the discipline of meter 117
Rhythm, itself perhaps only understood by Arnold as more subtly manipu-
lated rhythm, made into good English meters by the best English authors, will
have a “natural” effect that will shape the student without them even knowing
that it is happening ; this is similar to the belief that through the disciplinary
rigors of mastering classical versification, the English pupil need not under-
stand the Latin poetry he or she is learning, as long as it exercises the correct
disciplinary effect. This “natural” effect is related to the uses of metrical mne-
monics discussed in chapter 1: “a rhyme may glide into the mind / like wedge
into the oak, / Op’ning a broad, marked path for prose.” This verse, from Jane
Bourne’s Granny’s History of Rhyme, carries within it multiple discourses that
were circulating in the nineteenth century: that form’s effect could be insidi-
ous (gliding ) and act upon you without your knowledge; that, as in the case of
Hopkins’s poetics, it could be violent and striking (a wedge into an oak); and
that it was in some way linked to the native body of the English reader.^24 Ar-
nold, along with hundreds of scholars after him, does not pause to consider
the ways that the easily apprehended rhythmic narratives of Hemans and Scott
secure their popularity with the non–classically trained masses. Two years
later, Arnold aligns this specialized “formal effect” with discipline directly.
Rhythm and diction—in good poetry—might discipline the student to be-
come the right kind of English citizen:
The acquisition of good poetry is a discipline which works deeper than
any other discipline in the range of work in our schools; more than any
other, too, it works of itself, is independent of the school teacher, and
cannot be spoiled by pedantry and injudiciousness on his part. . . . Good
poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character; it tends
to beget a love of beauty and of truth in alliance together, it suggests,
however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires
the emotion so helpful in making principles operative. Hence its ex-
treme importance to all of us; but in our elementary schools its impor-
tance seems to be at present quite extraordinary.^25Arnold insists on “good poetry” to open “the soul and imagination” (1878,
192) yet either fails to notice or chooses not to see how the tropes of form and
discipline in English poetry are enacted through themes of discipline and duty
in the poems the students actually read, as well as in their physical classroom
activities. Unlike the awareness and understanding of metrical form on which
Bridges insists for metrical “mastery,” for Arnold the meters of good poetry, its
“rhythm and diction,” will form a superior character naturally, subtly, as if the
meter will be intimately folded into the student’s consciousness. Though he
does not name “meter” directly, it is the meter that clearly disciplines the stu-
dent in a differently classical sense or, rather, without the requirement of the
student sensing that he is being disciplined or formed at all. The power of this