is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition in the nature of the imagery or passion."

Scott, Byron and others followed Coleridge's example, making free use of the four-beat verse among the four-bar verses in their narrative poems; cp.:

If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,

Go visit it by the pale moonlight;

For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey.

When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruin'd central tower;
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;

When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave,
but go alone the while

Then go
Then view St. David's ruined pile;

And, home returning, soothly swear,

Was never scene so sad and fair!

(W. Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel II, 1 ff.)

And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall

Hold o'er the dead their carnival.

Górging and growling o'er carcase and limb;

They were too busy to bark at him!

From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh,
As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;
And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull,
As it slipped through their jaws, when their edge grew

dull,

As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,
When they scarce could rise from the spot where they
fed etc.

(Byron, The Siege of Corinth 40 ff.)

$215. Verses of one, two and three Bars.

These verses occur in NE. generally in combination with longer verses in stanzas, but sometimes

Skelton (died 1529) uses a curious metre in some of his poems. Verses of three or two beats, divided. by one or two unstressed syllables, are united in varying numbers by rime;

Whom Gyb our cat hath

slayne,

Gib, I saye, our cat
Worrowyd her on that
Which I loued best:
It can not be exprest
My sorrowful heuynesse,
But all without redresse;
For within that stounde,
Halfe slumbrynge, in a

sounde

I fell downe to the grounde

Rudely rayne beaten,
Rusty and moughte eaten,
If ye take well therwith,
It hath in it some pyth.
For, as farre as I can se,
It is wronge with eche degre:
For the temporalte
Accuseth the spiritualte;
The spirituall agayne
Dothe grudge and complayne
Vpon temporall men:
Thus eche of other blother
The tone agayng the tother
Alas, they make me shoder
etc.

$216. Blank Verse.

The Italian poet Trissino, who lived in the first half of the sixteenth century, wrote his tragedy Sophonisbe and his epic Italia Liberata dai Goti in unrimed verses (versi sciolti) in imitation of classical verse. In England Surrey (died 1547) translated Æneid II and IV (c. 1540) into unrimed verses of five feet (blank verse). This translation was first printed 1557. Blank verse was first used in drama by Sackville and Norton in Gorboduc (c. 1561), but it did not become the recognized verse for drama before Marlowe produced his Tamburlaine (1587). In the seventeenth century Milton used blank verse for epic poetry, and in the eighteenth century it was used by Thomson, Young, Cowper and others for didactic poetry. In the

nineteenth century blank verse for poetry of all kinds.

was much used

NOTE. According to the New English Dictionary the term blank verse is first found in Nash's preface to Greene's Menaphon (1589): The swelling bumbast of bragging blanke verse; further Shakespeare (Hamlet II 2, 339: and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't). On the beginnings of blank verse in England see Schröer, Anglia 4, 1 ff.

Milton defines blank verse: "The measure is English heroic line without rime." Thus the rhythmical scheme of blank verse is precisely the same as that of heroic verse: ×*|××|×*|××|××|(x); but owing to the absence of rime blank verse is capable of more variety than heroic verse.

Thus the poet may use many words at the end of the verse, to which there are no corresponding rimes (cp. § 140, note), or an independent unstressed syllable may follow the last stressed syllable. Feminine endings, therefore, are easier in blank verse than in heroic verse, and in Shakespeare's later dramas they are very frequent (§ 217). Other dramatists, e.g. Fletcher, often use gliding endings (emperor, liberty, dángerous etc.).

In rime strongly stressed words (nouns, adjectives, verbs) are generally used. Where there is no rime more weakly stressed words (pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions) may occupy the last stressed position, and since these proclitics are closely connected grammatically with the following words, enjambement is very fre

quent. Surrey uses enjambement, and in later dramatic and epic blank verse it becomes more and more frequent.

With the great increase of enjambement it becomes more and more usual to put a sentence pause within the verse. Dramatic poets sometimes divide a verse between two or three speakers, e.g. Shakespeare, especially in later dramas. Thus the "centre of gravity" is shifted from the end to a position within the verse, as in alliterative verse (§ 105).

Since in blank verse no two consecutive verses are closely connected (as they are by rime in heroic couplets), the poet has full freedom in sentence grouping. Thus the poet has great freedom, almost as great freedom as prose would give him, but the scheme of the verse is always present in his mind and this determines a certain rhythmical grouping.

On the other hand a good style is essential for blank verse unless it is to approach too near prose; cp. Lewis, Principles p. 63:

"The fact is, after all is said, that the great glory of blank verse is not solely in its metre, but jointly in its metre and in its style. If the words are mean, or if the thoughts are mean, majestic and cunningly conflicting cadences will not make blank verse noble or beautiful."

Symonds is too extravagant in his praise of blank verse (Alden, Engl. Verse p. 214f.):

"English blank verse is perhaps more various and plastic than any other national metre. It is capable of being used