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Pope and the Rules of Prosody

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Jacob H. Adler
Jacob H. Adler*
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky, Lexington
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Extract

This paper owes its origin to three statements about Pope:

      … I find your Practice the Prosodia of your Rules.—Henry Cromwell, letter to Pope, S December 1710.
      … he [Pope] adhered rigidly to the rules laid down in it [his letter on prosody], both in the translation from Statius and in the Pastorals.-Edith Sitwell, Alexander Pope, p. 69.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 3 , June 1961 , pp. 218 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Note 1 in page 218 Alexander Pope, Correspondence, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford, 1956), i, 109. Referred to henceforth as Sherburn. 2 New York, 1930.

Note 3 in page 218 Oxford, 1950.

Note 4 in page 218 Cromwell does not specifically mention the Pastorals, but in 1710, of course, the Pastorals are almost the only—and by far the most likely—poems that his letter could have been referring to. The Pastorals contain violations of the rules for caesura placement (e.g., Spring, 1. 18), for caesura repetition (e.g., Spring, 11. 32–35), and for rime repetition (e.g., Autumn, 11. 83–84, 87–88), among others.

Note 6 in page 218 In the Cromwell version of Pope's letter, they are rules 2 (verbal expletives) and 7 (representative meter).

Note 6 in page 218 Besides such obvious sources as Dryden's Essays, the Taller and Spectator, the critical works of Johnson, Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, and Lord Kames' Elements of Criticism, the following is a partial list of works consulted: Anselm Bayly, The Alliance of Music, Poetry, and Oratory (London, 1789); James Beattie, “An Essay on Poetry and Music, as they affect the mind,” in Essays (Edinburgh, 1778); Richard Bentley, Milton's Paradise Lost (London, 1732); Edward Bysshe, The Art of English Poetry (4th ed., London, 1710); William Coward, Li-centia Poetica discuss'i (London, 1709); Thomas Gray, “Observations on English Meter,” in Works, ed. Edmund Gosse (New York, 1885); Edward Manwaring, Of Harmony and Numbers in Latin and English Prose and in English Poetry (London, 1744); W. E. Mead, The Versification of Pope in its Relations lo the Seventeenth Century (Leipzig, 1889); Lord Monboddo, Of the Origin and Progress of Language (Edinburgh, 1774); Henry Pemberton, Observations on Poetry (London, 1738); “J. I).,” Preface to Joshua Poole's The English Parnassus… Together with A short Institution to English Poésie, by way of Preface (London, 1677, but probably originally published in 1657); John Rice, An Introduction to the Art of Reading with Energy and Propriety (London, 1765); Samuel Say, Poems on Several Occasions: and Two Critical Essays (London, 1745); Thomas Sheridan, Lectures on the Art of Reading (2d ed., London, 1781); Daniel Webb, Observations on the Correspondence between Poetry and Music (London, 1769) and Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry (London, 1762); and Samuel Wesley, An Epistle to a Friend concerning Poetry (London, 1700).

Note 7 in page 218 Sherburn, i, 105–108.

Note 8 in page 219 Sherburn, i, 22—25. In the authorized edition, that portion of the letter to Cromwell which dealt with prosody was suppressed (Sherburn, i, 22, n. 3).

Note 9 in page 219 The deceit was perfectly transparent: the Cromwell version had already been published.

Note 10 in page 219 Pope, of course, had to give the letter a somewhat earlier date. Walsh died in 1708.

Note 11 in page 219 This paper uses the Cromwell version (from Sherburn, i, 105–108) for several reasons: (1) it seems illogical to examine Pope's early practice on the basis of a letter in a version not known to exist before 1735; (2) much of what Pope says in the Cromwell letter reappears in An Essay on Criticism, so it seems clearly enough to represent his genuine youthful views; (3) Pope's later attitudes toward poetry as expressed in the Preface to the Iliad, Postscript to the Odyssey, Preface to Shakespeare, Epistle to Augustus, and Peri Bathous reveal in general a more liberal attitude which does not square with his letter. On the other hand, the revisions in the 1735 version are revealing: Pope slightly liberalizes his rules on caesura and monosyllables, bringing them more into line with his practice; voices an objection to triplets (and triplets, never frequent in Pope, had grown even less so); and places his rule on sound conforming to sense—a rule he always praised and usually followed—first instead of last.

