13.61 13.39 9.52 3.25 
 
 5-21 4.73 1.29 
 
 From the first draft of Timbuctoo in 1827 to 
 Balin and Balan in 1885, Tennyson's blank verse 
 extends over nearly sixty years. With two excep- 
 
 1 Took Chancellor's Medal in 1829, but composed 
 1827. 
 
 124 
 
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 
 
 tions, however, the metrical variations are indicative 
 not of chronology (and therefore of change of met- 
 rical habit), but only of variety of theme and of 
 rhetorical treatment. The metrics of the individual 
 Idylls afford no indication of chronology except that 
 the four earliest have slightly fewer run-on lines 
 and somewhat more endstopt lines than the later 
 ones. Timhuctoo, the earliest of the poems, and 
 the nearest to Paradise Lost in its proportion of 
 run-on and endstopt lines, is much more extreme in 
 those respects than any of the later poems except 
 Lucretius. Of the four long poems, the Love?s 
 Tale, which is the earliest, has more run-on lines 
 than the Princess, and as many unbroken lines as 
 the Idylls. Arden and the Idylls have distinctly 
 fewer run-on and more unbroken lines than the 
 Princess; a relation which suggests that similar 
 differences between Paradise Lost and Paradise Re- 
 gained are not accidental. It may be that run-on 
 and unbroken lines tend to compensate for each 
 other, that a poet may secure freedom of movement 
 by a preponderance of either. 
 
 125 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles : 1864, Atalanta 
 in Calydon; 1876, Erechtheus. 
 
 LI. Run. End. Com. Unb. Fern. Uns. 
 Atalantai 1373 42.82 18.28 38.90 39.83 32 4.29 
 
 Erechtheus^ 977 67.55 4.81 27.64 41.96 none 1.33 
 
 2 Poems, 
 
 2350 
 
 53.14 12 
 
 .66 34.20 
 
 40.69 
 
 3.06 
 
 18S1, Mary 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Stuart, 
 
 5046 
 
 
 
 ] 
 
 [-34 « 
 
 In Atalanta 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tot. 
 
 
 Percentage of 
 
 caesuras 
 
 after 
 
 Cses. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 End. 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 .-o ^'^^, 
 
 50.42 
 
 4958 
 
 10.93 
 
 11.88 
 
 8.70 
 
 Run-on 
 
 caesuras, 
 
 
 5-30 
 
 5-62 
 
 4.24 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9, 
 
 15-92 
 
 10.72 
 
 8.91 
 
 18.90 
 
 12.95 
 
 1. 16 
 
 
 
 
 10.82 
 
 8.69 
 
 0.53 
 
 In Erechtheus: 
 
 
 
 
 
 Cais. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 End. 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 .. ^^^ 
 
 64-57 
 
 35-42 
 
 5-32 
 
 8.62 
 
 4-54 
 
 Run-on 
 
 caesuras. 
 
 
 329 
 
 5.64 
 
 2.03 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 7-52 
 
 12.69 
 
 7.68 
 
 36.67 
 
 11.60 
 
 2.19 
 
 
 
 
 28.52 
 
 9.71 
 
 0.63 
 
 2 Poems: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Cses. 
 
 Mid. 
 
 End. 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 .r.'58o 
 
 56.13 
 
 43-87 
 
 8.67 
 
 10.50 
 
 7.02 
 
 Run-on 
 
 caesuras, 
 
 
 4-49 
 
 4-74 
 
 3.22 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 12.53 
 
 11.51 
 
 8.41 
 
 26.07 
 
 12.42 
 
 1.S8 
 
 
 
 
 17.97 
 
 905 
 
 0.63 
 
 1 In both plays I have omitted not only the rhymed 
 portions but the occasional pages of stichomythy. 
 
 2 — birdwist, — infatuated, — seeing. 
 
