because such contracted utterances are quite unnecessary for the metre, inasmuch as the lines are perfectly good to the ear even if the word the is fully, but softly, uttered, according to prose custom; and (3) because I find the same elision mark used in the old texts in cases where it is utterly impossible that the total suppression of the e can have been meant. No doubt the reading of English poetry in Milton's time or Shakespeare's differed in some respects from ours. The differences, however, must have been in details of pronunciation rather than in metrical instinct. On the whole, it is best to assume that strictly metrical effects are pretty permanent, that what was agreeable to the English metrical sense in former generations is agreeable now, and that, even in verse so old as Chaucer's, one of the tests of the right metrical reading of any line is that it shall satisfy the present ear. For this reason, and also because Milton's poetry is a property which, by his own express intention, we may use and enjoy after our own habits and methods, the right way of scanning his verse is to read it freely and naturally as we should read verse of our own day, subject only to a few transmitted directions, and to register the actual results as well as we can in metrical formulæ.

On this principle (which still, of course, leaves room for difference, as no two readers will read alike) I believe that a persevering and systematic scanning of Milton's lines of Blank Verse on any sufficient scale will yield a conclusion which may be thus expressed :-Although the normal formula of Milton's Blank Verse may be said to be 5 xa, and although a good many scattered lines answer exactly to this formula by consisting of five consecutive Iambi, an immeasurably larger proportion of his lines deviate from this formula by either (I.) Dissyllabic Variation, i.e. the substitution of a Trochee (ax), a Pyrrhic (xx), or a Spondee (aa), for the normal Iambus in one, two, three, or more of the five metrical places, or (II.) Trisyllabic Variation, i.e. the substitution of a trisyllabic foot, such as the Anapest (xxa), the Dactyl (axx), the Tribrach (xxx), the Amphibrach (xax), the Cretic (axa), the Bacchius (xaa), or the Antibacchius (aax), for the normal Iambus, in one or more of the places. Illustration will make this clearer :

I. DISSYLLABIC VARIATIONS. From the perplexing

abundance of examples of such, page after page, take, almost at random, these :

I. "Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment."

་

2. Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze."

3.

4.

"Dovelike sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss."

"Nine times the space that measures day and night."

5. Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell."

6. "Irreconcileable to our grand Foe."

7.

"Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last."

8. "Numberless as thou seest, and how they move."

9.

11.

13.

"Infinite wrath and infinite despair."

10. "Whose image thou art: him thou shalt enjoy."
"On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star."
12. "Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve."
Not to know me argues yourselves unknown."
"Gabriel from the front thus called aloud."
15. "Thus said:-Native of Heaven, for other place."
16. "In their triple degrees: regions to which."
17. "Created thee in the image of God."

14.

19.

21.

T8. "Burnt after them to the bottomless pit."
"Yet fell remember and fear to transgress."
20. "To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared."
"Productive on herd, plant, and nobler birth."
"Greedily she ingorged without restraint."
"Shalt eat thereof all the days of thy life."
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."
25. Like change on sea and land, sideral blast."
26. Me, me only, just object of his ire."

22.

23.

24.

27. 28.

30.

Found so unfortunate; nevertheless."

In the visions of God: it was a hill." 29. Justification towards God, and peace." "To the flood Jordan-came as then obscure." "With them from bliss to the bottomless pit." Among daughters of men the fairest found." 33. "And made him bow to the Gods of his wives." 34. "After forty days' fasting had remained."

31.

32.

35.

36.

37.

"And with these words his temptation pursued."
"From that placid aspect and meek regard."
"Their enemies, who serve idols with God."

38.

So fares it when with truth falsehood contends."

39. "Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect."

40. Light from above, from the fountain of light."

41.

42.

"Environed thee; some howled, some yelied, some shrieked.” "In the bosom of bliss, and light of light."

43. "Hail, son of the Most High, heir of both Worlds."

45.

46.

47.

66

Scandalous, or forbidden in our Law."

Horribly loud, unlike the former short."

"For his people of old: what hinders now?"

All these lines, it will be observed, are decasyllabic; and so far they are regular. There being only ten syllables in each, the forced Iambic chant might regularize them all completely, or convert them all into strict 5 xa: e.g. "Irréconcíleǎblé to our grǎnd Fóe"; 'Ŏn á sunbéam, swift ás ǎ shooting stár"; "Grěedíly shé ingórged without rěstráint"; "That invinciblě Sámson, fár rěnówned." Even where the Iambic chant is at its worst, however, it does not inflict such horrors as these, but acknowledges reluctantly that the lines are not to be regularized. A study of the facts puts all formally right by declaring that English Blank Verse admits a Trochee, a Spondee, or a Pyrrhic, for the Iambus, in almost any place of the line.

