3856. Robert Southey to [Samuel Tillbrook], 17 June 1822

 

MS: MS untraced; text is taken from Robert Southey, Poetical Works, 10 vols (London, 1837–1838)
Previously published: Robert Southey, Poetical Works, 10 vols (London, 1837–1838), X, pp. xviii–xxi.

The greater part of your Treatise is employed in very ably and pleasantly supplying the deficiencies of my Preface, in points wherein it was necessarily deficient because I was out of reach of materials.

(1)

Samuel Tillbrook, Historical and Critical Remarks upon the Modern Hexametrists, and Upon Mr Southey’s Vision of Judgment (1822), a critique of Southey’s Vision of Judgement (1821).

The remarks which are directed against my own hexameters appear to me altogether ill founded. You try the measure by Greek and Latin prosody: you might as well try me by the Laws of Solon, or the Twelve Tables.

(2)

The code of laws devised for Athens by Solon (c. 630–c. 560 BC); and the Laws of the Twelve Tables (c. 450 BC), describing the rights and duties of Roman citizens.

I have distinctly stated that the English hexameter is not constructed upon those canons,

(3)

‘Preface’, A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), pp. [ix]–xiii.

but bears the same relation to the ancient, that our heroic line does to the iambic verse.

(4)

Iambic verse consists of lines of five feet, or ten syllables. Heroic verse takes this form, but in addition lines are grouped into couplets whose last word rhymes. Southey stated that his hexameter ‘bears the same analogy to the ancient hexameter that our ten-syllable or heroic line does to iambic verse: iambic it is called, and it is so in its general movement; but it admits of many other feet, and would, in fact, soon become insupportably monotonous without their frequent intermixture’ (A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), p. xiii).

I have explained the principle of adaptation which I had chosen, and by that principle the measure ought to be judged.

You bring forward arguments which are derived from music. But it by no means follows that a principle which holds good in music, should therefore be applicable to metre. The arts of music and poetry are essentially distinct, and I have had opportunities of observing that very skilful musicians may be as utterly without ear for metre, as I am myself without ear for music. If these arguments were valid, they would apply to the German hexameter as well as to the English; but the measure is as firmly established among the Germans as blank verse is with us, and having been sanctioned by the practice of their best poets, can never become obsolete so long as the works of Voss, and Göethe, and Schiller

(5)

Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805).

are remembered, that is, as long as the language lasts.

Twice you have remarked upon the length of the verse as occasioning a difficulty in reading it aloud. Surely you have taken up this argument with little consideration, because it lay upon the surface. It is doubly fallacious: first, upon your own principle; for if the English verse is not isochronous

(6)

Occupying equal time.

with the Latin, it must be shorter; and secondly, because the breath is regulated in reading by the length of the sentence, not by that of the verse.

Why did you bring against my trochee in the fifth place,

(7)

A trochee is a foot of one stressed, followed by one unstressed, syllable. In Southey’s hexameters the sixth foot in his lines was usually a trochee, but occasionally a trochee was used as the fifth foot, ‘for the sake of variety, or of some particular effect’ (A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), pp. x–xi).

an argument just as applicable to the spondaic verse,

(8)

A spondee is a foot of two stressed syllables, used for emphasis and as a variation from a verse form’s regular pattern.

and which, indeed, is only saying that a versifier who writes without any regard to effect, may produce very bad verses? You might as well object to the Alexandrine

(9)

A line of verse of six iambic feet.

that it admits of twelve monosyllables. And how is it that you, who know Glaramara

(10)

A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), Canto 1, line 9; the printers had omitted the word’s final letter. Glaramara is a fell in the Lake District. Tillbrook knew it as he was a regular visitor to the Lakes and rented Ivy Cottage, near Wordworth’s home at Rydal Mount.

so well, should have made me answerable for a vowel dropt at the press?

You have dealt fairly in not selecting single lines, which taken singly would be unfavourable specimens; but methinks you should have exhibited one extract of sufficient length to show the effect of the measure. I certainly think that any paragraph of the poem containing from ten lines upward would confute all the reasoning which you have advanced, or which any one could adduce against the experiment.

But I have done. It is a question de gustibus,

(11)

A shortened form of the Latin maxim: De gustibus non est disputandum – ‘in matters of taste there can be no disputes’.

and therefore interminable. The proof of the pudding must be in the eating; and not all the reasoning in the world will ever persuade any one that the pudding which he dislikes is a good pudding, or that the pudding which pleases his palate and agrees with his stomach can be a bad one. I am glad that I have made the experiment, and quite satisfied with the result. The critics who write and who talk are with you; so I dare say are the whole posse of schoolmasters. The women, the young poets, and the docile bairns

(12)

James VI and I (1566–1625; King of Great Britain 1603–1625; DNB), ‘Ane Schort Treatise conteining some reulis and cautelis to be obseruit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie’ (1584), [unpaginated]: ‘To ignorants obdurde, quhair willful errour lyis,/Nor yit to curious folks, quhilks carping dois deiect thee,/Nor yit to learned men, quha thinks thame onelie wyis,/Bot to the docile bairns of knowledge I direct thee.’ Appropriately, this verse is composed of lines with six iambic feet.

are with me.

I thank you for speaking kindly and considerately concerning the subject of the Vision, and remain,

My dear Sir,
Yours very truly,
ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Keswick, 17th June, 1822.

Notes

1. Samuel Tillbrook, Historical and Critical Remarks upon the Modern Hexametrists, and Upon Mr Southey’s Vision of Judgment (1822), a critique of Southey’s Vision of Judgement (1821).[back]
2. The code of laws devised for Athens by Solon (c. 630–c. 560 BC); and the Laws of the Twelve Tables (c. 450 BC), describing the rights and duties of Roman citizens.[back]
3. ‘Preface’, A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), pp. [ix]–xiii.[back]
4. Iambic verse consists of lines of five feet, or ten syllables. Heroic verse takes this form, but in addition lines are grouped into couplets whose last word rhymes. Southey stated that his hexameter ‘bears the same analogy to the ancient hexameter that our ten-syllable or heroic line does to iambic verse: iambic it is called, and it is so in its general movement; but it admits of many other feet, and would, in fact, soon become insupportably monotonous without their frequent intermixture’ (A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), p. xiii).[back]
5. Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805).[back]
6. Occupying equal time.[back]
7. A trochee is a foot of one stressed, followed by one unstressed, syllable. In Southey’s hexameters the sixth foot in his lines was usually a trochee, but occasionally a trochee was used as the fifth foot, ‘for the sake of variety, or of some particular effect’ (A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), pp. x–xi).[back]
8. A spondee is a foot of two stressed syllables, used for emphasis and as a variation from a verse form’s regular pattern.[back]
9. A line of verse of six iambic feet.[back]
10. A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), Canto 1, line 9; the printers had omitted the word’s final letter. Glaramara is a fell in the Lake District. Tillbrook knew it as he was a regular visitor to the Lakes and rented Ivy Cottage, near Wordworth’s home at Rydal Mount.[back]
11. A shortened form of the Latin maxim: De gustibus non est disputandum – ‘in matters of taste there can be no disputes’.[back]
12. James VI and I (1566–1625; King of Great Britain 1603–1625; DNB), ‘Ane Schort Treatise conteining some reulis and cautelis to be obseruit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie’ (1584), [unpaginated]: ‘To ignorants obdurde, quhair willful errour lyis,/Nor yit to curious folks, quhilks carping dois deiect thee,/Nor yit to learned men, quha thinks thame onelie wyis,/Bot to the docile bairns of knowledge I direct thee.’ Appropriately, this verse is composed of lines with six iambic feet.[back]
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