Chapter 2: The Stigma of Meter
The humorous magazines of Cambridge and Oxford provided Dibdin with
the early training necessary to compose his own humorous verses, and as such
to bridge the gap between high and low audiences. He provides a list of imagi-
nary critical commentaries from such invented publications as “The Pedantic
Exterminator” and “The Scalping Knife” to emphasize that his position as a
“vociferous ballad singer” is not supposed to be taken seriously. But at the
same time, he is careful to portray himself as highly educated, acknowledging
his debt to no fewer than five authoritative histories. This claim to erudition
also aids his appeal to the second audience, which needs assistance in receiving
the correct history; he insists that “the dates of every incident occurring in the
History, were correctly and progressively placed opposite the relation of them”
(16). He proves his literary interest and expertise by his “miniature attempts to
point out, by abridged examples, the progress of English Poetry,” which “nec-
essarily cease at the period of Charles the Second’s Restoration, the Works of
most Authors of that and subsequent periods being generally known.” Dib-
din’s second audience, therefore, is a society that was beginning to believe in
the value of English literature and the importance of English history, the “ju-
venile” mind that, increasingly toward the end of the century, required histori-
cal facts to be impressed upon it efficiently, naturally, and easily, by the pres-
sures of the fledgling national school system. Though many of these texts were
responses to the midcentury national obsession with history that Catherine
Hall has noted,^25 most of the late nineteenth-century histories described the
necessity of memorizing facts for eventual examination.^26
But if verses are meant to take the place of more difficult lessons, what does
that imply for the study of metrical form itself? These histories purvey a metri-
cal language that is natural and simple, but also insidiously easy. George Ray-
mond’s 1842 Chronicles of England: A Metrical History believed that “no fact
in the world is better known than that metre, or rhythmical construction, is
that form of language which is the first beloved of memory in its dawn, and the
latest which attends it in its journey in decline” (viii). But Raymond warns
that versified language, “[l]ike bearded grass . . . has crept up the sleeve of
fancy, whence no power can dislodge it—it has attained its place with but lit-
tle solicitation, and holds it with obstinacy—indeed, such is the nature of met-
rical language . . . no effort in acquisition; and almost appearing of spontane-
ous existence” (viii). With a gesture to Robert of Gloucester, Raymond
recommended that his book be used as a study guide, not as a replacement “for
such a study in its ampler and more venerable garb.” The student must first
digest the “sober prose narration” and, “by means of this thread of rhyme,” “tie
up the bulk of the weighty historic yarn, which laborious hands have wove,
that the fibres may not unravel, and its continuity and purpose perish to-
gether” (xii).^27 Like Dibdin’s hope that the varied metrical forms might pro-
vide an index to the various epochs in English history, Raymond wants the
sameness of his verse form, a rather choppy pentameter that is held together