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be written as they are spoken, with the rhymes in the middle of the bars: thus,

"By thee will I sit for ever: let our fate stop here—

A kid I on this spot will offer:

Pan will bid us live in peace,

In love and peace, among his forest wildernesses."

This rule is as evident as that which forbids a comma in the place of a full stop, or a full stop in that of a comma. A poet may change the nature of his line as often as he pleases, but he is not free to violate habitually the very idea of a line. Sometimes he may take that freedom, as in the following from Beattie's Minstrel :

"And loud enlivening strains provoke the dance,
They meet, they dart away, they wheel askance :
To right, to left, they thrid the flying maze,
Now bound aloft with vigorous spring, then glance
Rapid along;"

or as in this from the Princess:

"She

Began to address us and was moving on

In gratulation, till as when a boat

Tacks, and her slackened sail flaps, all her voice

Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried
'My brother.'"

But the difference between an improper and an allowable freedom of this kind will be seen in what follows from the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher :

"More foul distempers than ere yet the hot

Sun bred through his burnings, while the dog
Pursues the raging lion."

And surely there must be something radically wrong in the mode of printing, when, as in the rhyme of Endymion, and in blank verse generally, the exception becomes the rule. Johnson quotes approvingly a saying, that blank verse is verse only to the eye. It is not a true saying, it is only a poor cousin of the truth. Blank verse is verse to the eye, and it makes music to the ear; but the verse which comes to the ear is not that which meets the eye. It should not be written nor printed in the common way: it should be penned and printed like Thalaba. Here is the opening of that poem, written after no such arabesque fashion as Southey supposed, but according to plain sense :

"How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain

Breaks the serene of heaven;

In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine

Rolls through the dark blue depths;

Beneath her steady ray

The desert circle spreads,

Like the round ocean girdled with the sky.

How beautiful is night!"

This much admired passage has the true melody of blank verse, and it may be so written, without any very deadly sin to trouble our consciences:

"How beautiful is night! A dewy fresh-
Ness fills the silent air; no mist obscures,

Nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain breaks the serene

Of heaven; in full-orbed glory yonder moon

Divine-rolls through the dark blue depths; beneath
Her steady ray the desert circle spreads,

Like the round ocean girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

But what is hereby gained? There is often as little pause between two words which are written in different lines as between the two syllables of fresh-ness; and those who are content that the idea of a line should thus be made a sham, need no longer quarrel with

"the water gru

El at or absent from the U-
Niversity of Göttingen."

CHAPTER III.

66

IMAGERY.

At the end of his treatise on the Art of English Poesy, Puttenham gives a list of those figures of speech which in the body of his work he had examined one by one: Eclipsis or the figure of default; zeugma, or the single supply; prozeugma, or the ringleader; mesozeugma, or the middle-marcher; hypozeugma, or the rerewarder; syllepsis, or the double supply; hypozeuxis, or the substitute; aposiopesis, or the figure of silence, otherwise called the figure of interruption; prolepsis, or the propounder; hyperbaton, or the trespasser; parenthesis, or the insertor; hysteron-proteron, or the preposterous; enallage, or figure of exchange; hypallage, or the changeling; homoioteleton, or the figure of likeloose; parimion, or figure of likeletter; asindeton, or figure of lose language; polysindeton, or the couple clause ; irmus, or the long loose; epitheton, or the qualifier; endiades, or the figure of twins; The list is interesting as an attempt to render into English the Greek names employed in rhetoric; and as thus far

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copied, it is remarkable as being but a tenth part of the whole. Here of course we may not enter into such detail, and neither may we encumber ourselves with those figures which are merely figures of speech. We have to do only with such as may be classed under the general name of Imagery.

It has already been shown (p. 157) that verse and imagery are evolved at once and together from the first law of poetry, the law of imagination; and that as the primary object of the former is to express time, so the primary object of the latter is to denote place. I speak of place in the widest sense of the word, be it pure space, be it locality or geographical place, be it shape or form, that is, defined and figured place.

By imagery many seem especially to understand similitude; and it would seem to be a common opinion that rich and rare similitudes form the peculiar device of poesy. They form indeed a splendid ornament, and for the purpose which they serve are invaluable. That distinguishing purpose will be unfolded in treating of imagery as developed by the second law of poetry, and as employed in epic poesy; but it must here be remarked that, although similes can and do in their own way further the object of the first law, namely, in representing place to the mind, they are by no means essential to that end. A few examples may be given to show how, without similitude or metaphor, the idea of place may be thus conveyed to the mind.

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