606 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 165. 



a strict application of the canons of pronunciation, 

 ■we find him an offender, I think I may claim that 

 the indictment against Dr. Swift for " mere Irish- 

 ism'''' in poetry should be quashed as unsustain- 

 able. From Gray's Poems I select the following : 

 " Who foremost now delight to cleave, 

 With pliant arm thy glassy wave." 

 We must make " cleave" clave, or " wave" weave, 

 to adjust the rhythm here. 



" Black misfortune's baleful train, 

 Persuade them they are men." 

 I know no process of adaptation which could 

 make these lines " go off trippingly." Were I to 

 pronounce "men" main, even an Irish brogue- 

 aneer must say to me, " I don't know what you 

 mane (mean)." 



I also find in the precise Gray such terminations 

 as these : 



join air toil veins 



line hear smile strains 



And now, in conclusion, I beg to say, surely, 

 when these master-poets can thus ride Pegasus 

 with so careless and loose a rein, — surely it is 

 unfair to curb him tightly with the pronouncing 

 dictionary, when an Irishman gets into the saddle ; 

 and when he trips at all, to cry out how Irish ! 



A. B. R. 

 Belmont. 



P. S. — Apropos of Bernard Barton, I have just 

 stumbled over the following : 



" Lonely and low is thy dwelling-place now, 



On which the bright sunbeams are dawning, 

 [ But oh ! I remember the moments when thou 



Wast as blythe as the breeze of the mawning ! (morn- 

 ing)-" 



I cannot altogether accept the apology offered 

 by A. B. R. for Swift's supposed Irish pronunci- 

 ation of certain words, viz. that this was a license 

 usurped by many other poets who had not the 

 misfortune to be born on the wrong side of the 

 Channel. I think it follows unanswerably, from 

 the examples given by him, as well as by your 

 correspondent H. B. C, that there was no Irishism 

 in these pronunciations ; and that, during the first 

 half of the eighteenth century, the diphthong ea was 

 always pronounced so as to rhyme with ay. I 

 have been myself long of this opinion from many 

 passages in the best poets of that period. There 

 was therefore nothing either of poetic license, nor 

 of Hibernicism, in Pope's making the word tea to 

 rhyme with aioay; join with nine: or Young's 

 making pleads rhyme with masquerades, seat with 

 estate, theme with fame, and seas with blaze ; be- 

 cause I have no doubt that such was the received 

 pronunciation of the most correct speakers of the 

 day. 



I deny, In short, that these are Irish rhymes, or 

 Irish pronunciations in any sense; in Ireland the 



old pronunciation of these words has been retained, 

 although it is now fast dying out except amongst 

 the lower orders ; but strange as it may now seem, 

 it is nevertheless I believe the case, that down to 

 the times of Swift, Pope, and Young, tea was pro- 

 nounced tay ; sea, say ; and plead, plade. 



I hope your correspondents may continue their 

 researches Into this subject, and perhaps they will 

 also kindly answer this Query : How far is this 

 so-called Irish pronunciation preserved in the 

 provincial parts of England, and by the peasantry ? 



J. H. T. 



P. S. — Is not the dialect of English preserved in 

 Scotland the remains of the pronunciation general 

 at an earlier period, that of Chaucer and Wickliffe, 

 when the Anglo-Saxon element was predominant 

 in our language ? 



Your correspondent A. B. R. (at p. 539.) charges 

 me with hypercriticism, for saying (at p. 431.) that 

 " Irishisms " are to be found in the rhymes of 

 Swift. I confess that I can see nothing hyper- 

 critical In the remark I made. Surely every 

 reader of Swift must have been struck with that 

 peculiarity of rhyme, so repeatedly to be met with 

 In his writings, where the rhythm fails, unless the 

 pronunciation be given with the Irish brogue ; 

 and, in making this the subject of a brief note, I 

 did so, not with the feeling that I was pointing 

 out what had escaped the attention of other 

 readers, but because I thought that the pecu- 

 liarity In question had been unnoticed in print. 

 The communication of H. B. C, however (p. 540.), 

 shows that I was mistaken on this point, and 

 that "Swift's Irishisms" formed the subject of 

 an article in Leigh Hunt's Tatler, published in 

 1830. But A. B. R., in defending his country- 

 man, hints that Swift's " rhyming liberties " were 

 equally shared in by English poets, even by " the 

 premier poet " in his " model poem." Now, al- 

 though Byron says of Pope, that "his versification 

 is perfect," I would by no means undertake to 

 defend the rhymes that A. B. R. quotes from The 

 Rape of the Lock. Nor is it necessary for me to 

 do so, as my remark related to Swift, and to him 

 alone. Because I perceived and pointed out a 

 peculiarity In the rhythm of his verse, it does not 

 therefore follow that I was blind to the imperfec- 

 tions of English poets, or fancied that the Irish- 

 man was the only person who went not by the 

 strict rules of " the pronouncing dictionary." On 

 the contrary, I am fully aware that — 

 " Sometimes 

 Monarchs are less imperative than rhymes," 



and that, before this power, even premier poets 

 have to bend. But although (according to 

 A. B. R.) " the Pegasus of the polished Pope 

 flings up his heels in the face of the pronouncing 

 dictionary with quite as much of the brogue as 



