in the handling of the pentameter couplet. Hence in questioning the emphasis placed on Waller the structure of the couplet becomes a crucial test.

Apart from this it is in itself interesting and profitable to trace the beginnings of the measure which at this time took possession of English poetry and held every writer under its sway for a hundred and fifty years. And here we are at least on solid ground. Here one may with some show of mathematical accuracy put one's finger on traces of classical style. Statistical enumeration of metrical peculiarities may seem a trivial occupation, we shall see that it is at times fallacious, but that it is a valuable corrective of a priori or hastily formed impressions can hardly be doubted. With this preparation, I may venture the statement that the conclusions which follow are corrected and often guided by just this kind of analysis.

As a matter of fact, the differences in effect between the "classical" couplet of Dryden and Pope and the "romantic" couplet of Browne, Chapman, and John Fletcher in the seventeenth century and Keats and Shelley in the nineteenth, may be traced in a large degree to certain metrical peculiarities. Briefly stated, these are as follows: (1) in classical poetry there is a tendency toward distich; (2) there is greater regularity or smoothness; (3) the lines are lighter and swifter.

These statements may need some explanation. By "a tendency toward distich" I mean that writers of the school of Pope bound their thoughts to the limits of the couplet, instead of letting it run on without pause to the couplet following. One may read page after page of the poet just mentioned without finding a single couplet that is run-on, and without finding a full pause or stop (such as that at the end of a sentence) anywhere else in the couplet. The romantic poets, on the other hand, pay little attention to the couplet as a verse-unit and indicate breaks in the thought by pauses which are as likely to occur within the line as at the end. Classical tendency then, is indicated by avoidance of run-on lines and couplets, and of marked pauses within the line.

The second quality, that of "smoothness," is secured by various means. The absence of full pauses within the couplet con

tributes to that effect. Again, even the cæsural pauses, when they occur, are chiefly medial--that is they fall after the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable of the line. And it is scarcely necessary to add that a cæsura so placed detracts less from the smoothness and balance of a line than one placed elsewhere. Finally, there are fewer variant feet. Trochees, except at the beginning of the line where they attract little attention, are rare; spondees, well defined anapæsts, and deficient feet are infrequent; the regular iambic movement of the line is maintained.

The third quality, that of "lightness and swiftness," is not so easily accounted for. It is obtained partly by an increased proportion of lines that have but a slight cæsura or none at all, partly by a larger proportion of light feet. Pyrhics are frequent, without a spondee near at hand to counterbalance them. In short, the general tendency in classical poetry is toward a line in which the emphasis is concentrated before the cæsura and at the end, as in these lines from Dryden's "MacFlecknoe:"

This aged prince, now flourishing in peace
And blessed with issue of a large increase;
Worn out with business, did at length debate
To settle the succession of the state.

Here are two lines with scarcely a cæsural pause, and in the last there are but three accented syllables. The effect is, monotony perhaps, but also swiftness and vigor.

With this extended enumeration of the marks of classical style, we may now turn to the writers whom I have already mentioned, with the more definite purpose of finding in their verse traces of this regularly enjambed, smoothly and swiftly flowing, and somewhat artificial type of verse that reached its perfection in Dryden and Pope. In this search we should look naturally, I think, to the earlier school of satirists, consisting of Hall, Donne, Rowlands, Marston, Wither, and several others, all of whom were treating the kind of material that became popular later, and treating it in the same general manner. These men at once found the couplet the most effective measure for satirical poetry. "After Lodge, Hall, and Donne," says Professor Alden in his "Rise of Formal Satire in England, "the measure may almost be made a test of the intentionally satiric character of a

poem." It is true that in their couplets one element of the later style, that of regularity, is nearly always lacking. This may be due in part to their Latin models. "The Roman ancients," says Hall in one of his prologues,

Whose words were short and darksome was their sense.
Who reads one line of their harsh poesies

Thrice must he take his wind and breathe him thrice.

Perhaps, too, they deemed a careless and slovenly style appropriate for the scurrilities they frequently indulged in. However that may be, Marston and Donne carried freedom so far that their satires stand in a class by themselves; and as for Lodge, his satires and epistles in "A Fig for Momus" have simply the flowing melody that is found in the couplets of early Elizabethan comedy.

