





I.!.. \spHEMY. 



114 



by De U Motto le Vayer, in the age of Louis XIV. Nona of these 

 attempts, however, have had the effect of reconciling the French ear to 

 thi* mode of composition, >od it U probable that there U something 

 adverse to it in the genius of the language. 



The firrt KngliA blank verse ever written appears to have been the 

 Translation of the Kinrt and Fourth Books of the .-Eneid, by Lord 

 Surrey, which was printed in 1557 under the title of ' The Fourth 

 Boke of Virgill, intreeting of the l.ouo between -Eneas and Dido; 

 tranalatod into Englishe, and drawen into itraunge metre,' Lond. with- 

 out date, 4to, 1557, along with the second book, but which must have 

 been written at least ten yean before, for Surrey wag executed iu 1547. 

 Surrey most probably borrowed the idea of this innovation from the 

 Italians ; but Dr. Nott is of opinion that he could not have seen 

 Trissino's poem, already mentioned, as it was not printed till after his 

 death, though written many years before. Axe-ham, in his ' School- 

 master,' expressly commemorates this translation of Surrey's as the 

 first attempt to write Knglioh verse without rhyme. " The noble Lord 

 Thomas, earl of Surrey," he says, " first of all Englishmen, in trans- 

 lating the fourth book of Virgil, and Qonzalvo Perec, that excellent 

 learned man, and secretary to King Philip of Spain, in translating the 

 Ulysses of Homer out of Greek into Spanish, have both by good judg- 

 ment avoided the fault of rhyming." " The spying," he adds, " of this 

 fault now is not the curiosity of English eyes, but even the good judg- 

 ment also of the best that write in these days in Italy." The first 

 who imitated Surrey in the new kind of verse which he had introduced 

 was, according to Warton, Nicholas Qrimoald, or Qrimalde, some of 

 whose poetical compositions were first printed in the same volume in 

 which Surrey's translation from Virgil appeared. " To the style of 

 blank verse exhibited by Surrey," says Warton, " he added new 

 strength, elegance, and modulation. In the disposition and conduct of 

 his cadences, he often approaches to the legitimate structure of the 

 improved blank verse." The next thirty years may bo said to have 

 naturalised the new mode of versification in the language. The first 

 theatrical piece which appeared in blank verse was Lord Sackville's 

 tragedy of ' Gorboduo,' otherwise called the tragedy of ' Ferrex and 

 Porrex,' which was acted in the hall of the Inner Temple iu 1561, 

 though not printed till 1565. Then followed George Gascoigne's 

 tragedy of ' Jocasta,' which was acted at Gray's Inn in 1566. In 1576 

 the same author published a poem in blank verse, entitled ' Steel Glass.' 

 In 1579 appeared George Peele's blank verse tragedy of ' David aud 

 Bethsabe.' In 1588 was published Aske's poem, in the same form of 

 versification, entitled ' Elizabetha Triumphans.' 'A Tale of Two Swans,' 

 a blank verse poem by William Vallans, appeared in 1590; and 'Hiero- 

 nymo,' another tragedy without rhyme, had also been acted before 

 that year. So that when Shakspere began to write for the stage, as 

 he is supposed to have done in 1591, he may be said to have found 

 blank verse already familiar to the public ear as the legitimate form of 

 dramatic poetry. (See Warton's ' History of English Poetry,' section \L, 

 and the notes to the edition of 1824. See also section x. of the Disser- 

 tation by Dr. Nott on ' The State of English Poetry before the Sixteenth 

 Century,' prefixed to his edition of Surrey's Poems, 1815.) 



It is curious that Sir Philip Sidney does not mention blank verse in 

 his treatise entitled ' The Defence of Poesy,' which must have been 

 written after several of the pieces we luive mentioned above liatl 

 appeared. Sidney (tied in 1586, at the age of thirty- two. " Now of 

 versifying," he says, " there are two sorts, the one undent, the other 

 modern : the ancient marked the quantity of each syllable, and accord- 

 ing to that framed his verse ; the modern observing only number, wit li 

 some regard of the accent, the chief life of it Htandeth in that like 

 sounding of the words which we call rhyme." " Truly," he afterwards 

 adds, " the English, before any vulgar language I know, is fit for both 

 sorts ; " and then he goes on to show its superiority to the Dutch (that 

 is, the German), the Spanish, the Italian, and the French, resting his 

 argument entirely, in so far as the three hut-mentioned tongues are 

 concerned, on its alleged greater variety of final rhymes. In a pre- 

 ceding part of the treatise he expressly mentions the tragedy of 

 ' Gorboduc,' making it an exception to the rudeness of all the English 

 plays he had seen, as being " full of stately speeches and well-sounding 

 phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of 

 notable morality, which' it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtain 

 the very end of poesy." 



Notwithstanding the examples thus set, the employment of blank 

 verse was almost confined to the drama for the greater part of the 

 17th century. Draytpn, and Daniel, and Phineas Fletcher, and 

 Davenant, all in that interval wrote lung poems, and all in rhyme. 