Note 12 in page 219 English Parnassus, p. x. According to T. S. Omond (English Melrisls…, Oxford, 1921, p. 294) this work was probably published originally in 1657, and “J. D.” may possibly be Dryden. If he is Dryden, then Dryden occasionally failed to practice what he preached—e.g., Hind and the Panther, ii, 75: “If sight b'emission or reception be.”

Note 13 in page 219 English Parnassus, p. x.

Note 14 in page 219 E.g., Bysshe, pp. 12 ff.; see also Johnson, Rambler 88 (Works, ed. Sir John Hawkins, London, 1787, vi, 107).

Note 15 in page 219 Other figures for hiatus: Essay on Criticism (where Pope echoes his rule), an average of 4% of the lines in Part i; Eloisa, 8% of the first hundred lines; Arbuthnot, 11% of the lines in the first half; Essay on Man, Epistle i, 15%.

Note 16 in page 220 One method frequently used to avoid the awkwardness of hiatus was to place the gapping words at a caesura. Indeed, hiatus occurs thus so frequently that it seems probable the caesura was felt to cancel the gappage. I have hence not included such hiatuses in my count. Examples:

Or for an earthly, I or a heav'nly love

(Pope, Iliad, xiv, 360)

The liveried army, / and the menial lord

(Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, 116)

Note 17 in page 220 But all this does not mean that extremes of gappage cannot be ill-sounding. Pope makes an additional point in his revised letter which appears sound: the gappage of like vowel sounds is least desirable. Pope himself usually avoids such combinations, but they do occur:

Some scruple rose, but thus he eas'd his thought

(Moral Essays, iii, 365)

See the last sparkle languish in my eyel

(Eloisa, 332)

The example of awkward elision given by Pope in both letters is “th'old”—that is, presumably, elision before a monosyllable; a sort very rare in Pope. E.g., Windsor Forest has “th'unwearied” and “Th'Oppressor” but “And the new world launch forth to seek the old” (1. 402). Another sort of elision which would seem especially awkward to us is elision after a trochee, as in Dryden's “Drown'd ifi thë'abyss of deep idolatry” (Hind and the Panther, ii. 633). This seems never to occur in Pope and only rarely in eighteenth-century verse generally.

Note 18 in page 220 Elision between words is never really very frequent in Pope and is especially rare in the satires, occurring not at all in the Epilogue and in.5% of the lines in the First Satire of the Second Book. On the other hand, it occurs in 4% of the lines in Canto ii of The Rape, in 4.5% in Part I of An Essay on Criticism, in 6.5% in the Messiah. Dunciad, final version:.6% of Book i; Essay on Man: 2% of Book i. Pope's use of elision apparently decreased irregularly, but he apparently always thought elision more appropriate to more formal poems.

Note 19 in page 220 Observations on Poetry, p. 130. See also Wesley, 11. 509–513.

Note 20 in page 220 Poems on Several Occasions, p. 131. Regarding the unkind reference to Bentley, it should be said that while many of his notorious “corrections” of Paradise Lost were for the sake of regularizing meter, he did permit initial trochees, and even supplied them in his revisions.

Note 21 in page 220 In the Epistle to Augustus, Pope speaks favorably of “What's long or short, each accent where to place” (1. 207); but he does not say that the accents must be invariably alternate. He also speaks unfavorably of “our splay-foot verse” (1. 271), but the context is historical, and an objection to the metrics of some of the metaphysical poets would hardly seem an attitude of notable rigidity.

Note 22 in page 221 Three of these highly unusual lines appear to be for “representative” effect, attempting to represent “starting” (i.e., being startled), jumping, and difficulty. Thus Pope would seem to place “representative meter” ahead of metrical normality, though he seldom required such unorthodox irregularity to achieve it.

