ALLITERATION-. 



A I.I. ITERATION. 



Then iniut, therefore, be 60 per cent of the first, utd 

 40 per cent of the wound. 



Inatead of (luding the pn>|irtion per cviit,, the proportion in v.l.i. Ii 

 any other number muxt be divided, may be found by using that 

 number of down, Ac., iiwUwl of 100, ami tin- tin. , price* may be all 

 timlti|>lied by any number which will rlmr tln-ni of fraction*. 



Example. How limit 80 gallon*, worth (>J</. a gallon, be nude of 

 iugredirnU worth l)<f. and lid. per gallon f 



Fric* of mixture. 



S 1 



Price of Int ingredient. 



Trice of wcond ingredient. 

 11 



4 



26 7 



dillVrvncc of -JO anil 41 



.litt.rciice of 7 and 44 



18 

 80 



37 H40 ( 38H 

 111 



44 



Answer, 38ft gallons of the Brat, and 41 {. of the second. 



ALLITERATION. This term is usually employed to signify the 

 juxtaposition, or frequent recurrence in composition, of words com- 

 mencing with the same letter, when introduced with a view to its 

 rhetorical effect. Byron's line in the concluding stanza of the second 

 canto of ' Childe Harold,' 



" JFht is the worst of iroo thtt tout on age," 



may be given as an example; and another instance occurs in the 

 Nktue stanza, in the line 



" O'er AenrU rfiridcd, and o'er lopes destroyed." 



Churchill lias at once ridiculed and exemplified the figure in his well 

 known verse 



41 And pt alliteration's artful aid," 



where every word begins with the same letter. Modern critics have 

 detected numerous instances of alliteration both in the Latin and 

 Greek/ poets. (See the dialogue entitled ' Actius,' in the ' Latin 

 Dialogues ' of Joannes Joviauus Pontanus ; and Harris's ' Philological 

 Enquiries,' part ii. chap, iv.) Alliteration, however, has been most 

 systematically used as an ornament of diction in the Celtic and Gothic 

 dialects. Herald Barry, commonly called Oiraldus Cambrensis, who 

 lived in the twelfth century, tells us, in his ' Description of Wales,' that 

 in his day, both the English and Welsh were so fond of this figure of 

 speech which he calls Annom!nali"ii, th.it they deemed no composition 

 to be elegant, or other than rude and barbarous, in which it was not 

 plentifully employed. The mine tendency is also said to have formed 

 a striking peculiarity in the genius of the Irish language. (See 

 Warton's 'History of English Poetry,' vol. ii. p. 106, noted, ed. of 

 1840.) Dr. Percy, in an eseay published in his 'Reliqties of Ancient 

 English Poetry,' has traced the origin and history of alliterative verse 

 down from the compositions of the old Icelandic poets. Nearly all the 

 varieties of Runic verse, which were very numerous, appear to have 

 depended for their prosodial character entirely upon alliteration. It 

 wa* necessary that so many words in every line should begin with the 

 same letter ; and this was all that was required to make good metre. 

 According to the learned Wormius, there were no fewer than 186 

 kinds of Icelandic verse formed upon thi principle, and without 



harmonies of alliterative verse were sometimes Of the most complicated 

 description, and such a were likely, one would suppose, to elude any 

 except the nicest and most practised ears : " An objection has been 

 taken to the antiquity of the Welsh poetry, from its suppose, 

 of affitanttan. Bat this u not the case : for the alliteration luu 

 not been perceived by those ignorant of ita construction, wliich is to 

 make it in the middle of words, and not at the beginning, as in this 

 Instance: 



Yn 



ti nw 







Thi information was imparted to Mr. Douce, by the 

 Edward Williams, the Welsh bard." 



Of Anglo-Saxon poetry, alliteration is the most distinctive charac- 

 teristic ; though somewhat curiously, Mr. Tyrwhitt, in his essay on the 

 1 Language and Vacation of Chauoer,' has gone so far as to say, 



.*_* I *M4Luu_ . i .- t i , ft 



Saxon rene the alliteration is very decided, but it is especially so in 



narrative poetry. In the Brat Una of every couplet there are two 

 priiiri|ntl words beginning with the wine letter, and this letter i* the 

 initial letter of the first emphatic word, or that on which a stress i* 

 laid in pronuncintion, in the woond lino. The two letter* in the Brut 

 line are, by some authorities, called the sub-letters, the single letter in 

 the second line the chief letter. Occasionally there in only one sub- 

 letter in the first; and there is never more than one chief letter in the 

 second line. The subject of Anglo-Saxon alliteration U fully treated \.\ 

 IU*k, in his Anglo-Saxon Grammar, p. 186, Ac. ; and by Mr. T. Wright, 

 in his ' Biographia Britannica Literaria,' p. 7, 4c. ; see alto Conybeare's 

 Introductory Essay to ' Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry.' Tin- 

 foil. >\\ing lines from the poem of Beowulf nl., line687, ic.) 



