266. EBB to James Commeline, Jr.
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 62–66.
[Not all marks of stress and pronunciation have been reproduced in this transcript. They are all reproduced in the print volume.]
Hope End
May 7th 1827.
Dear Sir,
I have rather more than performed my threat of detaining your books an unreasonable time, & have been so much pleased & interested that you may think very well both of my honesty & your own good fortune, in getting them back at all. The correspondence has been read by me repeatedly & most attentively; & I have strictly followed your direction in giving particular consideration to the paper on the vowels, & the summary of your opinions in page 301. [1] I am extremely obliged to you for the instruction & pleasure I have recieved by these means; & confess that my convictions give a very strong proof of their allegiance to Mr Price in resisting so long an attack conducted with such acuteness & ability. You see I do resist: & since you have been kind enough to send me this book, & I have been free enough to express this scepticism to you, I may as well be still freer & say two or three words in explanation of my impracticability.
The grand maxim of Mr Price’s system, is, you well know, “Salus metri suprema lex,” [2] to which may be added a codicil from Longinus, τεκμηριον μετρου ακοη. [3] Without the ear, on metrical subjects, there should be no judgment; & from the ear, no appeal. Now what strikes me in Mr Price’s pronunciation is its willingness to be guided by the ear as de jure divina, [4] whereas yours, very nationally, will admit no jus divinum .. no passive obedience, but, while it professes to be guided by the desire of the ear, tells the ear, in the first place, what it is proper to desire. This is not quite Lord Bacon’s idea of a loyal subject: and if the ear recognize, with a good grace, can′o as an iambus, or pat′ulæ as an anapæst, I will believe (but not till then) that Ferdinand recognized the liberal constitution with a good grace. [5] It certainly does appear very evident to me, that any person may, without a knowledge of prosody, be capable of distinguishing a long syllable from a short one: in any word articulated distinctly: & it appears to me equally evident that no person would be able to distinguish what you call a long syllable from a short one, without a knowledge of prosody. I think if you were to try an experiment à la Psammetichus, on some unsophisticated organ, [6] innocent of Dionysius & the critics, it would decide “the long & the short of it” [7] in can′o, very differently from what you might expect. If this be so, the common sense of the ear is against you; & as the practice of pronunciation must have been formed by the ear,—& critical rules from the practice of pronunciation, it follows that no critical rule can be so good an authority in a question of this kind as the common sense of the ear. Dionysius indeed shews the cause of length by observing “that long syllables are constituted from the long vowels or the dichronous ones taken long:” [8] but surely long vowels do not in themselves constitute long syllables, tho’, in your words, they constitute syllables “capable of prolongation”. It is clear that the long sound—i.e. the sound capable of prolongation,—may be uttered in a short time,—as, among other innumerable instances,—Virgil’s “Insulæ Ionio in magno.” [9] Therefore, if I may venture to express an opinion, I am afraid lest the strictest attention to the sounds of the vowels which you & Dionysius could prescribe, tho’ in itself very desirable, would fail in securing a preservation of the quantity. With regard to the second cause of length “dichronous vowels or short vowels taken long”, you will only allow that they may be taken long in the case of aggregated consonants. But I do not understand how you get over those instances,—& they are not very rare,—where a short vowel followed by a single consonant must be taken long: as in Homer’s
αυταρ ἐπειτ’ αυτοισι βελος ἐχεπευκες εφιεις: [10]
where I see no other means of giving βελōς its iambic cadence but by laying our modern accent after the sigma. You, according to your principle, must lay our accent,—as a substitute for the Roman one,—after the lambda, & thus you are in a dilemma. For if the accent after the sigma give length, the accent after the lambda must give length—& your quantity is false: if, on the other hand, the accent after the lambda do not give length (& according to your principle, it must shorten the syllable) then the accent after the sigma does not give length,—& your quantity is false,—&, what is more lamentable, it must be false, & we can have no means at all of distinguishing βελος as an iambus, in that place. But you will not submit to this: you will bring your very ingenious subterfuge (can you forgive the word?) & try to demonstrate that the last syllable of βελ′ος′ is made longer than the first by “the pause, & reverberation which follows the close of a word so accented.” But there is no room for pause or reverberation after the word βελ′ος′;—the voice being carried on immediately over the two next unaccented syllables,—ος′εχε,—to the next accented one. If ος′εχε be a dactyl, surely būs′ĭly can be no tribrach. Again, if the accent after the lambda in βελ′ος, shorten the syllable, how can we lengthen the ελ in αυτους δ’ελωρια τευχε κυνεσσιν.? [11]
