14

  Where only one Lift in the first half-line alliterates, it should normally be the first.

  15

  All vowels alliterate with one another.

  WARNING Do not be deceived by spelling. Union alliterates with yeast, yellow, &c., not with uncle.

  16

  No half-line of any type should end in a pure dactyl. Noble Norbury, with trash and trumpery, glancing gloomily, &c., are unmetrical.

  17 STRUCTURE

  (1) The medial pause which divides the first from the second half of the line must be strictly observed, so that the two halves fall apart as separate speech-groups.

  (By speech-groups I mean those units—rhythmical, rhetorical, emotional, and to some extent syntactical, units—out of which our actual conversation is built up. Thus if the reader says ‘The big workman who had sat silent and sucked his pipe all the evening’, he will (I hope) find that the speech-groups coincide with the half-lines in the example given under para. 6. A good deal of re-education is here necessary, for the chief beauty of syllabic verse lies in a deliberate clash or contradiction between the speech-groups and the ‘feet’, whereas in alliterative verse the speech-group is both the metrical, and the aesthetic, unit. See below, para. 18.)

  Examples. Thus, he will stand as a stone till the stars crumble, is metrically good. The laugh of the lovely lady is silent is bad. But Lost is the laugh of the lovely damsel is not a line at all: for it pretends metrically to be:

  LOST is the LAUGH of the LOVEly DAMsel

  (A-type+A with anacrusis): and in this the first half is so impossible as a speech-group that a poet could have written it only because he was really still thinking in feet and syllables, and not in speech-groups and half-lines.

  (2) But while we cannot run across the medial break, we can run across the end of a line. In other words, the last half of a given line and the first half of the next are more intimately connected than the two halves of a single line. Hence we may write

  There stands a stone. Still’d is the Lady’s

  Peerless laughter.

  Corollary. Hence, though the poem begins and ends with a full line, yet within the poem a new paragraph or sentence should usually begin in the second half of a line.

  18 AESTHETICS

  It follows that whereas syllabic poetry primarily uses the evocative qualities of words (and only secondarily those of phrases), alliterative poetry reverses the procedure. The phrase, coinciding with the half-line, is the poetic unit. In any English country tap-room the student may hear from the lips of labourers speech-groups which have a certain race and resonance in isolation. These are the elements of our native metre.

  Such are the rules. Where no tradition—at least no modern tradition—exists it is rash to offer advice, but perhaps two counsels may be given. In the first place, if any one is attracted by the metre in general, but disposed to omit the rules of quantity and produce a merely accentual adaptation, I would like to save him disappointment by warning him that he will almost certainly produce rubbish. Torture the language, or the thought, as he will, the result will be thin. The thing to aim at is richness and fullness of sound, and this cannot be attained without quantity: with quantity, the metre opens possibilities of resonance which have not been exploited for a thousand years. In the second place, I would advise him to be on his guard against too many B types. His iambic training will probably be tempting him to them at every turn: but if he yields his poem will sound like octosyllabics. And lastly, I would advocate to all who have a taste for such things some serious contention with the difficulties of this metre. A few successful specimens would be an excellent answer to the type of critic (by no means extinct) who accuses the moderns of choosing vers libre because they are not men enough for metre. For if syllabic verse is like carving in wood and vers libre like working with a brush, this is like carving in granite.

  A man who preaches a metre must sooner or later risk his case by showing a specimen: and if the fate of Gabriel Harvey deters me, that of Campion invites. In order to avoid misunderstanding I must say that the subject of the following poem was not chosen under the influence of any antiquarian fancy that a medieval metre demanded medieval matter, but because the characters of the planets, as conceived by medieval astrology, seem to me to have a permanent value as spiritual symbols—to provide a Phänomenologie des Geistes which is specially worth while in our own generation. Of Saturn we know more than enough. But who does not need to be reminded of Jove?

