[In the following essay, Short examines Campion's poetry, his theories on meter as expressed in Observations in the Art of English Poesie, and the importance of his contribution to the theories of metrical poetry of his time.]

Most of the scant attention paid by critics to the poetry of Thomas Campion has been sidetracked by two considerations which, however interesting in themselves, have little to do with his real poetic accomplishments. One of these considerations is that he was a musician and almost alone among his contemporaries composed settings for his own poems; the other is that he played some part in the guerilla warfare waged by a few Elizabethan writers against rhyme. Before we can make a fresh adjustment to his poetry, we must dispose of the first and reckon with the second.

The usual thing to say about Campion's poetry is that it was beautifully “married” to his music, and with the exception of some studies tracing his indebtedness to classical authors, almost all criticism that surmounts the obstacle of his attack upon rhyme merely extends or embellishes this popular opinion. As E. H. Fellowes implied in reviewing a book that considers Campion both as poet and musician, this makes too much of Campion's music, his lesser gift. Mr. Fellowes stated:

It must also be pointed out, though Mr. Kastendieck does not seem to have done so, that the musical side of Campion's work was slight as compared with that of Dowland or Morley, for example.

Furthermore—

A man may be both a poet and a musician; others less famous than Campion have, since his day, set their own words to music; but in every case the words must inevitably come first, even if the musical melody should occasionally have been designed when no more than a single stanza of the lyric has been written.¹

Mr. Fellowes may have meant only that the words come first in point of time; if so, it should be further stipulated that, to Campion at least, the words also came first in importance. Far too much has been made of Campion's honest effort to write music that would not wholly betray the purposes of his lyrics. He avoided the violation of the lyric form wreaked by the writers of madrigals, motets, and other more elaborate musical compositions, but so did the other “lutenists” or writers of airs. To have achieved all the aptness with which he has been credited, Campion would have had to write separate music for each stanza of the songs he set, or as a poet, to write in an unvarying fixity of metre. This was far from his intention or practice; the stresses and cadences of his poetry are richly plastic, varying from stanza to stanza and from meaning to meaning. Frequently, it is true, in the first stanza of a song, which alone was printed in combination with the musical notation, a felicitous identity of musical and verbal accent appears to bear out the notion of unique harmony between words and music, but if the reader will observe where the same musical accent falls in the second and subsequent stanzas, he will find that in most cases no such extreme propriety exists.

There is, moreover, another and more compelling reason for studying Campion's poetry, or any other poetry, apart from the music with which it has become associated. A musical setting is so overpoweringly, determinatively sensuous that in its presence the subtleties of lyric poetry have little chance of making themselves felt. However various music itself may be, it dogmatizes upon any words that accompany it; it dictates one reading and precludes the hearing of any other, whereas for much great poetry there is no one right reading, but several which must be simultaneously apprehended. Drama furnishes an apt analogy. Though we may reject certain of the multitudinous interpretations of Hamlet, or of a line from Hamlet, the tantalizing wealth of the play doubtless inheres partly in the certainty of our retaining more than one. Yet if an actor is to succeed, he must make up his mind strongly to project a single interpretation, or at least a combination of interpretations much simpler than the combination we carry along in a silent reading. Like the expository resources of the actor, those of music are simple and sensuous, and impose limitations upon the expressiveness of the words.

Campion's tunes rig out his lyrics in pretty but concealing finery; his best poems mean more, as poems, when silently read than when sung or intoned. For this reason, whoever aims at justly appreciating his poetry had best forget his music.

In 1602 Campion published his Observations in the Art of English Poesie, a treatise having three parts: an introduction establishing the importance of numbers, especially over rhyme; a discussion of eight verse-forms deemed suitable to the genius of the English language; and a set of rules for determining the quantities of English syllables. The next year, Samuel Daniel's response, A Defence of Ryme, drew across Campion's track a red-herring that has in some degree distracted the attention of every subsequent commentator on his treatise.

