Letters on Poetry and Art

Appendix I: The Problem of the Hexameter

The perfection of the hexameter is one of the unsolved problems of English prosody. Either the problem is insoluble, the noble rhythm so satisfying in Greek and Latin unsuited to the brief Saxon vocables—or else the secret of a successful measure has not yet been discovered. Even were the solution found, there are many obstacles in the way of its acceptation. Yet a new metrical movement is felt to be a necessity and half-unconsciously strained after by the modern mind in poetry. If one could be found that, without admitting too wide a licence, without breaking down the mould of metre in which poetry by a wise instinct has always sought to restrain herself, yet provided a freer scope and a fuller mould for the more subtle and complex emotions and the vaster conceptions in which we have begun to live, the change might mean a new life and energy for a great literature now too much overburdened and fettered by its past successes and triumphs. The present poem is an experiment in this direction. No doubt the definite entry of the hexameter among the ordinary forms of English prosody must wait until it is chosen by a supreme poetical genius or a master rhythmist. But meanwhile something may possibly be done by a careful attempt founded on a clear and definite conception of the difficulties to be solved and a consistent method in their solution.

The poems of Clough and Longfellow are, I think, the only serious essays in the hexameter in English literature. Many have dallied with the problem, from the strange experiments of Spenser to the insufficient but carefully reasoned attempts of Matthew Arnold. But it is only by a long and sustained effort like Evangeline or the Bothie that the solution can really come. Longfellow in this connexion can be safely neglected,

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but Clough's work is of a different order. Occasionally he really grappled with his task and for a moment [conquered] [............]¹. But it is Clough's defect that he is unable ordinarily to combine force with harmony. Either he produces verse of a rough energy, like the general type of hexameter used by him in the Bothie, or, as in the pentameter experiments in the Amours de Voyage, the breath of life and power is wanting in a harmonious shell of sound. Yet once or twice he has surmounted every difficulty. Especially is there one verse with the right Homeric movement in the Bothie,—

He like a god came leaving his ample Olympian chamber

which gave to my mind the key to the just use of the hexameter.

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