  THE PLANETS

  Lady LUNA, in light canoe,

  A : B

  By friths and shallows of fretted cloudland

  B : C

  Cruises monthly; with chrism of dews

  A : B

  And drench of dream, a drizzling glamour,

  B : B

  Enchants us—the cheat! changing sometime

  B : A

  A mind to madness, melancholy pale,

  A2 : E2

  Bleached with gazing on her blank count’nance

  A : C

  Orb’d and ageless. In earth’s bosom

  A : C2

  The shower of her rays, sharp-feathered light

  B : E2

  Reaching downward, ripens silver,

  A : A

  Forming and fashioning female brightness,

  A : A

  —Metal maidenlike. Her moist circle

  D2 : C

  Is nearest earth. Next beyond her

  B : A

  MERCURY marches;—madcap rover,

  A : A

  Patron of pilf’rers. Pert quicksilver

  A : D

  His gaze begets, goblin mineral,

  B : A

  Merry multitude of meeting selves,

  D2 : B

  Same but sundered. From the soul’s darkness,

  A : C

  With wreathèd wand,* words he marshals,

  B : A

  Guides and gathers them—gay bellwether

  A : D4

  Of flocking fancies. His flint has struck

  C : B

  The spark of speech from spirit’s tinder,

  B : C

  Lord of language! He leads forever

  A : B

  The spangle and splendour, sport that mingles

  A2 : A

  Sound with senses, in subtle pattern,

  A : C2

  Words in wedlock, and wedding also

  A : C

  Of thing with thought. In the third region

  B : C

  VENUS voyages . . . but my voice falters;

  A : C

  Rude rime-making wrongs her beauty,

  D : A

  Whose breasts and brow, and her breath’s sweetness

  B : C

  Bewitch the worlds. Wide-spread the reign

  B : E

  Of her secret sceptre, in the sea’s caverns,

  A2 : C2

  In grass growing, and grain bursting,

  C : C

  Flower unfolding, and flesh longing,

  A : C

  And shower falling sharp in April.

  C : A

  The metal of copper in the mine reddens

  B : C2

  With muffled brightness, like muted gold,

  C : B

  By her finger form’d. Far beyond her

  B : A

  The heaven’s highway hums and trembles,

  C : A

  Drums and dindles,* to the driv’n thunder

  A : C

  Of SOL’s chariot, whose sword of light

  C : B

  Hurts and humbles; beheld only

  A : C

  Of eagle’s eye. When his arrow glances

  B : C

  Through mortal mind, mists are parted

  B : A

  And mild as morning the mellow wisdom

  A2 : C

  Breathes o’er the breast, broadening eastward

  E : A

  Clear and cloudless. In a clos’d garden

  A : C

  (Unbound her burden) his beams foster

  A2 : C

  Soul in secret, where the soil puts forth

  A : B

  Paradisal palm, and pure fountains

  E : C

  Turn and re-temper, touching coolly

  A : A

  The uncomely common to cordial gold;

  B : B

  Whose ore also, in earth’s matrix,

  C : C

  Is print and pressure of his proud signet

  B : C

  On the wax of the world. He is the worshipp’d male,

  B : B

  The earth’s husband, all-beholding,

  C : A

  Arch-chemic eye. But other country

  E2 : C

  Dark with discord dins beyond him,

  A : A

  With noise of nakers, neighing of horses,

  B : A

  Hammering of harness. A haughty god

  A : B

  MARS mercenary,* makes there his camp

  D2 : E

  And flies his flag; flaunts laughingly

  B : D

  The graceless beauty, grey-eyed and keen,

  A2 : E

  —Blond insolence—of his blithe visage

  D2 : C2

  Which is hard and happy. He hews the act,

  B : B

  The indifferent deed with dint of his mallet

  B : B

  And his chisel of choice; achievement comes not

  B : A2

  Unhelped by him;—hired gladiator

  B : D

  Of evil and good. All’s one to Mars,

  B : E

  The wrong righted, rescued meekness,

  C : A

  Or trouble in trenches, with trees splintered

  A : C

  And birds banished, banks fill’d with gold

  C2 : E

  And the liar made lord. Like handiwork

  B : D2

  He offers to all—earns his wages

  B : A

  And whistles the while. White-featured dread

  B : E

  Mars has mastered. His metal’s iron

  A : C

  That was hammered through hands into holy cross,

  B : B

  Cruel carpentry. He is cold and strong,

  D5 : B

  Necessity’s son.* Soft breathes the air

  B : E

  Mild, and meadowy, as we mount further

  A : C

  Where rippled radiance rolls about us

  C : A

  Moved with music—measureless the waves’

  A : E

  Joy and jubilee. It is JOVE’s orbit,

  D5 : C

  Filled and festal, faster turning

  A : A

  With arc ampler. From the Isles of Tin

  C : B

  Tyrian traders, in trouble steering

  A : C

  Came with his cargoes; the Cornish treasure

  A : B

  That his ray ripens. Of wrath ended

  C : C

  And woes mended, of winter passed

  C : B

  And guilt forgiven, and good fortune

  B : C

  Jove is master; and of jocund revel,

  A : C2

  Laughter of ladies. The lion-hearted,

  A : A2

  The myriad-minded, men like the gods,

  A2 : E

  Helps and heroes, helms of nations

  A : A

  Just and gentle, are Jove’s children,

  A : C

  Work his wonders. On his wide forehead*

  A : C2

  Calm and kingly, no care darkens

  A : C

  Nor wrath wrinkles: but righteous power

  C : B

  And leisure and largess their loose splendours

  A2 : C

  Have wrapped around him—a rich mantle

  A2 : C

  Of ease and empire. Up far beyond

  A2 : E

  Goes SATURN silent in the seventh region,

  C : C

  The skirts of the sky. Scant grows the light,

  B : E

  Sickly, uncertain (the Sun’s finger

  A : C

  Daunted with darkness). Distance hurts us,

  A : A

  And the vault severe of vast silence;

