¹ B. Van Dam and C. Stoffel, Chapters in English Printing, Prosody and Punctuation.

² * John Attey, The First Booke of Ayres of Four Parts, 1622.

William Barley, A New Booke of Tabliture, 1596.

* John Bartlett, A Booke of Ayres with a Triplicate of Musicke, 1606.

* Thomas Campian, Two Bookes of Ayres (probable date 1617).

* — — The Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres (probable date 1618).

* Philip Rosseter, A Booke of Ayres, 1601.

Those starred have been edited with music. Note that Barley (1596) is the earliest, John Dowland next, and Porter (1632) the last, but that the movement is practically over with Campian (1618). 3 A History of English Versification (Oxford, 1910), p. 126.

⁴ Essai sur les Principes de la Métrique Anglaise (Paris, 1909), i, 189. 5 The Science of English Verse (New York, 1911), pp. 141–182.

⁶ Fellowes, English Madrigal Composers (Oxford, 1921), pp. 66, 121–123.

⁷ Fellowes, Preface to First Series (1920).

⁸ Miles M. Kastendieck, England's Musical Poet, Thomas Campian (New York, 1938), p. 135.

⁹ Kastendieck, pp. 68 f. Also Ralph W. Berringer, “Thomas Campian's Share in Booke of Ayres',” PMLA, lviii (Dec., 1943), 948.

¹⁰ H. J. C. Grierson, ed., The Poems of John Donne (Oxford, 1912), I, 432.

¹¹ Kastendieck, pp. 68 f. et passim for Campian and Rosseter; J. Pulver, A Biographical Dictionary of Old English Music (London, 1927) for Barley, J. Danyel, J. Dowland, J. Cooper (Coperario), T. Campian, A. Ferrabosco, J. Jones, T. Hume; DNB for Raleigh, S. Daniel, Earl of Pembroke, T. Campian, Ben Jonson; F. Howes, William Byrd (New York, 1928), p. 148; H. Davey, History of English Music (London, 1921), p. 79.

¹² T. Campian, “Mistress, since you so much desire,” Songs from Rosseter's Booke of Ayres, xvi, and T. Campian, “Beauty, since you so much desire,” Fourth Booke of Ayres, xxii. Though the titles suggest that these are the same poem, there are several differences in stanza one and the second stanza is entirely different. But the refrains are the same. Notice the realism involved in the gradual stepping up of the word higher at each repetition in accordance with the words a little. Also note the fact that there, which refers to higher, stands at the same pitch with it. This realism is a prevailing feature of the airs. Other examples are: “Then sink, sink, sink, sink, Despair,” Dowland, Fourth Booke, xix; “Climb, O heart, climb to thy rest,” Pilkington, First Booke, xiii; “Cupid doth hover up and down,” Dowland, Third Booke, ii; “But down, down, down, down, I fall down and arise,” Dowland, Second Booke, iii; “At length I mounted up,” Bartlett, A Book of Ayres, xiii; “The blackbird whistled,” ibid., xix-xxi; “Sink down, proud thoughts,” Corkine, First Booke, i; “Drop not, mine eyes,” Danyel, Songs for the Lute and Viol, ix-xi.

¹³ History, pp. 9–10.

¹⁴ The Metres of English Verse (New York, 1930).

¹⁵ American Prosody (New York, 1935).

¹⁶ The Reading of Poetry (Boston, 1939).

¹⁷ Convention and Revolt in Poetry (Boston, 1930), p. 230.

¹⁸ Lectures on Prosody (Japan, 1929), p. 59.

¹⁹ Pattern and Variation in Poetry (New York, 1932), pp. 159–160. 20 Poet's Handbook (New York, 1940), p. 140 et passim.

²¹ Milton's Prosody (Oxford, 1921), p. 7.

²² Handbook of Poetics (Boston, 1913).

²³ Ed., Elizabethan Lyrics (Boston, 1895).

²⁴ English Verse: Specimens Illustrating Us Principles and History (New York, 1903).

²⁵ The Principles of English Versification (Cambridge, Mass., 1922).

²⁶ Handbook, p. 139.

²⁷ Principles, p. 22.

²⁸ Milton's Prosody, p. 40. 29 History, p. 141.

³⁰ English Verse, p. 60.

³¹ History, pp. 7, 126.

³² English Verse, p. 60.

³³ Handbook, p. 205.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 221. 35 Milton's Prosody, pp. 5–8.

³⁶ History, p. 132.

³⁷ Lectures, p. 22.

³⁸ Handbook, p. 205.

³⁹ History, pp. 5–8.

