Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/449

 s. xii. DEC. 5, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

441

LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 190S.

CONTENTS. No. 310.

NOTES -.George Bliotand Blank Verse, 441 Shakespearian Critics Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' 442 Dic- tionary of English Dialect Synonyms " Fiscal " " Bulachon" and its Variants, 444 St. Valery or Waleric De Quincey's Syntax "Kissed hands," 445 Fable as to Child-murder by Jews, 446.

QUERIES : Thackeray and 'Damascus and Palmyra' Thackeray's Poem 'Catherine Hayes 'Margaret Roper, 446 Lieut -Col. de Storff " God's silly vassal" Hanging Censers Epigram on Madame de Pompadour J. Den- man T. Upton J. Oscar Parker Parody on Sterne "Questionnaire," 447 'My Old Oak Table ' Village Feasts Pindar Family "Ingland": "Inglish" Rev. T. Wilson " Popes "Sir G. Carey Salep or Salop Capt. Pepper Aylmer Arms, 448 Capsicum, 449.

REPLIES -.Early Measures of Capacity Long Lease, 449 Will read in Parish Church, 450 Marat in London- Sir Walter Raleigh, 4ol The Alpine Club-Capt. Peter Puget John South W. Upcott Chi-Rho Monogram, 452 St. Bees College " Avary "Sexton's Tombstone, 453 Heidelberg Gallery 'N. & Q.' : Early References Grubb M'RaghnaU Overstrand Church The National Flag, 454-St. Kitts T. W. Snagge " Travailler pour le Roi de Prusse "Folk-lore of Childbirth Thomas Howard. Duke of Norfolk, 45o Madame Humbert and the Crawfords Queen Elizabeth's Pocket Pistol, 456 " Surquedry " : Chester Definition of Pleasure Berkshire and Oxford- shire Parish Registers Old Pewter Marks, 457.
 * Outrecuidance " Last Survivor of Waterloo St. Peter's,

NOTES ON BOOKS : Sir G. O. Trevelyan's 'American Revolution' Wakemau's 'Irish Antiquities' 'English Historical Review.'

Obituary : Mr. Julian Marshall.

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

GEORGE ELIOT AND BLANK VERSE.

GEORGE ELIOT held peculiar ideas on the subject of blank verse ; and it must be con- fessed that she had the courage of her con- victions, for she certainly carried out these ideas in her poetical compositions whether to the beautification of these, or otherwise, is possibly a matter of opinion. In a letter to John Black wood dated 30 July, 1868, and in allusion to her * Spanish Gypsy,' she writes :

" I think I never told you that the occasional use of irregular verses, and especially verses of twelve syllables, has been a principle with me, and that it js found in all the finest writers of blank verse."

Again, in a letter of hers, of the same date, to Canon Macllwaine, who had ventured to find fault with some such lines in that poem, she writes :

" Some of the passages marked by you for revision were deliberately chosen irregularities. George Eliot adheres strongly to the principles first, that metrical time must be frequently determined in despite of syllable-counting ; and, secondly, that redundant lines are a power in blank verse. Milton is very daring, and often shocks the weaklings who think that verse is (i.e., ought to be) sing-song."

Well, at the risk of being set down as a "weakling," I cannot hold or believe this doctrine, unless it be on some such principle

as that on which, I believe, in music an occasional discord accordo del diavolo is by some considered to be a beauty ; possibly [)y the effect of contrast and the pleasure of again into harmony, and thus preventing insipidity. To me it seems tantamount to saying that a countenance otherwise regular and beautiful would be improved by a mis- shapen nose, and thereby saved from being insipid :
 * resolving," as I believe musicians call it,

Hunc ego me, si quid componere curem, Non magis esse velim quam naso vivere pravo, Spectandum riigris oculis nigroque capillo :

while the examples sometimes cited of such irregularities in Milton do not prove that they are beauties, or that Milton himself so regarded them good Homer himself some- times nods and then he was Milton, and not Marian Evans.

As to Shakespeare, many of the lines in his plays which we think to be defective were probably not so in his time, since it is cer- tain that in his day many words were pro- nounced quite differently from nowadays. Thus, in 4 1 Henry VI.,' III. ii. [Globe ed., III. iii. 3], where Joan says,

Care is no cure, but rather corrosive , and in * Troilus and Cressida,' I. iii.,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

when Shakespeare wrote it is probable, or at least conceivable, that the word " corrosive " had the stress on its first syllable, "com- merce" on its last syllable, and that the second i in " dividable " was short.

We all know that blank verse of the English heroic metre, in its strictly perfect form, consists of lines each of which contains five iambuses, each iambus being accented on its last syllable. It has, in other words, been defined as a " decasyllabic " metre, having the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth syllables accented. Thus the following is an example of a perfect line in this metre :

When down along by pleasant Tempe's stream. But we all know also that a whole poem written in such lines would be intolerable from its monotony would, in fact, be what George Eliot denounced as "sing-song." This monotony, however, is to be cured, and can be effectually cured, by constant variety in the incidence of the accent, not by piling up redundant syllables in the manner of George Eliot ; or if such should be occasionally resorted to, it should be very rarely ; and it has been observed that this licence is more allowable in dramatic verse than in verse of any other kind. PATRICK MAXWELL.

Bath.