 3 68 cases: 22 times words like — secretary; 14 times 
 phrases like — know him; 17 times words like — seeing. 
 There are only 4 doubtful cases in — able; only one 
 instance of two extra syllables; — szvorn to me, 3. i. 540; 
 
 126 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 Both Atalanta and Erechtheus have to the drama 
 something of the relation that oratorios have to 
 grand opera. The blank verse which is the chief 
 metre of both poems gives way in choruses and 
 occasional other passages to a variety of metres, and 
 the dialogue is never broken with any intent of the 
 illusion of the stage. Wherever the dialogue is 
 rapid, the speakers have at least their line apiece, 
 and almost invariably end a speech at the end of a 
 line. 
 
 Comus and Samson Agonistes, and the Princess 
 with its intercalated songs, seem pale and timid de- 
 partures from convention when compared with 
 Swinburne's bold use of lyric measures in the most 
 intense passages of these poems; but they are not 
 less remarkable for the amount and character of the 
 changes in their blank verse. In Atalanta, to be sure, 
 the proportions of run-on and endstopt lines are by 
 no means exceptional, but the percentage of run-on 
 lines in Erechtheus is exceeded only by Newcomb, 
 and approached only by the first two books of Para- 
 dise Lost, by Philips' Blenheim, and by Akenside's 
 revised third Canto, while the percentage of end- 
 stopt lines is the lowest I have any record of; even 
 the sum of the endstopt and commastopt lines is 
 less than in any of the other men except Newcomb 
 and Shelley. 
 
 The chief distinction of both poems, however, is 
 their distribution of caesuras. In Atalanta, the 
 10.93% after the ist syllable is considerably greater 
 than in the other men ; Browning, who comes near- 
 est, has only 7.48%. After the 4th syllable, only 
 Landor has so few, and after the 6th, only Gas- 
 coigne. After the 7th syllable, on the other hand, 
 
 in no case is the extra syllable heavy. In run-on lines 
 — ta'en occurs once, — howsoe'er once, and — soe'er 
 twice. 
 
 127 
 
ENGLISH BLANK VERSE 
 
 only Akenside, Glover, and Landor have nearly so 
 many ; after the 8th syllable only Arnold has more, 
 and Shelley alone approaches him. After the 9th 
 syllable, nine poets have as many or more, but only 
 Browning and Tennyson materially exceed Swin- 
 burne. (For similar proportions in Queen Mary, 
 see p. 25, note.) Swinburne's excess of caesuras 
 after the ist syllable is due to his habit in this poem 
 of running a sentence over into the following line 
 just one syllable, for he has more than four times 
 as many 'run-on' caesuras after the ist syllable as 
 Landor, Wordsworth, or Arnold— the only ones who 
 have more than 1%. Of 'run-on' caesuras after the 
 7th syllable, Shelley and Cowper have as many, and 
 Glover and Akenside have more; but after the 8th 
 syllable, only Milton and Arnold approach Swin- 
 burne. 
 
 The differences between Atalanta and Erechtheus 
 are very much more striking than any I have noted 
 in the work of other poets. As compared with Ata- 
 lanta, Erechtheus has fewer caesuras after the first 
 four syllables (only 26% as compared with 47.43% 
 in Atalanta), and has practically all of the conse- 
 quent increase in the second half of the line after 
 the 7th syllable — 36.67%, a percentage not only 
 about twice as great as any one else has at that 
 place, but not equalled at any other place in the line, 
 except by Somervile after the 6th and by Gascoigne 
 and Surrey after the 4th syllable. The 'run-on' 
 caesuras are similarly concentrated after the 7th syl- 
 lable, for the 28.52% of Erechtheus is twice that of 
 Akenside even. Erechtheus also reverses the divi- 
 sion of nine of the poets, and has two-thirds of its 
 caesuras in the middle instead of at the ends of feet. 
 
 In contrast with these extravagances of versifica- 
 tion, it is especially interesting to note that Swin- 
 burne has a proportion of unbroken lines which is 
 
 128 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 
 
 not extraordinary, that he uses fewer unstressed 
 endings than the other 19th century men (except 
 Arnold, and in Erechtheus the percentage is exactly 
 that of Sohrab and Rustum), and that he not only 
 avoids feminine endings in Atalanta and Erech- 
 theus, but in Mary Stuart uses fewer than any other 
 dramatist I know. 
 
 129 
 
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