Note 23 in page 221 Initial trochees occur in Pope's works from such low figures as 10% of the lines in the Messiah and 15% in Spring to such high figures as 25% in the first half of Arbuthnot and 33% in the First Satire of the Second Book.

Note 24 in page 221 Elements of Criticism, new ed., ed. Abraham Mills (New York, 1852), p. 316. For other views, see Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 7th ed. (London, 1798), iii, 103 (requires closed couplets); Bysshe, p. 8 (favors open couplets and run-on lines); Pemberton, p. 34 (likewise); Say, p. 166 (reduces passage from Paradise Lost to end-stopped Unes to show ill effect); Johnson, Life of Denham, Works, ii, 80 (looks both ways).

Note 25 in page 221 Elements, p. 306.

Note 26 in page 221 Hundreds of lengthy passages from Pope illustrate the rule without constriction, e.g., Eloisa, 11. 359–364, which obeys it perfectly, even though the grammar is suspended to the very last word.

Note 27 in page 221 See note 24.

Note 28 in page 221 The caesura is one of those simple phenomena which are very difficult to define. I would agree with T. S. Omond (A Study of Metre, London, 1903, pp. 7–8, and elsewhere) that it is a matter of sense, not meter, since the metrical pause is something else again, and something of little concern in eighteenth-century poetry; yet it is not entirely a “sense pause” either, since the pause may occur where there would be no hesitation in prose reading. With slight modification, Pope's own remark in his letter on prosody is good enough for ordinary purposes : “Every nice Ear must (I believe) have observ'd, that in any smooth English Verse of ten syllables, there is naturally a Pause.”

Note 29 in page 222 Bysshe, extreme prophet of regularity, permitted the pause after any syllable from third to seventh (pp. 4–5); Pemberton approved the wide variety of pause in Milton (p. 119, p. 135, n.); Kames (pp. 244 ff.) and Blair (pp. 98 ff.) admitted that the sense might require the pause anywhere, though they preferred it to be central (fourth through seventh); and Johnson, in Rambler 90, agreed that limitation of caesural placement, however desirable, was not feasible.

Note 30 in page 222 Nevertheless he repeats it almost verbatim in the letter “to Walsh,” modifying only the rule limiting successive caesuras after the same syllable by suggesting that the pause after the fifth “tires not so much, tho' it be continued longer” (Sherburn, i, 23).

Note 31 in page 222 Life of Dry den, Works, ii, 431.

Note 32 in page 223 In his letter “to Walsh” Pope adds an objection to triplets. The remarks I have made about Alexandrines apply about equally well to triplets throughout.

Note 33 in page 223 Pp. 121–122.

Note 34 in page 223 For similar views, see Dryden, Preface to Albion and Albanius, Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1926), i, 274–275; Johnson, Rambler 88, Works, vi, 104, and Life of Cowley, Works, ii, 67; Kames, p. 284; Monboddo, ii, 404–405.

Note 35 in page 223 This is not to say that the “ten low words” line is other than bad; and Pope is himself sometimes unwittingly guilty of a bad line of precisely the same type, e.g., “He best can paint them who shall feel them most,” the last line of Eloisa to Abelard. (The concluding line of Addison's Campaign, from which Pope's line is adapted, is not similarly awkward.)

Note 36 in page 223 An interesting special use is that of controlled anger: “Sir, let me see your works and you no more” (Arbuthnot, 1. 68). It should also be noted that Pope's “slow” lines are not necessarily made up wholly of monosyllables (e.g., “Thy life a long, dead calm of fix'd repose,” Eloisa, 1. 251); and that if monosyllable lines do tend toward slowness it is because they pile up consonant clusters (which the eighteenth century disliked) and spondees.

Note 37 in page 224 While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,

With sure returns of still expected rhymes:

Where'er you find ‘the cooling western breeze,‘

In the next line, it ‘whispers thro’ the trees;'

If crystal streams ‘with pleasing murmurs creep,‘

The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with ‘sleep‘

(ii, 148–153)

Note 38 in page 224 Letter to Pope, 28 June 1715 (Sherburn, i, 301).