  B : C

  Where fancy fails us, and fair language,

  A2 : C

  And love leaves us, and light fails us

  C : C

  And Mars fails us, and the mirth of Jove

  C : B

  Is as tin tinkling. In tattered garment,

  C : C

  Weak with winters, he walks forever

  A : B

  A weary way, wide round the heav’n,

  B : E

  Stoop’d and stumbling, with staff groping,

  A : C

  The lord of lead. He is the last planet

  B : C2

  Old and ugly. His eye fathers

  A : C

  Pale pestilence, pain of envy,

  D2 : A

  Remorse and murder. Melancholy drink

  A : E2

  (For bane or blessing) of bitter wisdom

  B : C

  He pours for his people, a perilous draught

  A2 : B

  That the lip loves not. We leave all things

  C : C

  To reach the rim of the round welkin,

  B : C

  Heaven’s hermitage, high and lonely.

  D2 : A

  CHAPTER 3

  WHAT CHAUCER REALLY DID TO IL FILOSTRATO

  A great deal of attention has deservedly been given to the relation between the Book of Troilus and its original, Il Filostrato, and Rossetti’s collation1 placed a knowledge of the subject within the reach even of undergraduate inquirers. It is, of course, entirely right and proper that the greater part of this attention has been devoted to such points as specially illustrate the individual genius of Chaucer as a dramatist and a psychologist. But such studies, without any disgrace to themselves, often leave singularly undefined the historical position and affinities of a book; and if pursued intemperately they may leave us with a preposterous picture of the author as that abstraction, a pure individual, bound to no time nor place, or even obeying in the fourteenth century the aesthetics of the twentieth. It is possible that a good deal of misunderstanding still exists, even among instructed people, as to the real significance of the liberties that Chaucer took with his source. M. Legouis, in his study of Chaucer to which we all owe so much, remarks that Chaucer’s additions ‘implied a wider and more varied conception’ than those of Boccaccio; and again ‘Chaucer’s aim was not like Boccaccio’s to paint sentimentality alone, but to reflect life’.2 I do not wish to contradict either statement, but I am convinced that both are capable of conveying a false impression. What follows may be regarded as a cautionary gloss on M. Legouis’s text. I shall endeavour to show that the process which Il Filostrato underwent at Chaucer’s hands was first and foremost a process of medievalization. One aspect of this process has received some attention from scholars,* but its importance appears to me to be still insufficiently stressed. In what follows I shall, therefore, restate this aspect in my own terms while endeavouring to replace it in its context.

  Chaucer had never heard of a renaissance; and I think it would be difficult to translate either into the English or the Latin of his day our distinction between sentimental or conventional art on the one hand, and art which paints ‘Life’—whatever this means—on the other. When first a manuscript beginning with the words Alcun di Giove ogliono il favore came into his hands, he was, no doubt, aware of a difference between its contents and those of certain English and French manuscripts which he had read before. That some of the differences did not please him is apparent from his treatment. We may be sure, however, that he noticed and approved the new use of stanzas, instead of octosyllabic couplets, for narrative. He certainly thought the story a good story; he may even have thought it a story better told than any that he had yet read. But there was also, for Chaucer, a special reason why he should choose this story for his own retelling; and that reason largely determined the alterations that he made.

  He was not yet the Chaucer of the Canterbury Tales: he was the grant translateur of the Roman de la Rose, the author of the Book of the Duchesse, and probably of ‘many a song and many a lecherous lay’.* In other words he was the great living interpreter in English of l’amour courtois. Even in 1390, when Gower produced the first version of his Confessio Amantis, such faithful interpretation of the love tradition was still regarded as the typical and essential function of Chaucer: he is Venus’ ‘disciple’ and ‘poete’, with whose ‘ditees and songes glade . . . the lond fulfild is overal’. And Gower still has hopes that Chaucer’s existing treatments of Frauendienst are only the preludes to some great ‘testament’ which will ‘sette an ende of alle his werk’.* These expectations were, of course, disappointed; and it is possibly to that disappointment, rather than to a hypothetical quarrel (for which only the most ridiculous grounds have been assigned), that we should attribute Gower’s removal of this passage from the second text of the Confessio Amantis. It had become apparent that Chaucer was following a different line of development, and the reference made to him by Venus had ceased to be appropriate.