⁴⁰ Enid Hamer, Metres of English Poetry, p. 9, says: “There are four base feet, generally recognized and now in common use. The two which proceed from light to heavy syllables and are called rising feet are

The iambus The anapest

The two which proceed from heavy to light and are called falling feet are

The trochee The dactyl

Besides admitting one or more of the other three as modulations, each of these base feet is capable of being replaced by certain feet which are not themselves used as bases.“ On page 10 she discusses the monosyllabic foot, on page 11 the pyrrhic and the spondee, and on page 12 two compound feet, ionic and minor and choriambus . These last are not, of course, feet in the usual accentual definition, and many texts (those of Gummere and Bridges, for example) do not acknowledge their existence in English metre. Schipper (p. 11) considers the use of such terms justifiable only in discussing professed imitations of classical metres. However, Brewster Ghiselin finds paeonic measures, not only in Swinburne, who experimented with Greek metres, but in Shelley, Poe, D. H. Lawrence, Hopkins, Bridges, and Robinson Jeffers. See ”Paeonic Measures in English Verse,“ MLN, lvii (May, 1942), 336–341.

⁴¹ This line could be scanned accentually as an adaptation of the classic amphibrach. Most accentualists, however, ignore or deny the existence of such feet. Hamer is one of the few who accept them fully. She would no doubt read the line as follows:

I wooed her, I loved her, and none but her admire This, as the music shows, comes much nearer than conventional scansion to the way the poet read it.

⁴² I shall have more to say later about the “reversed” foot, but call attention at this point to the fact that it appears to be not an altered accent, but an extra syllable.

⁴³ It would be also quite possible to read it:

I do love thee as my lambs. But whenever more than two unaccented syllables come in succession, a secondary accent tends to appear. This is a well-known phenomenon in polysyllabic words. Verrier considers that the prevalence of binary rhythms is due to its simplicity, and to the fact that they occur most widely in nature, in breathing, in walking, in various labors (ii, 57, 97, et passim). This tendency will naturally be reinforced if the metrical pattern has been duple.

⁴⁴ . H. Sonnenschein, What Is Rhythm? (Oxford, 1925), p. 104.

⁴⁵ A. Ferrabosco, Ayres, viii, 1.

⁴⁶ T. Campian, First Booke, ix, 1.

⁴⁷ See ante, note 12, for music.

⁴⁸ It is probably such lines as these that have led some metrists to say that there is no real distinction between “rising” and “falling” metre. Allen (p. xxvi) considers the foot-division to be “often arbitrary.” Clement Wood (pp. 133–135) questions whether, since “iamb” and “trochee” are so readily interchangeable, the distinction has any real value. Verrier (i, 186–198), devotes some pages to proof that there is no such thing as “rising metre.” However, A. S. Hurst and John McKay say that their experiments show that “the average anapest is longer than the dactyl, and the average iambus is longer than the trochee,” and that the relative length of the syllables is different. (See Experiments in Time Relations of Poetic Metres [Toronto, 1900], p. 167.)

⁴⁹ Walter de la Mare (London, 1924), pp. 252–261.

⁵⁰ Science of English Verse, pp. 34, 63, 65, 73, 82, 110.

⁵¹ Poets and Their Art (New York, 1932), pp. 290–291.

⁵² What Is Rhythm?, p. 105.

⁵³ Principles of English Verse (New York, 1906). 54 Essai, i, 158–159.

⁵⁵ The Rhythm of Speech (Glasgow, 1923).

⁵⁶ The Principles of English Metre (Oxford, 1923).

⁵⁷ The Foundation and Nature of Verse (New York, 1918).

⁵⁸ New Methods for the Study of Literature (Chicago, 1927).

⁵⁹ Essai, i, 146.

⁶⁰ Ibid., i, 158.

⁶¹ A Study of Metre (London, 1903), p. 24.

⁶² Ibid., p. 49.

⁶³ Principles, p. 13; Poets and Their Art, pp. 293–295, 298, 300.

⁶⁴ Science of English Verse, p. 127.

⁶⁵ Essai, I, 160–161.

⁶⁶ This statement seems to make dissyllabic metre, at least in the “heroic line,” genuinely duple.

⁶⁷ Omond, p. 65.

⁶⁸ Essai, I, 156.

⁶⁹ Campian-Rosseter, xiv, 1. Note, however, that the authorship of the words in this part of the text is in dispute. See note 9.

⁷⁰ Poets and Their Art, pp. 293–295. Typical lines are:

Whether tis no- bler in the mind I to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

It will be observed that the periods, or bars, are not by any means all of them equivalents of conventional accentual iambic feet.