It is by no means to be supposed that the foregoing examples represent all the possible dissyllabic variations; but in these examples alone a considerable number of interesting variations may be observed. Thus the Trochee for

the Iambus is very frequent in them. It appears, if I may trust to my own reading, in the first metrical place in Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 22, 29, 31, 34, 39, 40, 45, 46, giving in each case the very acceptable effect, so common in good blank verse, of a strong syllable now and then at the beginning of a line. I find it in the second metrical place in Nos. 15, 16, 20, 24, 26, 28, 32, 34, 36, 42, 44, 47; it comes in the third metrical place in Nos. II, 12, 13, 23; and in the fourth in Nos. 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 27, 31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 40, 43. The Pyrrhic also is not uncommon. I find it, or seem to find it, in the first metrical place in Nos. 11, 16, 20, 24, 28, 30, 32, 35, 42, 44, 47; in the second in Nos. 8, 10, 14, 18, 21, 22, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45; in the third in Nos. 3, 6, 17, 18, 19, 31, 33, 35, 40; and in the fourth in Nos. 26, 34, 39, 45. One does not like to speak so surely of the Spondee, which is supposed to be rather alien to English speech; and the matter is complicated (as indeed it is in the Pyrrhic) by the delicate question of what the distinction is between accent and mere stress, strength, or quantity. Can a weak syllable, on the one hand, be said to be accented, and a syllable requir

ing strong or emphatic enunciation, on the other hand, be said to be unaccented? Without discussing such a subtlety, let me say that I perpetually find in Milton's verse a foot for which "spondee" is the best name, and that it would be difficult to characterize many of his lines otherwise than by calling them Spondaic. In the foregoing examples I find, or seem to find, the Spondee for the Iambus, in the first metrical place, in Nos. 4, 5, 7, 15, 18, 19, 25, 26, 27, 38, 43; in the second metrical place in Nos. 2, 3, 13, 30, 35; in the third metrical place in Nos. 7, 10, 21, 26, 34, 41; in the fourth metrical place in Nos, 7, 14, 41; and (what is worth observing) in the fifth or last metrical place in Nos. 6, 7, 41, 43, 45.- -More appears from the examples given than merely that the Iambus may be displaced anywhere in the line by another dissyllabic foot. It appears that there may be not only one such displacement, but several such, in any line, and indeed that one displacement naturally brings others by way of correction or compensation. Thus, of the 47 lines quoted, while some exhibit but one displacement (e.g. Nos. 1, 4, 5, 29, 36, 46), there are two displacements in many (Nos. 2, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 33, 37, 42, 44, 47), three displacements in thirteen (Nos. 3, 6, 11, 13, 14, 16, 19, 24, 31, 38, 39, 40, 41), four displacements in six (Nos. 7, 18, 26, 34, 35, 45), and one remaining line (No. 43) with actually five displacements, or not a single regularly placed Iambus in it. Subtle laws, no doubt, regulate the correction of one displacement by another or others; but the inquiry is too minute here.One remark bearing on it may, however, be added. It is that the acceptability of a line to the ear, the ease with which it is passed as good or usual blank verse, is by no means in the inverse proportion of the number of its variations from the normal; and, vice versa, that the strangeness of a line to the ear, the difficulty of accepting it, is by no means in the direct proportion of the number of its variations. Of the 47 specimen lines twenty-three or almost exactly a half, are lines which, I think, would be accepted at once, or without much demur, as in legitimate Blank Verse time-viz. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 22, 29, 30, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 45, and 46. The other half, or twenty-four in all-viz. Nos. 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 40, 42, 44, 47-are

strange lines, out of tune with the general rhythm of Blank, and some of them so startlingly so that, in their detached state, they look like bits of prose, or lines astray from some complex chorus. Well, among those lines that would be accepted at once by everybody as in true Blank Verse time is precisely that No. 43 which is irregular or non-Iambic in all the five places : "Hail, Són of the Most High, héir of bóth Worlds" (aa, xx, aa, ax, aa). Of the other perfectly or easily acceptable lines, two exhibit four variations (No. 7, with actually four Spondees, and No. 45 with a Trochee, two Pyrrhics, and one Spondee), seven exhibit three variations (Nos. 3, 6, 13, 14, 38, 39, 41), eight exhibit two variations (Nos. 2, 8, 9, 12, 15, 22, 30, 37), and five exhibit one variation (Nos. I, 4, 5, 29, 46). Of the twentyfour strange lines, on the other hand, one exhibits one variation (No. 36), thirteen exhibit two variations (Nos. 10, 17, 20, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 32, 33, 42, 44, 47), six exhibit three variations (Nos. 11, 16, 19, 24, 31, 40), and four exhibit four variations (Nos. 18, 26, 34, 35).

From the above, even if it be only approximately correct, it results that, though five beats or accents are the normal measure of Blank Verse, yet the number of accents, unless in a peculiar sense of accent, not realized in actual pronunciation, is also variable. In a good many of the lines only four distinct accents can be counted (e.g. Nos. 8, 9, 11, 18, 20, 22, 24, 31, 33, 35, 37, 40, 42, 44, 47). In three lines (Nos. 17, 28, and 39) I can detect but three; and, on the other hand, in a few very spondaic lines the number seems to mount to six (Nos. 2, 25, 26), seven (No. 43) or even eight (Nos. 7, 41). This diminution of the accents below four or increase above five conflicts, I know, with the common notion of accent, which makes it a mystical something, distinct from stress, strength, or anything that can be perceived in actual enunciation. But I cannot bear a nomenclature which in such a line as No. 7 would call the weak "their" and the strong repeated "who" indiscriminately unaccented syllables, or which would sink the coequality of three words in the following line with the strongest other words in it by saying that it has somehow but five

accents :

"Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death."