notes to chapter 1 213
- Goold Brown, The Grammar of English Grammars, 827, 828.
- As evidence of the necessity for simplifying and abstracting metrical rules for
pedagogical purposes, the section on “versification” that appears in Goold Brown’s
often reprinted First Lines of Grammar reads: “Versification is the art of arranging
words into lines of correspondent length, so as to produce harmony by the regular al-
ternation of syllables differing in quantity” (Brown, The First Lines of Grammar, 145). - Patmore’s article, “English Metrical Critics,” appeared in issue XXVII, 127–61,
1857 of the North British Review in 1857 as “an article ostensibly reviewing George
Vandenhoff ’s The Art of Elocution, Edwin Guest’s A History of English Rhythms, and
William O’Brien’s The Ancient Rhythmical Art Recovered.” Sister Mary Augustine
Roth’s reproduction of Patmore’s Essay on English Metrical Law includes an introduc-
tion in which she expertly traces the influences of Patmore’s predecessors Joshua
Steele, Hegel (“whose Aesthetics provided the philosophical basis for an “organic”
theory of prosody unifying ‘life’ and ‘law,’ meanings and versification,” ix), Daniel, Fos-
ter, Mitford, and Dallas. Patmore revised the essay and printed it as a “Prefatory Study
on English Metrical Law” in the 1878 edition of Amelia, Tamerton Church Tower,
Etc., which was again reprinted in the 1879 four-volume edition of Patmore’s col-
lected Poems (in volume 2). - Patmore, “Essay on English Metrical Law,” Poems Volume 2, 217. I am using the
fourth edition of the second volume of Poems, which was printed (and reprinted) in
1886, 1887, and 1890, attesting to its popularity as well as the potential readership of
the essay, which appeared in the appendix. Despite the importance that Dennis Taylor
has given to this essay (as the harbinger of the “New Prosody”), few of Patmore's obitu-
aries mention the essay, and a long Atheneaum piece (1896: Dec. 5, 797) only states: “a
thoughtful essay, marked by fresh study, and displaying the genius of the poet in a very
distinct and startling light.” Saintsbury discards Patmore's metrical interventions in a
June 15, 1878 Athenaeum review (757) [see chapter 3]. A long review in The Exam-
iner ( June 29, 1878) summarizes:
it is ingenious and scrupulously exact in expression, and is conceived in a digni-
fied spirit, but errs in recording as legitimate canons of rythmic (sic) art irregu-
larities that are only to be pardoned in genius, not recommended to immaturity.
For instance, it is dangerous to attempt, by any public recognition of time, to
regulate the varied pauses that enliven and illuminate the best English verse. If
once we drop the jog-trot measurement of lines by feet, on the ground that,
what we call an iambus has, in fact, by an irregularity, become a trochee, we
open the door to every sort of extravagance. By all means, let young people con-
tinue to be taught to scan in the old mechanical way. If they are poets, they will
learn intuitively to arrange their time. . . . The whole of this study on metre, in
short, is highly interesting, whether the reader agrees with it in detail or not. It
is singular to find a poet defending with such dignity the theory of an art that
he seems, in practice, so often to defy. (821–22)Patmore himself asserts “I have seen with pleasure that, since then [1856], its main
principles have been quietly adopted by most writers on the subject in periodicals and
elsewhere” (“Essay on English Metrical Law,” 215).