⁷¹ Thomas Campion and the Art of English Poetry (London, 1913), p. 49.

⁷² “The Metrical Theory and Practice of Campian,” PMLA, lix (Dec, 1944), 1008.

⁷³ The Versification of Robert Browning (Columbus, 1928), p. 41.

⁷⁴ Essai, i, 189.

⁷⁵ What Is Rhythm?, pp. 105 and 111.

⁷⁶ Essai, i, 190.

⁷⁷ Science, pp. 217, 194.

⁷⁸ Essai, i, 221.

⁷⁹ Science, p. 231.

⁸⁰ What Is Rhythm?, p. 105.

⁸¹ Essai, i, 196, 198.

⁸² I have given at example 3 the music for this line, which shows the accent by leap at las.

⁸⁸ Essai, i, 189–190.

⁸⁴ See note 48.

⁸⁵ George Stewart finds himself torn between the reading we have found, which, he says “harmonizes also with the effect upon the ear,” and the fact that the so-called substitution has been freely admitted by such poets as Pope, who adhered to a fixed syllabic standard. See Modern Metrical Technique (New York, 1922), p. 28 f.

⁸⁶ See notes 70 and 77.

⁸⁷ Bridges, p. 43.

⁸⁸ English Verse, p. 17.

⁸⁹ History, p. 11.

⁹⁰ Essai, i, 212.

⁹¹ Gummere, p. 146, and Stewart, p. 65.

⁹² Principles, pp. 62 f.

⁹³ How to Write Verse (London, 1904), p. 32.

⁹⁴ Lanier, pp. 194, 197.

⁹⁵ A Study of Shakespeare's Versification (Cambridge, 1920).

⁹⁶ A Study of Versification (Boston, 1911), p. 24.

⁹⁷ New Methods, p. 179.

⁹⁸ American Prosody, pp. 132 f.

⁹⁹ Science, pp. 198–199, 89, 91.

¹⁰⁰ Essai, i, 182, 209.

¹⁰¹ Principles, p. 52. 102 Essai, i, 176.

¹⁰³ Study of Metre, p. 113.

¹⁰⁴ Walter de la Mare, pp. 252–261.

¹⁰⁵ Baum, pp. 59 f., quotes the results of some readings of verse recorded in hundredths of a second, and points out that, in spite of the apparent irregularity of the time-values of the various syllables, the value of the light syllable is on the average about half that of the heavy one. I should like to point out in addition that, in spite of these irregularities, the reading confirms my theory of the division of the measure and of the run-on line. The measure has approximately.75–.85 seconds in the earlier lines and approximately.60 in the later ones. The divisions occur generally, but not always, before a stressed syllable, and the light syllable at the beginning of lines one and nine belongs to the first foot, while that in line three belongs to the preceding pause and forms an “anacrusis” of the whole foot. The run-on line 5–6 shows the first syllable of six as belonging to the last half of the last foot of five. An attempt to divide at the conventional foot-division,, etc., produces a much greater irregularity in time-values and makes the end-pauses impossible to account for within the metre. It will be observed that the time is duple, and that the heavy syllable is approximately equal in most measures to the other two. Trisyllabic metre is thus not necessarily triple in time:

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers

.25.35.15.8(.15).15.15.3.2.6(.2)

From the seas and the streams;

.2.18.42.15.15.62 (.75)

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid.2.35.3.5.18.18.34.4.45

In their noon- day dreams..18.2.22.2.7 (.6)

From my wings are shak- en the dews that wa- ken.

25.35.44.22.3.2.1.6.2.25.25

The sweet buds ev- ery one

.1.35.53 (.15).2.21.5 (.55)

When rocked to rest on their moth- er's breast.18.47.2.4 (.2).18.2.22.18.47 (.4)

As she danc- es a- bout the sun

.2.2.45.2.1.25.2.5 (.85)

I wield the flail of the lash- ing hail

.22.22.1.5.15.15.25.15.45 (.3)

And whit- en the green plains un- der

.2.22.18.1.32.5.2.2 (.5)

And then a- gain I dis- solve in rain

.22.38.1.55.15.2.7.15.55 (.67)

And laugh as I pass in thun- der.

.2.4 (.2).15.15.39.18.22.25

“Two facts emerge from these statistics at once: (1) that in about ninety per cent of the feet the, or unstressed element, is shorter than the, or stressed element, or, in other words, stress and syllable-length nearly always coincide; and (2) that while there is very great variation in the absolute lengths of short syllables and long syllables, the proportion of their average lengths is about 2:4.”

¹⁰⁶ Walter de la Mare, Collected Poems (1941). By permission of Henry Holt and Co.