The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-03-11
Of sobriety. Of intellectual and moral self
command
M.

Nv.
To our mind the most interesting part
OF these three remarkable volumes Is the
forty pages, more or less. devoted to Her
bert's style and technique. How did Her
bert marshal his poetic when
he constructed his stately meditAtions and
his religious love lyrics? How did no build
his line, his stansa; how did he frame the
general plan OF his poem? Finally, how
does 1t happen that he 10 so difficult TO
comprehend, a difficulty which accounts
for the fa6t that 80 few Of his poems are
widely read9 With regard, first, to the
formation Of the line, Prof. Palmer Eecog-
nizes that for Herbert's purposes the most
familiar foot, namely, the lamb, was the
best. A movement Of an unusually swift
or melodious sort might distract attention
from the thought, whore all the pleasure
Ia intended TO be found. Feet OF three
syllables are accordingly discarded There
Ia no daotylio or anap1stio hne In Herbert.
His working foot Is the common lamb
which, OF course, means two syllables
with an accent on tho second. In this
rhythm all but eleven OF his poems are
written, the eleven being troohaio, the
troohee. rs we need not say, being two
syllables with an accent on the first.
Everywhere his rhythm Is Of extreme
regularity. In all his verse Prof. Palmer
has been able to count only q dozen
irregular lines, and most Of these Irregular
titles are due either to ooalososnce OF vowels
or to the creator expressiveness thus pur-
posely given to the thought. Though
regular, however, Herbert's line Is far
from mechanical. He has q feeling for
its texture and is slilful In varying 1t. Now
he shifts its pauses; now be employs the
familiar substitution Of q troohee for an
iambus, especially in the first foot; now
he clogs an unaccented syllable with many
c~onsonants or with long vowels; now atops
the sense at the end Of a line, or again runs
it over into the next The editor also
shows how by delaying his line Herbert
often brings out pensive emotion, or still
moro commonly blocks Its passage, or
renders it rugged in places where be wishes
the thought to linger.
Touching the practice Of senjambement,'
or carrying q sentence over from one line
to the next, which is an important verse
test In the case Of the poets Immediately
preceding Herbert. the editor has found
that the author Of @The Temple used about
one turnover line to three handicapped
In his Cambridge poems; and somewhat
more, though not 30 many as n to two,
In those Of the Bemerton time. The num-
Der Of so-called ~light" and weak BINDINGS,
never considerable, Is rather less In the
later poems than in the earlier.
Careful inspection shows that Herbert
employs but little vowel color. The editor
knows Of no group OF lines In Herbert Of
which 1t may be said with certainty, as 1t
may be said Of passages in Spenser or Tenny-
son, that the vowel effects are an important
part Of the poetry. In Herbert's poem
"Businesse' the rhyme Is carried throughout
in 6 and o. In Home" nine Of the thirteen
stanzas have a rhyme In a. The sharp
vowels / and Q arc favorites with him, and
Prof. Palmer sees reason to suspect that
in poignant poems, like 4The Search
they are Intentionally employed. The
broad calm vowels. a and o, do not o. fire.
ouently suit his theme. It Is observed,
also, that Herbert seldom strengthens a
line with ALTERATION. Some examples OF
this expedient are cited, but they ara few
indeed, compared with the alliterative
exuberance OF Spenser, SouthweIl, Giles,
Fletcher and other contemporaries. The
editor opines that this failure to appeal
to the ear on the part Of a poet 80 fond of
music was not wholly due to dulness but was
part OF a deliberate plan to push thought
into the foreground. 1t seems also to have
been with an eye to his intellectual aim
that Herbert studiously avoided the long
and melodious lines priced by his predeces-
sors, sThe fourteen syllabled line and
the Alexandrine with its twelve syllables,
played q great part in the musical Eliza
bethan verse, but there ts no instance of
either in Herbert. " His longest line
is ten syllables, his shortest three, except
in refrain. The frequent use Of refrain
might seem to conflict with his supposed
avoidance Of the mellifuous, but / think
that he Is attracted to 1t for the sake Of its
iteration Of thought and not for It's value
as sound. For driving home the dominant
note Of a poem 1t serves him admirably
In Herbert's verse rhyme is a necessary
factor, not an occasional adjunct. There
Is no instance Of blank verse In his poems.
Unlike Sidney, George Harvey and many
another, he made no experiments with
hexameters and other exotic and rhymeless
rhythms. Herbert does not follow them,
though his classical training might have
tempted him in the same direction. Modern
poets, as Prof. Palmer reminds us, often
content themselves with rhyming alternate
lines, allowing the remainder to 20 un-
rhymed. Herbert tolerates nothing so
loose. Only one pair Of lines Is left un-
rhymed in all his verse. The editor be-
lieves the single exception to be due to an
error Of the copyist, and has proposed an
e~mendation. 1t is true that Herbert often
uses an unrhymed line as a refrain, by
which means he increases the effect oil the
refrain as a disjointed cry. AS Prof.
Palmer points out, however, absences of
rhyme In refrain or abortive endings are
not an abandonment OF the rhyming prip-
ciple. They ]presuppose 1t. II rhyme were
not practically universal, such intentional
omissions would be ineffective.
1t does not follow that because with
Herbert rhyme is universal it Is also ex-
cellent. Far from being that, the editor
proves by many examples that 1t Is rude
and often false. For instance, Herbert
rhymes friend and mind. least and guest.