26 chapter 1
out disgust, a benefit of some importance would be conferred on the rising
a g e .”^16
Rather than rely on artificial memory, the English verses (as opposed to
Grey’s hexameters of invented Latinesque words) are memorable for their
simplicity:
When years one thousand and threescore and six
Had pass’d, since Christ in Bethlem’s manger lay,
Then the stern Norman, red from Hastings’ field,
Bruis’d Anglia’s realm beneath his iron sway. (26)Though these lines are syllabic (each containing ten syllables with the aid of
elision) they are neither regularly nor emphatically accentual; they seem,
rather, to be syllabic on the French model. There are, throughout, more em-
phatically regular lines, as the final stanza shows:
In sev’nteen hundred sixty, George the Third,
In Britain born, his people’s dear delight,
Receiv’d the scepter twin’d with laurel round,
And with fresh force renew’d the thicken’d fight. (52)Just as we move closer to the present day, so too does Valpy grow more confi-
dent in his pentameters. But the pentameters were not really his; Valpy admits
that his chronolog y was inspired by an anonymous Poetical Chronolog y of the
Kings of England that appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine^17 over several
months in late 1793 and early 1794, and that he had to perform “alterations . . .
from a sense of moral and political propriety” on his source text. He explains:
It is the duty of a teacher to instill into the minds of youth the pur-
est constitutional principles. He must have the care to reconcile the
lofty sentiments of Republican liberty which occur in the perusal of the
Greek and Latin writers, with a loyal submission to that form of Monar-
chy, which the experience of ages has proved to be the best calculated to
insure private security, and to promote public happiness, in this coun-
try. (5–6)Valpy admits that he rewrote lines from the prior chronolog y so as to save
England’s princes from “unmerited obloquy” and “cruel invective.”^18 It is no
surprise that history writing is ideological and political; here, the loyal submis-
sion to the ten-syllable lines, often (but not always) rhymed abab, is also, ex-
plicitly, submission to that form of monarchy to which the “rising age” should
pledge unequivocal allegiance (both accounts are written in pentameter, and
Valpy only makes subtle changes to the original text). Valpy was a schoolmas-