reflect the same heavenly source.

One can go back to them again

and again without losing any of their inimitable witchery."1 Belden (1906):

[Donne's] verse is possibly mad, . . . but there was method in his madness, and a definite purpose which he very effectually accomplished... The verse-rythm of Donne's poetry is the natural outward and visible form of his mental temper. He writes so because he can best express his thoughts and his feeling. This I take it is the meaning of Coleridge's rather mysterious dictum that in Donne 'the sense, including the passion, leads to the metre.' But I should rather say that in Donne the meaning, straining against the rhythm of the fore-established metre in the reader's mind, reproduces there the slow, tense emphasis of Donne's thought. The melodists, from Greene and Marlowe to Swinburne, are always in danger (if it is a danger) of lulling the mind to sleep with the music of the sense. The verse pattern is caught at once; we get the tune; and the melodist never ventures far from it, however much he may adorn it with alliteration, assonance, and vowel-series. Such things we say sing themselves, -which can seldom if ever be said of Donne's poetry. It is the test of lyric as distinguished from other poetry that it does so sing itself. Donne's verse (with possibly one or two exceptions) is never lyric in this sense. Instead, he leaves you, line after line and phrase after phrase in doubt of the pattern, or of how the line is to be fitted to the pattern, producing thereby a searching pause on almost every syllable, a sort of perpetual "hovering accent." This is the real idiosyncrasy of Donne's verses, and in it consists, no doubt, much of the peculiar charm of Donne's poetry for certain minds.' 2

—a

Looking back over this array of criticism,3 and realizing that,

1 Frank L. Babbott, Poems of Donne, (The Marion Press) Jamaica, Queensborough, N. Y., 1905, pp. vi, vii.

2 Prof. H. M. Belden, (University of Missouri), Donne's Prosody. (A paper recently read before the Central Branch of the Modern Language Association, at the University of Wisconsin.)

3 Other criticisms may be found in Chapter III. Chapters on 'John Donne' in Leisure Hours, vol. 13, and The Argosy, vol. 32, are not accessible.

Donne's poetry, as a whole, can be but one thing, we are impressed with the fact that his critics, the majority of them at least, have (to use one of Donne's conceits) shivered his verse and given to the world definite reflections of themselves in the numerous sparkling fragments.

CHAPTER II.

SECONDARY ACCENT IN DONNE'S VERSE.

A Comparative Study.

'Iterated acknowledgement is due Sievers for his fine discrimination in classifying secondary word-accents and in proving their rhythmic function in Anglo-Saxon. . . But, although Sievers has opened the way, no one has hitherto consistently and completely pursued the rhythmic function of secondary word-accents along the entire course of English versification.' 1

Professor Bright contributed another study on this subject in 1901.2 The same year Dr. Julian Huguenin and Dr. G. D. Brown made special application of the principle of secondary accent, the former to Anglo-Saxon verse3 and the latter to the poetry of Milton. In 1904 Dr. Raymond D. Miller, 'pursued the rhythmic function of secondary word-accent along the ... course of English versification' from Chaucer to Dryden.5 Miller cites a number of examples from John Donne, but it is impossible to pursue this study without looking more extensively, and at the same time more narrowly, into the principle of secondary accent as it manifests itself in the verse of Donne.

Professor Bright discusses three opinions, or doctrines, as to the manner in which poetry should be read." The first, the sensedoctrine, requires that it be 'read as one reads prose . . . its advocates maintaining that [this method] alone enables the reader to

1 James W. Bright, 'Proper Names in Old English Verse,' Pub. Mod. Lang. Asso. of America, (1899) xiv, 356-7.

2 'Concerning Grammatical Ictus in English Verse.' An English Miscellany, Oxford, 1901, pp. 22-33.

Secondary Stress in Anglo-Saxon, Baltimore, 1901.

* Syllabification and Accent in the Paradise Lost, Baltimore, 1901.

5 Secondary Accent in Modern English Verse (Chaucer to Dryden), Baltimore, 1904.

• Proper Names, etc., pp. 361-2.

58

"bring out" the meaning. It is thus that the relation of the art of poetry to music is ruthlessly pushed aside by the assumption that the harmony of "numbers" must not be regarded as much as the logic of the sense.'

Sometimes this method of scansion does not conflict with rhythm, as in the line,

From higher powers; from God religion flows.1

but in the succeeding line the rhythm is violated:

Wisd

Wisdom and honour from the use of kings.

No theory which ignores the music of verse can be correct.

The second doctrine (third in Professor Bright's discussion) is the ictus-doctrine, which requires the reader to stress strongly every word or syllable standing under the ictus; and to stress no other word or syllable. This method of scansion (commonly designated 'routine scansion') is sure to give a rhythmic, or rather a galloping reading, which may not interfere with the sense, as in

Go and catch a falling star.2

but at times the sense is violated. Thus in the line

I sing the progress of a deathless soul.3

of though an arsis, deserves only a weak stress; while in

The flail-finn'd thresher, and steel-beaked sword-fish.1

-finn'd, steel-, and sword-, though only theses, must be stressed to 'bring out' the sense; and like of, in the line above, though an arsis, deserves only a weak stress.

Just as the sense-doctrine disregards rhythm for sense, so the ictus-doctrine ignores sense for rhythm; and both may be dismissed.

The third doctrine, (second in Professor Bright's discussion) is

the rhythm-, or pitch-doctrine, which has due regard to both sense and ictus.

Before illustrating this doctrine, it is well to inquire why the harmonies of verse are not generally perceived. Professor Bright gives a satisfactory answer: 'On the one hand we are apt to misunderstand the artistic quality of what is commonly described as "monotony," and then a second barrier is set up in the growing tendency in pronunciation to subordinate as uniformly unstressed all other syllables to those which have the chief word-stress.' 1

In his lectures Professor Bright has called attention to the fact that simple 'duration' in the enunciation of words or syllables falling under the ictus, is conducive to 'artistic monotone.' He thereby intends to modify his previous description of the ictus, to the extent of substituting duration for pitch as the characteristic element in the rhythmic quality of secondary-accent syllables when under the ictus.

In the poems of Alexander Smith," we meet lines in which the sense-doctrine and the ictus-doctrine come in conflict, and in which the author italicizes the word in thesis that requires senseaccent or emphasis for meaning:

'Tis the deep soul that's touched, it bears the wound. Page 8, verse 14.

Our ears, Sir Bookworm, hunger for thy song.

I'd rush across this waiting world

And cry, 'He comes !'

Lay it upon her grave.

But few request my prayers. . .

22, 17.

26, 3.

118, 9.

136, 3.

Deep in the mists of sorrow long I lay,

Hopeless and still, when suddenly this truth

Like a slant sunbeam quivered through the mist

And turned it into radiance. . .

158, 2-5.

In these lines the author has indicated the words which the sense-doctrine requires to be stressed-each time the word is in

1 Concerning Grammatical Ictus, etc., p. 26.

A Life-Drama and Other Poems, Boston, 1865.