effectiveness for the expression of meaning may require a departure from the strictness of the metrical arrangement.

These considerations, amongst others, will weigh in the general criticism of metrical constructions. Take, as an example, the celebrated line in Milton:

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

The first word is a trochee instead of the regular iambus, and makes the line more difficult to pronounce. Neither in feeling nor in melody is it an obvious improvement, but rather the contrary. Whether it is an agreeable variation is open to doubt; the decision would rest upon the view that we took of the verses preceding. The probable motive of the poet's choice was to make the sentiment terse and expressive. If he could have found an iambus for better giving the same meaning, he would probably have adopted it. As a detached line, so frequently quoted, adherence to the typical structure of the verse would have been, to say the least of it, no drawback.

The fact that Milton's melody is so often of the highest order calls attention to the many lines where the quality is undiscernible or wanting. The opening lines of Paradise Lost are neither conformable to the proper type of the verse. nor an apparent improvement as regards melody, judged by the most palpable rules. Their merit is the compactness of the sense; and, as the construction is unusually involved, the compliance with metrical form would be next to impossible.

The three concluding lines of Paradise Regained, Book III., are unusually stiff and heavy in their movement :

So spake Israel's true King, and to the fiend
Made answer meet, that made void all his wiles;
So fares it when with truth falsehood contends.

There is nothing to redeem these lines but the thought and the terseness of the wording.

The following lines from Marlowe would appear to justify the licence of beginning a line with a trochee :

The griefs of private men are soon allay'd;

But not of kings. The forest deer, being struck,
Runs to an herb that closeth up the wounds.

The two first lines are blank verse in purity, and are highly effective examples of its power. The third line deviates to seemingly good purpose. After the words, 'The forest

6
THE METRE IN HAMLET'.

315

deer, being struck,' we feel a propriety in beginning the next line with the emphatic verb 'runs,' which necessitates a trochee instead of the iambus. We could not say the same of the word better' in the previous example. Moreover, the delay of the voice upon 'runs' renders acceptable the two light unemphatic syllables to an' that precede the other voice-entangling word herb'.

As exemplifying the mode of interpreting the harmony of metre, regular and irregular, with the subject-matter of the poetry, we may give the following passage from Mr. J. B. Mayor's Chapters on English Metre, p. 176. The reference is to Shakespeare's Hamlet'.

'Horatio's speech commencing A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye,' is a piece of fine imaginative poetry, standing in strong contrast with his preceding rapid business-like statement about the claim of Fortinbras. In place of the rough, broken rhythm of the former speech, we have here some four or five of the most musically varied lines in Shakespeare, marked by slow movement, long vowels and alliteration. It is only as Horatio descends to earth again that we have the double ending in 1. 124. In Hamlet's speech to his mother, he appears as a stern preacher, obeying the command received from his murdered father. Plainly there is no place here for ease and politeness. The same may be said of the ghost's speech, only that it has an added solemnity. The old play is necessarily regular and formal. Soliloquies, if quietly meditative, or the outpouring of a pleasing emotion, will naturally take the regular poetic form if agitated, or vehemently argumentative, they will be irregular, marked by the use of sudden pauses, feminine endings and trisyllabic feet, as we see in I. 2. 129-160, O that this too too solid flesh would melt,' &c. This is remarkably shown in the speech beginning' To be or not to be,' where we find five double endings in the first eight lines, these being perplexed and argumentative; but in the next twenty lines there is not a single feminine ending, as these are merely the pathetic expression of a single current of thought. Then in 1. 83 follow reflections of a more prosaic turn, and we again have two double endings. It may be noticed that in the soliloquies III. 3. 36-96, six of the twelve double endings consist of the word heaven or prayers, which are hardly to be distinguished from monosyllables. One

other instance may be quoted to illustrate Shakespeare's use of the feminine ending. In I. 1. 165 Horatio says:—

So have I heard and do in part | believe ¦ it,
But, look, the morn, in rus set man tle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high east ward hill |.

The first line is conversational, the two others imaginative without passion, only with a joyful welcome of the calm, bright, healthy dawn after the troubled spectral night; and we have a corresponding change in the rhythm."

RESIDUARY QUALITIES.

In the foregoing discussion of Strength, Feeling, Humour, and Melody, a wide range of literary effects has been overtaken; their characteristics and conditions having been minutely surveyed. These qualities do not include all literary excellence. Nevertheless, they are so prominent and commanding, as to be rarely absent from any work of artistic pretensions By them, our pleasurable sensibilities can be less expensively gratified than by any others. we couple with their requirements the 'Aids to Qualities' generally, we can do little more in the way of prescription or criticism in regard to style. Still, in order to be as complete as possible, we shall now touch upon a few matters that have not been expressly adverted to already.

THE SENSE QUALITIES.

If

The Senses, in their own proper character, are appealed to in works of Art. The Painter, the Sculptor, and the Decorator seek to impart the pleasures of the eye, in the first instance, although they do not stop there. The Poet and the Musician gratify the original sensibility of the ear, while enhancing the value of their work by large drafts on the higher emotions.

Under Melody, the agreeable titillation of the ear is studied, so far as the choice and arrangement of words will operate.

The direct gratification of the sense of Sight is not possible in the poetic or literary art, as in Painting and similar arts. The poet must work by presenting visible objects in idea, according to his means. This he may do with considerable success. The pleasures of the eye may be recalled by language; and these may prove either pleasures of the sense, or the still greater pleasures of emotion as attached to visible pictures: for example, the pleasure of contem

plating personal beauty. Each of the two effects has its own laws.

The same applies to Hearing. Melody of language and metrical arrangements make but a small part of the influence of poetry on the ear. As with the eye, the pleasures of hearing can be given in idea, and can have the same double character of pure primary gratification of the sense, and associated emotional pleasures. The effect of music is sometimes reproduced in poetry ideally, but without being remarkably successful.

The inferior Senses-Touch, Odour, Taste-have their pleasures, which are not excluded from poetic allusions and descriptive efforts. A soft touch, a fragrant odour, or a delicious taste can be conceived by us, and can add to the charm of the object possessing the quality. Even the pleasures of eating and drinking may, in the ideal presentation, be so far refined by remote suggestion, or euphemistic reference, as to be admitted into the sphere of poetical treatment.

When sense pleasures are ideally presented in their purity, or nearly so, the effects are designated as Glitter, Brilliancy, Glare, Sparkle, Lustre, Refulgence, Radiance, Sensuousness. For producing them, the terminology of pure sensation, and its ideas, has to be brought under the control of the descriptive art, as well as under the general conditions of excellence, positive and negative, for every form of Art composition.

A somewhat higher class of effects, intermediate between the foregoing and the Quality of Strength, are those designated by the names Gorgeous, Majestic, Glorious, Stately, Dignified, Magnificence, Grandeur. In all these, there is a certain effect of pure Strength, adorned by the sense accompaniments of glitter and show; the combination being more imposing and impressive than Strength unadorned.

The pleasures of Movement, as in the Dance, are open to poetic handling. They lend themselves to metrical expression, from their rhythmical character. It is enough to refer to Gray's Ode on the 'Progress of Poesy,' I. 3.

Feasting, and its accompaniment, Hilarity and Joviality, are often represented in language, as suggesting agreeable ideas. The refined feasts of the gods in Homer, and the feasts of angels in Milton, have the highest degree of refinement. The draught of vintage,' in Keats's Nightingale Ode, is one