Note 39 in page 224 E.g., by L. M. McLean, in “The Riming System of Alexander Pope,” PMLA, vi (1891), 134–160. This article provides many useful statistics on Pope's rimes, but such an objection as that not all possible combinations of a particular rime appear with close to the same frequency seems ill-considered. One cannot expect such words as spray and hay to appear as frequently as way and say and day. And with heroic couplets used so overwhelmingly, it was doubtless inevitable that a great many word combinations would become hackneyed.

Note 40 in page 224 Other critics were apparently little concerned. Johnson's objection to frequent rime repetition (Life of Denham, Works, ii, 81) may possibly be the only one to match Pope's in the whole couplet tradition.

Note 41 in page 224 Of the first two hundred lines of Eloisa, ninety-four lines involve only thirteen rimes, and one set of rime words occurs four times.

Occasionally repetition of similar sounds could result in something especially deplorable, for example:

This way and that the spreading torrent roars;

So sweeps the hero thro' the wasted shores:

Around him wide immense destruction pours,

And earth is deluged with the sanguine showers.

As with autumnal harvests cover'd o'er,

And thick bestrown, lies Ceres' scared floor

(Iliad, xx. 573–578)

Note 42 in page 224 Still another aspect is violation of normal word order for the sake of rime. Pope, of course, violates normal word order for many purposes, but probably less often for rime than for rhetoric. He has, as everyone knows, many quite lengthy passages in which there is not a single word out of its normal prose position. Where he does shift for the sake of rime, the shift is very often in the first line of a couplet only—so often, and with such good effect, that this seems like a special Popean device. Critics rarely objected to shift in word order for rime's sake, though Dryden did (“Epistle Dedicatory of The Rival Ladies,” Ker, i, 7). There is evidence to indicate that Pope felt heroic couplets to be superior to blank verse on the basis that couplets can employ normal prose order and still seem poetic, while blank verse must deviate in order to avoid prosiness. (See Joseph Spence, Anecdotes…, 2d ed., London, 1858, p. 151.) See also Johnson, Life of Akenside, Works, iv, 291.

Note 43 in page 224 “Discourse concerning… Satire,” Ker, ii, 113.

Note 44 in page 224 Life of Walls, Works, iv, 188.

Note 45 in page 224 Licentia, p. 74.

Note 46 in page 224 Licentia, p. 74, n.

Note 47 in page 225 Art of English Poetry, pp. 19 ff.

Note 48 in page 225 E.g., Life of Cowley, Works, ii, 66.

Note 49 in page 225 See Sherburn, i, 301, n. 5. On the other hand, Pope has, of course, many excellent rimes, fulfilling all the requirements of accuracy, variety, inevitability, unexpectedness, and rhetorical point. See W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., “One Relation of Rhyme to Reason,” The Verbal Icon (Lexington, Ky., 1954), pp. 153–166.

Note 50 in page 225 “Discourse concerning… Satire,” Ker, ii, 105–106.

Note 51 in page 225 Life of Pope, Works, iv, 136. There are three double rimes in The Rape, but Johnson was almost surely referring to the wonderful climactic couplet, “The meeting Points the sacred Hair dissever / From the fair Head, for ever, and for ever!” (iii. 153–154).

Note 52 in page 225 See Bysshe, pp. 10–11; Webb, Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry, p. 29; and especially Johnson, Life of Waller, Works, ii, 270.

Note 53 in page 225 See Tillotson, pp. 141–142, and elsewhere.

Note 54 in page 225 E.g., Coward, p. 60, n.; Bysshe, p. 11; Kames, pp. 247 ff.; Say, p. 97. On the other hand, Pope himself warned in the Postscript to the Odyssey against allowing sound to supersede sense, rather than enforce it.

Note 55 in page 225 Ramblers 92 and 94; also Life of Pope, Works, iv, 119 ff.