What makes the corner stone of your doctrine; viz. “Quantity is not the essence of English poetry,”—is the great stumbling stone in my way; for I can no more concieve poetry unregulated by time, than music unregulated by time. The first of over may be, as you observe, “a note on the organ”,—The first of ev′er “a note on the harp,” but it is evident that tho’ the “note on the harp” be not so naturally lengthened as the “note of the organ,” yet the time may be equally kept on either instrument: the harp note compensating the time by a slight subsequent pause. If this were not so, one instrument could not accompany the other without producing such a want of rhythm as Mr Price complains of in your recitation,—where you allow your harp & organ,—your accentual arsis & thesis, & your metrical, to play continually at cross purposes. You concieve English versification to be constituted by “a recurrence of certain marked & conspicuous sounds at regular & fixed intervals[”]: but you do not explain how you concieve the intervals to be regulated & fixed. Not, certainly, by the number of intermediate distinct sounds or syllables, however the critic Fadladan might count them on his fingers, [12] —for the number of syllables forming an English heroic verse are by no means definite, extending from ten to 13 or 14 without injury to the rhythm. In French verse, the number is more definite; & perhaps for a reason, which, if admitted, bears hard against you,—that French syllables have greater equality of length than is the case in our language,—& that consequently the same number of syllables is apt to occupy the same time in pronouncing. You argue that all homogeneous verses regulated by quantity, must have the same number of times: that English homogeneous verses have not the same number of times,—I wont go on to your ergo, because I cannot admit this proposition. In English ve[r]se, long syllables are not always double the length of the short ones,—& Quinctillian’s [“]longis longiores, brevibus breviores [13] &cæ” is abundantly true with regard to it. If therefore you attempt to ascertain the number of times is [sic for in] an English heroic verse, by the same means used by you to ascertain the number of times in an ancient one, you must not be surprised at discrepancies, for you cannot expect to arrive at any accurate conclusion. When we had the pleasure of seeing you here, you noticed a line to me, which, according to your reckoning, has two times less than “When Ajax strives some rocks vast weight to throw”: [14] I mean
Ye nymphs of Sŏl′ymă begin the song! [15]
I thought afterwards on the subject; & came to the conclusion that we pronounce the short syllables of that dactyl (if you will suffer me to call it so) much more leisurely & slowly than we do in common; by which means we preserve themetre. To prove this I shall look to Cowper’s choriambus “rōcks nĕvĕr heard”—“These valleys & rōcks′ nĕvĕr hear′d.” [16] I shall take from the choriambus its first accented syllable & two subsequent unaccented syllables; (for “never” is unaccented in that place) & put them in the room of the one accented & two subsequent unaccented syllables which form the word Sol′yma—
Ye nymphs of rōcks′ nĕvĕr begin the song
Now if in reading this line you lay your accent on rocks as you did on Sol′,—& give nĕvĕr, Cowper’s quick unaccented cadence, the case is exactly in point,—& you will find that, tho’ the accent lie precisely in the same place & the unaccented syllables follow as usual, all rhythm & metre have disappeared from the line. These statements seem to sanction a conclusion really favorable to Mr Price’s position. [“]Quantity is the essence of English poetry”. Indeed were the position ill founded Pancrace’s precaution would be prudent & proper—“Ah Monsieur! passer donc de l’autre coté, car cette oreille ci est destinèe pour les langues scientifiques et etrangeres, et celle là pour la maternelle et vulgaire.” [17] I shall be contented with saying in a different spirit but too surely in vain—“Ah Monsieur! passer donc de l’autre coté”.
I had wished to mention some other points, especially your charge against Mr Price’s “different pronunciation of the same words according to the supposed necessities of poetry”, as being “contrary to all analogy”: & your adoption of a monosyllabic pronunciation of pyrrhics constructed like ŏαι,—by which adoption, you do not seem to me to get out of the “triste embarras”: [18] for if you say thwai for Θŏαι, you must, consistently extend the practice to iambi & say thyoon for Θɛων,—& this seems quite inadmissable on every principle of metre.
Κειμαι δ'ενθαδε νυν: [19] I have already inflicted too much on your patience; my “two or three words” having stretched themselves to most unreasonable dimensions. Do not suspect me of meditating so gratuitous a piece of impertinence as an attempt at converting you, or defending Mr Price,—who in such a case, might well supplicate to be defended from his defenders. My object has merely been to prove, that I have rejected no opinion without considering it, as far as my limited means would suffer me,—& that, tho’ you have had an incompetent reader, (which is rather your fault than mine) you have not had an inattentive one.
With many obliged feelings, & our united remembrances, believe me
Very truly yours
E B Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Brown University.
1. See Commeline’s letter (no. 252).
2. “The soundness of the metre is the supreme law.”
3. “Hearing is the proof of metre” (De Sublimitate, Fragmenta, III, 3).
4. “By divine law.”
5. Apparently a reference to the imposition in 1812 of a British-style constitution on Ferdinand IV, King of Naples (1751–1825).
6. A reference to an experiment with two newborn children, ordered by Psammetichus, King of Egypt, recounted by Herodotus (II, 2).
7. Cf. The Merry Wives of Windsor, II, 2, 59–60.
8. In chapter XV of his De Compositione Verborum.
9. “Islands set in the broad Ionian sea” (Æneid, III, 211).
10. “Thereafter on the men themselves he let fly the sharp-pointed darts” (Iliad, I, 51–52).
11. “Made them spoils for dogs” (Iliad, I, 4).
12. Fadladeen, Grand Chamberlain of the Harem and self-appointed critic, in Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh (1817).
13. “Long longer, short shorter” (Institutio Oratoria, IX, 4).
14. Pope, “An Essay on Criticism” (1711), line 370.
15. Pope, “Messiah” (1712), line 1.
16. “Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk” (1782), line 30.
17. Scene IV of Molière’s Le Mariage Forcé: “Well, then, go on the other side of me, for I keep this ear for scientific and foreign languages; and that I destine for the vulgar or mother tongue!” (Samuel Foote’s 1762 translation).
18. “Sad difficulty.”
19. “And here I now rest.”
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