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there are grounds for believing, that in the Anglo-Saxon the stress on the adjective was always subordinate to that on the substantive. In nine cases out of ten, it was clearly subordinate; in no case is it found predominant ;* and when with the aid of the sectional pause, it takes the accent, there is, in the great majority of cases, an evident intention on the part of the poet, to use the pause for the purposes of emphasis-the substantive, in all probability, still keeping the stronger accent. There are, indeed, instances of the sectional pause, where it is certainly not used as an emphatic stop; but these, I believe, are, for the most part, found in poems of inferior merit, or in those artificial rhythms † which were probably invented in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries. They may perhaps be laid to the account of carelessness or of incapacity, and ranked with those cases, where the ordinary rhythm of the language has been made to yield to the rhythm of its poetry. These exceptions may shake, but I do not think they are sufficiently numerous to overturn, the hypothesis that has been started.

Having thus given the reasons, which incline me to the opinion already stated as to the origin of the pause, I shall now proceed to range in order, those sections into which it enters. If we consider the pause as filling the place of an unaccented syllable, we may use nearly the same notation to indicate the rhythm, as hitherto. We have merely to show the presence of the pause, by the addition of a p. Thus the section we have already quoted

from Sackville,

Their great crueltie.

would be represented by the formula, 5 ll. p.

* When the adjective has a stronger accent than its substantive, it always forms part of a compound, and is no longer subject to inflexion.

Conybeare's rhiming poem, for example.

291

THE SECTION 1p. OF TWO ACCENTS.

Sections, which admit the pause, may be divided into two classes, accordingly as they contain two or three accents. When the section contains only two, the pause cannot change its position, for it must fall between the accented syllables; but as the section may vary both its beginning and its end no less than three different ways, it admits of nine varieties. Of these six have established themselves in English literature, to wit, 1. p. 1 l. p. 1 ll. p. 5. p. 5 l. p. 5 ll. p.

Whether the section 1. p. were known in Anglo-Saxon, is a matter of some doubt. In Beowulf, there is the couplet,

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Spake then the Scylding's Lady

and in Cadmon, 148, we have,

Thy læs him westengryre,

Har hæth holmegum wederum
Oferclamme.

Lest them the desert-horror

The hoar heath-with deluging storms
O'erwhelm.

The lengthened section, 1 l. p. is somewhat more com

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The section 1 p. was never common. It was chiefly used by our dramatists; and more particularly in their faëry dialect.

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This is the only instance of the section in Milton, who doubtless borrowed it from Fletcher. The propriety of Shakespeare's rhythm will be better understood, if we suppose (what was certainly intended) that the fairy is pouring the love-juice on the sleeper's eye, while he pronounces the words, "Thou tak'st." The words form, indeed, the fairy's "charm," and the rhythm is grave and emphatic as their import. I cannot think, with Tyrwhitt, that the line would be improved, "both in its measure and construction, if it were written thus:

See thou tak'st]."

I know not how the construction is bettered, and the correspondence, no less than the fitness of the numbers, is entirely lost. Seward, in like manner, took compassion upon the halting verses of Fletcher. His corrections afford us an amusing specimen of conjectural criticism.

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Fletcher, like Shakespeare, had a charm to deal with; and, to gain the same object, he used the same rhythm.

The sections 1. p. and 1 l. p. are both of them to be found in Spenser's August; but the strange rhythm which he adopted in his roundle can only be considered as an experiment. It would be idle to trace out every variety he has stumbled upon, in writing a metre for which he had no precedent, and in which he has had no imitator.

The section 1 ll. p. is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon. In that dialect it is met with, not only among the short and rapid rhythms of Beowulf, but also in the stately numbers of Cædmon; and of all the pausing sections known to our earliest dialect, was the one most widely used. It is singular it should so completely have disappeared from the early English. I do not recollect one single instance of it in that dialect.

We will begin with the couplet of four accents.

Tha | theah|tode : theoden ure.

Deop | dream aleas : drihten ure.

Beorn | bland en feax bill geslehtes.

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Cad.

Cad.

Battle of Brunanburgh.

Rhim. Poem.

War Song.

Cæd.

Cad.

Rhim. Poem.

Same.

Rhim. Poem.

War Song.
Cad.

Rhim. Poem.

Alf.

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The following are instances of this section, when found

in the couplet of five accents.

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Cæd.

ealra feonda gehwile: fyr | ed|neowe.

The section 5. p. was used by our dramatists in their faëry dialect. It was also found in Sackville, and must, at one time, have taken deep root in the language, for it forms a striking feature in the staves of several popular songs.

O Troy! Troy!: there is no bote but bale,
The hugie horse within thy walls is brought,
Thy turrets fall.

Sackville. M. for M. Induction, 65.

Let her fly, let her scape,

Give again her own | shape.

I do wander every where,

Swifter than the moons | sphere.

:

Fl. Fa. Sh. 3. 1.

M. N. Dream.

Warton, in quoting Sackville, added a third Troy, without authority from the poet, or notice to the reader.

O Troy! Troy! Troy! there is no bote but bale.

The passages he has thus corrupted are more numerous, and the corruptions more serious than his late able editor suspected. They would have fully satisfied even the spleen of a Ritson, had it been his good fortune to have lighted on them. Steevens also, with that mischievous ingenuity which called down the happy ridicule of Gifford, thought fit to improve the metre of Shakespeare. He reads the line thus:

Swifter than the moonles sphere.

But the quarto of 1600, and the folio of 1623, are both against him. The flow of Shakespeare's line is quite in

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