Joseph Hall, though he too has less difficulty than he pretends in imitating the roughness of the ancients, seems to have done more than any other of this group toward moulding the couplet into a form fitted for satire. Warton, the eighteenth century historian of literature, who by virtue of his period was well equipped to judge in the matter, speaks highly of Hall's couplets. "These satires," he notes," "are marked with a classical precision to which English poetry had not yet attained -the versification is equally energetic and elegant, and the fabric of the couplet approaches the modern standard."

Energy and elegance, those two qualities the combination of which was at once the achievement and the pride of the later school, are indeed perceptible qualities in the satires of Hall. The following table of statistics will show his relation to other writers of satire, and in particular the resemblance between his work and that of Dryden. Note especially the small percentage of run-on lines and cæsuras. In these respects, as in number of variant cæsuras (not after the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable) and variant feet, Donne, as might be expected, leads all the rest, closely followed by Jonson and Marston; but the steadily increasing regularity from there down is noteworthy. The figures

"Unpublished fourth volume of his "History of English Poetry." Chalmers's "British Poets" (V, 226).

indicate that Rowlands, like Hall, wrote with great regularity. His couplets, however, are diffuse, sing-song, and lacking in vigor. Two-thirds of his cæsuras fall after the fourth syllable.

These figures demonstrate the "elegance" of Hall's style. Its energy is due to other characteristics, in which again he resembles later writers. Antithesis, epigrammatic brevity of expression, and neat balancing of phrase against phrase and of the first half of a line against the portion following the cæsura, have rightly been reckoned important characteristics of eighteenth century style. These artifices may of course be found in both prose and poetry from the time of Lyly on, but as distinctive and constantly recurring elements in verse they appear first in the Elizabethan satires. Jonson is full of it, but he is following as well as setting the fashion. Hall practices it very frequently. Note the conciseness and clearly antithetical structure of the following passages from Hall's satires, which were written before the close of the sixteenth century:

Small honor can be got with gaudie grave:
Nor it thy rotten name from death can save.
The fairer tombe, the fouler is thy name,
The greater pomp procuring greater shame.
Thy monument make thou thy living deeds;
No other tomb than that true virtue needs.

To know much and to think we nothing know:
Nothing to have, yet think we have enough,
In skill to want, and wanting seek for more,
In weal not want, nor wish for greater store:
Envye ye monarchs, with your proud excess,
At our low saile and our high happiness.

-Virgidemiarum (IV, vi).

These passages sufficiently illustrate Hall's style. The absence of the final polish and ease of later work is only too apparent. None of these writers was greatly concerned over a misplaced accent, an extra syllable, a weak ending, or a short foot. Such details were sure to be improved as the writing of satires continued, and as satire came to be considered a legitimate form of poetry. The important point is that Hall, Rowlands and others recognized that the end-stopped line was better fitted to their subject-matter and practiced it with the greatest regularity, and that it is in this direction we must look for the development of antithesis and for early examples of lines full of vigor and power of striking home.

It is not inappropriate that the name of Ben Jonson should follow those we have just treated, for in one phase of his work at least he was in close accord with contemporary writers of epistle, epigram and satire. Yet as the dominating personality of his age and as a writer active in many fields of literature he deserves fuller treatment than can be given here. His influence was undoubtedly greater than that of any other writer, not excepting Donne, on the poets of his own and the following generation. On making this statement one naturally thinks not only of Donne, but also in spite of the comparative insignificance into which he has sunk with the lapse of years, of Edmund Waller, among the poets of his time, as his epitaph reads, "facile princeps. But if the Sacharissa Cycle, "The Battle of the Summer Islands," and the rest of Waller's smoothly flowing, neatly phrased poems had never been written, it is hard to imagine that English poetry would have taken a very different turn from what it did. No one can believe that the powerful genius of Dryden, once free from the influence of Donne as seen in the conceits of his early poem on the death of Hastings, would not have found its way to the swift vigor of his later style.