English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and History — Themes and Context

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The following characters which may be unfamiliar are used in this e-text:

Þ, þ - upper and lower case thorn. Ð, ð - upper and lower case eth. Ȝ, ȝ - upper and lower case yogh.

Footnotes have been numbered sequentially and moved to the end of each chapter.

Minor corrections to punctuation and capitalisation have been made without note. Variant spelling, especially in Anglo-Saxon and middle English poems, is as per the original. The following corrections to typographical errors have been made:

p.129: "I hope to get safely out of..." (had "... safety ...") p.401: "It cannot be said, however,..." (Had "In ...") p.457: "Lotos-Eaters" (Index entry, had "Lotus-Eaters")

_SPECIMENS ILLUSTRATING ITS PRINCIPLES AND HISTORY_

RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN, PH.D.

_Associate Professor in Leland Stanford Junior University_

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

BOTH THE INSPIRATION AND THE OPPORTUNITY

The aim of this book is to give the materials for the inductive study of English verse. Its origin was in certain university courses, for which it proved to be necessary--often for use in a single hour's work--to gather almost numberless books, some of which must ordinarily be inaccessible except in the vicinity of large libraries. I have tried to extract from these books the materials necessary for the study of English verse-forms, adding notes designed to make the specimens intelligible and useful.

Dealing with a subject where theories are almost as numerous as those who have written on it, it has been my purpose to avoid the setting forth of my own opinions, and to present the subject-matter in a way suited, so far as possible, to the use of those holding widely divergent views. In the arrangement and naming of the earlier sections of the book, some systematic theory of the subject--accepted at least tentatively--was indeed indispensable; but I trust that even here those who would apply to English verse a different classification or terminology may be able to discard what they cannot approve and to make use of the specimens from their own standpoint. Even where (as in these introductory sections) the notes seem to overtop the text somewhat threateningly, they are invariably intended--as the type indicates--to be subordinate. Where it has been possible to do so, I have preferred to present comments on the specimens in the words of other writers, and have not confined these notes to opinions with which I wholly agree, but only to those which seem worthy of attention. My own views on the more disputed elements of the subject (such as the relations of time and accent in our verse, the presence of "quantity" in English, and the terminology of the subject) I have reserved for Part Three, where I trust they will be found helpful by some readers, but where they may easily be passed over.

To classify the materials of this subject is peculiarly difficult, and one who tries to solve the problem will early abandon the hope of being able to follow any system with consistency. Main divisions and subdivisions will inevitably conflict and overlap. For practical purposes, basing my arrangement in part on that found convenient in university lectures (which it will be seen is not altogether unlike that followed by Schipper in his _Englische Metrik_), I have divided the specimens of verse into two main divisions, each of which is suggested by a word in the sub-title of the book. Part One contains specimens designed to illustrate the principles of English verse, arranged in topical order. Part Two contains specimens designed to illustrate the history of the more important forms of English verse, arranged--in the several divisions--in chronological order. Part Three has already been spoken of. Part Four contains extracts from important critical writers on the place and function of the verse-element in poetry,--matters which give us the _raison d'être_ for the whole study of versification.

If there had ever been hope of making the collection of specimens fairly complete, even in a representative sense, this would have been dissipated by the discovery, during the very time of the book's going through the press, of a number of additional specimens which it seemed wicked to omit. Doubtless every reader will miss some favorite selection which might well have been included, and suggestions as to important omissions will be received gratefully. The attempt has been to put students on the track of all the more important lines of development of English verse, and to indicate, by including a considerable number of specimens from early periods, the continuity of this development from the times of our Saxon forefathers to our own.