150 Second Romantic Period of English Literature 



versy between blank verse and the heroic couplet — the decasyl- 

 labic rhyming couplet that is. Examples of this couplet are 

 familiar to everyone. 



This, as you see, practically makes a stanza of every two 

 lines, there is as a rule a definite break at the end of each second 

 line, neither sense nor grammatical structure being allowed to 

 run over from one couplet into the next. Much as it has been 

 girded against, this form is not without its qualities. It is 

 eminently suited for epigram, for syllogism, for satire, and indeed 

 for any verse that is unemotional and unimaginative — for any 

 verse that is not poetry, shall we say ? One school of critics 

 explains the barrenness in poetry of the 18th century by its 

 slavish adherence to the couplet. This school, while admitting 

 degrees of badness in the couplet, lays down as its first position 

 that all couplets are bad. Thus the poems of Hayly and Mason 

 and Darwin are very bad : Pope's are only bad. Yet Pope 

 brought the couplet to a high degree of mechanical perfection. 

 To such a degree, indeed, that it has been said " Any versifier 

 after him could turn out smooth and finished and melodious 

 couplets with as much ease as a machine cuts wood into blocks 

 of a given size." 



Goldsmith, who wrote like an angel if he talked like poor 

 Poll, made felicitous use of the couplet in his "Traveller " and 

 "Deserted Village." In his dedication of the former poem he 

 derides the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it — the 

 couplet that is. 



"What criticisms," he says, "have we not heard of late in 

 favour of blank verse and Pindaric Odes, Choruses, Anapaesls, 

 and Iambics, alliterative verse and happy negligence?" 



Yet Goldie could poke fun at the couplet. In his Essay, 

 "The Proceedings of the Club of Authors," a poet who has to 

 pay for the privilege of reading his own verses declaims " with all 

 the emphasis of voice and action " a piece, The Red Lion (not 

 Ringford, you know), which is an obvious travesty on the village 

 inn. 



The piece thus concludes : — 



" With beer and milk arrears the frieze was scored, 

 And five cracked teacups dressed the chimney board. 

 A nightcap decked his brows instead of bay, 

 A cap by night — a stocking all the day." 



