Andersen. — (lasslfcnfioii of Verse. 497 



" numbers." Coleridge and Shelley, in " Christabel " and " The Sen- 

 sitive Plant," are but reasserting the liberty that was enjoyed liy the old 

 balladists : thev are restoring the form with an exalted spirit. 



13. Again, it may be held that, admitting the pause on the stressed 

 vowel, this pause is not due to the potentiality of the duple unit to expand 

 to the triple, but to the fact that the stressed vowel is often a naturally 

 long one, as in the last lines of Marvell's " Song of the Emigrants in the 

 Bermudas " — 



(30.) And ill! the way to guide tlieir chime. 

 With falling oars they kept the time. 



— where every stressed vowel except that in " kept " is long, and would 

 naturally be dwelt on. This very fact that every duple unit has apparently 

 the power of lengthening its stressed syllable, and the fact that the stressed 

 syllable is in many cases actually sustained as if to bridge over some slight 

 gulf between it and the following syllable, have led to the conception of 

 the idea that " quantity," as understood of classical verse, may be an 

 integral part of English verse, or may be made so — that is, that there may 

 be long and short syllables bearing some definite and constant relationship 

 to each other. This is, in many cases, actually brought about when a poem 

 is set to music, as in '" Ye Banks and Braes." " Jockey to the Fair," " Love's 

 Young Dream," and so on, where the stressed syllables are twice the length 

 of the others ; but there is absolutely no uniformity or consistency in this, 

 <ind the three songs mentioned could just as well have been set to music 

 such as that of " Jock o' Hazeldean." where each syllable, stressed or not, 

 receives equal value, or that of " Macgregor's Gathering " and '" Kitty of 

 Coleraine," w^hose words are not duple but triple. 



14. In Shakespeare and Milton, vowels which certainly are naturally 

 short appear in stressed positions quite as often as vowels that are naturally 

 long ; short vowels being the a. e, i, o. u in " pat," "• pet," •■ pit," " pot," 

 and '-put" or "nut," as against their long sounds in "mate," "mete," 

 " mite," " mote " and " moot," or " mute." These are not intended to 

 comprise all the vowel sounds, biit merely to show the difference between 

 naturally short and naturally long vow'els. They appear with equal fre- 

 quencv in stressed positions, and both may be dwelt on or vocally paused. 

 As noted in example (29), the pause ])receding a duple unit disappears 

 when that unit is made triple. There is perhaps not a poet wlio has 

 resisted the temptation offered him of filling the pause with a syllable. 

 Dryden has these verses in " The Hind and the Panther " : — 



(31.) a. Wc take the anuseivH scatfoldiug away. 

 h. ■ Corering adultery with a .specious name : 



c. Buruisird, and h-.'Atening oh their food, to show 



d. As long as words a diiferent sense will bear, 



e. Forgive the Hla-nderous tongues that call'd you so 

 /. If sight by emission or reception be. 



Pope has these in " An Essay on Man " :^ 



(32.) a. Some hi^ppier /«land in the wAtery waste, 



b. How instinct varies in the groveling swine. 

 Compared, half-rea.so/(//(r/ e?fphant, with thine ! 

 'Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier? 

 For ever aeparats, yet for ever near ! 



c. Yet never pass the nisuperable line ! 



d. On diifere)il senses dif/e?-ew/ objects strike ; 



