The Rise and Fall of Meter

(Tina Sui) #1

222 notes to chapter 3



  1. Symonds, “The Blank Verse of Milton,” 767–81, reprinted in Blank Verse, 73–
    113; Symonds, appendix, Sketches and Studies of Italy, 411–28; and Symonds, appen-
    dix, Sketches and Studies of the Southern Europe, 325–84.

  2. Stanford, Selected Letters of Robert Bridges, vol. 1, 127.

  3. Ibid., 128.

  4. The preface was included with the poem before Hopkins sent the poem to Cov-
    entry Patmore in 1884. Norman MacKenzie, Complete Poems and Manuscripts, 314.

  5. Ibid., 118

  6. Abbott, LIII, 14.

  7. The sonnet became, initially, the twenty-third sonnet in his 1889 version of The
    Growth of Love and the twenty-second sonnet in all other editions. Cf. Holmes, “The
    Growth of The Growth of Love,” 583–97; 55, 221.

  8. Stanford, In The Classic Mode, 86. He lists “A Passer-by,” “The Downs,” and
    “Early Autumn Sonnet — So hot the noon” as the three additional poems in accentual
    meter.

  9. See MacKenzie, Poetical Works, 376–77, for a detailed discussion of the manu-
    scripts, and 144–46 for a copy of the earliest surviving autograph copy of the poem.

  10. For a summary of readings of “The Windhover,” by far the most discussed of
    Hopkins’s poems, see ibid., 378.

  11. “Mastery” has a sforzando sign above it, indicating slightly stronger stress and
    greater emphasis (ibid., 144).

  12. Abbott, LI, 85.

  13. Cf. Harrison, “The Birds of Gerard Manley Hopkins,” 448–63; also, August,
    “The Growth of ‘The Windhover,’” 465–68.

  14. Abbott, LI, 71.

  15. September 28, 1883, in Derek Patmore, “Three Poets Discuss New Verse Forms:
    The Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Bridges, and Coventry Pat-
    more,” 69–78.

  16. Bridges, Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, 5. Henry Beeching was one of Gerard
    Manley Hopkins’s first editors (posthumous), including some of his poems in his turn
    of the century antholog y Lyra Sacra. He also married Robert Bridges’s niece.

  17. Symonds, “The Blank Verse of Milton,” 767–81, mentioned by Hopkins to
    Bridges in letter XXX, April 3, 1877 (Abbott, LI, 32–40).

  18. Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe, 361–62.

  19. Ibid., 352. Blank Verse, which became a more famous volume, was published in
    1895 and included the essays first published in the former book.

  20. The rules he presented in 1887 included the rule of open vowels (all open vow-
    els may be elided); the second rule of pure R (unstressed vowels separated by “r” may
    be elided). This rule has an interesting exception in Milton’s use of the word spirit:
    “Milton uses the word spirit (and thus its derivatives) to fill indifferently one or two
    places of the ten in his verse). . . . The word is an exception” (22); the third rule of pure
    L (unstressed vowels before pure L may be elided, and here the exception is on the
    word “evil”) and finally the fourth rule of the elision of unstressed vowels before N.

  21. Bridges, On the Prosody of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.

  22. Unsigned review, “Mr. Bridges and Metre,” review of Milton’s Prosody, by Rob-
    ert Bridges, 85. The review begins, “Mr. Robert Bridges’ essay on Milton’s prosody has
    long been recognized by metrical students as a work of standing value.”

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