 Even dramatic composition had, after the Restoration, in the hands of 

 Dryden and others, begun to revert to that form. Dryden, in his 

 ' Essay on Dramatic Poetry,' published in 1663, discussed the relative 

 advantages of blank verse (which he says the French call j-rvtr 

 wwturft) and rhyme, giving the preference on the whole to rhyme ; 

 but he acknowledges that the majority of the public was in favour of 

 blank verse, and adds, in his ' Epistle Dedicatory to the Rival Ladies,' 

 that it is a measure " into which the English tongue so naturally 

 slides, that in writing prose it is hardly to be avoided. At length in 

 1667 appeared the ' Paradise Lost,' and vindicated the capabilities of 

 blank verse by the noblest exemplification of it the language yet 

 possesses. In an advertisement prefixed to the second edition of this 

 poem, printed iu 1068, Milton, professing to give "a reason of that 



which stumbleth many why the poem rhymes not," says, " The 

 measure is English heroic verse, without rhyme. . . . This neglect of 

 rhyme is so little to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps 

 to vulgar readers, that it is rather to be esteemed an example set, the 

 first in English, of ancient liberty lecoveied to heroic poem from the 

 troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming." He allows, however, 

 and indeed urges the fact in vindication of himself, that " some both 

 Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme >x>tli in 

 longer and shorter works, aa have also long since our best English 

 tragedies." 



For nearly two centuries blank verse may be said to have been 

 recognised as the only legitimate form for the higher specie* of 

 dramatic composition in our language. "Aristotle observes,'* says 

 Addison (' Spectator,' No. xxxix.), " that the Iambic verse in the Greek 

 tongue was the most proper for tragedy, because at the same time that 

 it lifted up the discourse from prose, it was that which approached 

 nearer to it than any other kind of verse. For, says he, we may 

 observe that men in ordinary discourse very often speak Iambics 

 without taking notice of it. We may make the same observation of 

 our English blank verse, which often enters into our common discourse, 

 though we do not attend to it, and U such a due medium between 

 rhyme and prose, that it seems wonderfully adapted to tragedy. I am 

 therefore very much offended when I see a play in rhyme ; which is as 

 absurd in English, as a tragedy of hexameters would have been in 

 Greek or Latin." Many long moral and descriptive poems, as well as 

 shorter pieces of the same class, have also within this period been 

 composed in blank verse ; but here it can only be said to hold a divided 

 empire with rhyme. The attempts that have been made to reject 

 rhyme in our other measures have not removed the feeling in favour 

 of rhyme, in so far as regards the establishment of the principle, 

 however much the beauty of particular poems composed upon that 

 system may have been admired. But some imitations of the classical 

 poets in their own peculiar rhythms have great beauty, such as 

 Milton's translation of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha, Longfellow's ' Evan- 

 geline,' in hexameters, and the unrhymed poems we have mentioned 

 at the commencement; and also several successful translations, in 

 hexameters and other unrhymed metres from the German, such aa 

 Gothe's ' Hermann und Dorothce,' and many of the lyrics. But these, 

 as we have already said, are not included in what is now understood as 

 blank verse. 



The German probably, of all the languages of modern Europe, 

 admits the greatest variety of unrhymed measures. From the practice 

 of modern German poets, it would appear that any species of verse 

 which may be used in that language with rhyme, may also be used 

 without it. In the German translations from Greek and Roman poets 

 we find every species of ancient metre successfully imitated, and of 

 course without rhyme. That which approaches nearest to, or rather is 

 i.li -mil-ill with, our ten-syllable blank verse, U also much used, as in 

 the following example : 



Per blinde Grcin rrhub ilcb alsobald, 

 wuhlt' cinen 1 Text, crklirt' ihn, wandt' ilm an, 

 Krmahnte, warnte, strode, trustet*, 

 So herzlich, dau dies Thriinen mildiglich 

 Ihm nicderflouen in den graucn Bart. KOSEUARTEM. 







1 1 ling to Mr. Park, iu a note to Warton's ' History of English 

 Poetry,' vol. iv. p. 241, the poet Daniel, in his ' Apology for Rhyme,' 

 published in 1603, appears to designate what we now call blank verso 

 l>y thr expression tinyle numbrrt. The Italians call blank verse tvrtv 

 iciolto, that is, loosened or untrammelled verse. 



BLANKET. [WOOLLEN AND WUKSTBD MAXUFACTII 



BLANQUININ. An alkaloid, said to have been found by Hi. 

 Mills in white cinchona bark (Cinrhona oralifulia). As itsscomposition 

 was not determined, its existence is very problematical. The substance 

 found was probably aricine. [CINCHONA, ALKALOIDS OF.] 



BLA'SPHEMY (in Greek /JAairfiipfa, UwjiMmia), a crime marked 

 for public punishment in the taws of most civilised nations, and which 

 has been regarded of such enormity in many nations as to be punished 

 with death. The word is Greek ; but it has found its way into the 

 English and several other modern languages, owing, it is supposed, to 

 the want of native terms to express with precision and brevity the 

 idea of which it is the representative. 



Among the canonists, the definition of blasphemy is made to include 

 the denying of God, or the asserting of anything to be God which 

 God, anything, indeed, in the words of the ' Summa Angelica,' voce 

 " Blasfemia," which implies " quondam derogationem excellentin boni- 

 tatis alicujus et prtecipue divincc;" and thin extended application of 

 the term has been received in most Christian countries, and punish- 

 ments more or less severe have been denounced against the crime. 

 Modern jurisprudence, according to Herzog (' Real Encyklopodie '), 

 defines blasphemy as whatever by word or action designedly dishonours 

 the religion of the state. It is made a penal offence, except in Bavaria. 



In our own country, by the rummon law, open blasphemy was 

 punishable by fine anil imprisonment, or other infamous corporal 

 punishment. The kind of blasphemy which was thus cognisable, is 

 described by Blackstone to be "denying the being or pi 

 God, contumelious reproaches of our Saviour Christ, profane scofling 

 .a tin- Holy Scripture, or exposing it to contempt and ridicule." 