will sufficiently illustrate the Anglo-Saxon form of alliterat 



" Stnet w* un-fali 

 rtlf wlsod* 

 fumum o>t-#atd*n ; 



Aeard, Aond-loccn ; 

 Aring-iren wlr," &c. 



The Anglo-Norman versifiers introduced rhyme int> Kngli.-h | 

 but the popular ear retained its liking for alliteration . nnd rhyme and 

 alliteration became freely intermingled the alliteration being most 

 used in addressing a vulgar audience. The most famous poem in the 

 English language, entirely composed in alliterative metre, is that 

 entitled 'The Vision of Piers Ploughman,' written about the middle 

 of the 14th century, and attributed to William or Robert Long- 

 land, a secular priest, and a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. This 

 U a long work, consisting of twenty -one parts or books, and com- 

 posed throughout in verses, the cadence of which appears to be 

 generally anapaestic, but which are evidently designed to derive their 

 chief metrical beauty from a certain artificial disposition, in < 

 the \vot\ls beginning with the same letter. The poem has be. 

 quently printed. An excellent edition was published in 1 856, by 1". 

 Wright, M.A., who, in his Introduction, says of it, that along with the 

 alliteration it accurately preserves the other characteristic of the metre 

 of Anglo-Saxon verse, namely that of "having two rises and tv 

 of the voice in each line .... making allowance for the change of the 

 slow and impressive pronunciation of tin- Anglo-Saxon foi 

 pronunciation of Middle English, which therefore required a greater 

 number of syllables to fill up the same space of time." Tli.- "]'nintf 

 lines of 'The Vision of Piers Ploughman' will enable the rcadT t.. 

 perceive these peculiarities : 



" In a tomcr season 

 Whan softe was the sonne, 

 I snoop me into shroudcs 

 As I a cheep w cue, 

 In habit us an hcrcmitc 

 I'nholy of werkes, 

 Wente wide in this world 

 Womlres to here ; " &c. 



Dr. Percy, in the essay above referred to, has shown that pooms con- 

 tinued to be written in English, the verse of which wan men-ly 

 alliterative, or in which, at least, alliteration served :is the substitute 

 for rhyme, down to the commencement of the 16th century, and in 

 the Scottish dialect even to a later period. One of the compositions 

 of this description which he cites is entit! Ii Field.' :n. 



narrative of the battle of Klodden, which was fought in 1 .113. An. .t li.-r 

 is a Scottish poem composed by I Junior, who lived till about the 

 middle of the 16th century. It is preserved in the Maitland Maim 

 script, and has since been published by I'inkcrton. The practice of 

 alliterative verse, as Percy has remarked, seems to have been longest 

 preserved in the north. In the ' Canterbury Tales,' Chaucer makes his 

 Parson, when asked for his story, reply, with a sneer at this antiquated 

 habit of the northern versifiers of that day, 



" Trustcth well I am a Soulhem nun ; 



I cannot t/fstf, rom, ram, titjr, by my letter, 

 And, God wot, rhyme hold I but little better ; 

 And therefore, if you list, I wull not glcwe ; 

 I woll you tell a little tale in prose," 



So strongly had alliteration obtained ]>ssession of the English, ear, 

 that even for some time after the introduction of rhyme, it np]>eani to 

 have be<'ii still considered an important cmlwllixhment of verse. Some 

 fragments of our old )....-try exhibit Ix.tli the consonance of final 

 syllables, and a rigid observance of all the regularities of allitei 



' t i lie l.ittur came to be neglected as a systematic accessory, it 

 was still lavishly employed as an occasional ornament. Our popular 

 ballad and lyrical poetry is full of such lines as those with which the 

 S ( 'oteh song commences : 



" J/erry may the maid be 

 Thnt marries the miller ; 

 For foul day and Air day," &c. &o. 



Down even to the present day, the use of alliteration, to a consider- 

 able extent, ha* continued to characterise English versification in its 

 most polished form, and in the hands of gome of our greatest ports. 