With considerable indignation, Daniel set himself against what he considered to be an unpatriotic attack, by a man of “faire parts and good reputation,”² upon rhyme. It is true that Campion uttered a few rash denigrations of rhyming: as in his reference to the “vulgar and unarteficiall custome of riming,” which had “deter'd many excellent wits from the exercise of English Poesy,”³ but in his first chapter he described quite clearly the principal subject of his discourse, which was the nature and art of “numbers,” a convenient term embracing both rhythm and metre. In the second chapter he touched upon “the unaptnesse of Rime in Poesie,” but mainly from the point of view that the easiness of rhyming had led to the abasement of numbers: “there is growne,” he wrote, “a kind of prescription in the use of Rime, to forestall the right of true numbers, … the facilitie and popularitie of Rime creates as many Poets as a hot sommer flies.”⁴ These bad poets he called Rimers, meaning as much to condemn their limping rhythms as their use of rhyme.⁵ If it were not for the occasional rash statement, his point would have been quite clear, and quite tolerable, as he stated it: “The eare is a rationall sence and a chiefe judge of proportion; but in our kind of riming what proportion is there kept where there remaines such a confused inequalitie of sillables?”⁶ Daniel himself, in the course of his famous defence, made reservations about the use of rhyme as serious as Campion's, though less vehemently stated.

The samples of unrhymed verse with which Campion illustrated his eight verse-forms further the misconception that his main point was mistrust of rhyme. They are so bad that nothing in them except the absence of rhyme attracts attention. The very first example, of Licentiate Iambick, begins with one of the rash statements:

Goe, numbers, boldly passe, stay not for ayde
Of shifting rime, that easie flatterer,
Whose witchcraft can the ruder eares beguile.
Let your smooth feete, enur'd to purer arte,
True measures tread.(7)

Even the widely-anthologized “Rose-cheekt Lawra” smacks unfortunately of the exercice à thèse. But we misread our author's purpose if we think his essential preoccupation to have been with anything other than the principles of English rhythms. If we make allowances for the few overstatements, we can sum up his position in some such words as these: jingling in rhyme is so easy that our poets give us little else, neglecting rhythmical control, which though more difficult, is so important that when it is present the lack of rhyme will not be missed.

Rightly understood, Campion's packet of criticism makes two contributions to English numbers: the first is a recognition of the true place in English poetry of the classical principles of quantity.

Campion's predecessors in the long conflict over quantitative and accentual verse, Ascham, Drant, Harvey, Spenser, Stanyhurst, Sidney, and Webbe, apparently felt called upon to choose between quantity and accent. Even when Sidney, after having experimented with quantitative verse, decided that English was “fit for both sorts,”⁸ he did not say for both sorts at one time, or if he had the notion that this was true, anything about how a mixture of the two should be ordered. In summing up the conflict, J. E. Spingarn wrote as follows:

Drant's and Harvey's rules therefore constitute two opposing systems. According to the former, English verse is to be regulated by Latin prosody, regardless of accent; according to the latter, by accent regardless of Latin prosody. By neither system can quantity be successfully attempted in English; and a distinguished classical scholar of our own day has indicated what is perhaps the only method by which this can be accomplished. This method may be described as the harmonious observance of both accent and position; all accented syllables being generally accounted long, and no syllable which violates the Latin law of position being used when a short syllable is required by the scansion. These three systems, with more or less variation, have been employed throughout English literature. Drant's system is followed in the quantitative verse of Sidney and Spenser; Harvey's method is that employed by Longfellow in Evangeline; and Tennyson's beautiful classical experiments are practical illustrations of the method of Professor Robinson Ellis.⁹

The above passage approaches the subject from a limited and hence misleading point of view, having in mind, as it does, only the problem of making use of classical metres in English poetry, so that the author's comment upon Campion quite misses the mark: “With Campion's Observations (1602) the history of classical metres in England may be said to close, until the resuscitation of quantitative verse in the present century.”¹⁰ Campion's Observations were not upon classical, but upon English metres, and he regarded quantity not as a factor of classical superiority to be substituted for accent, but as a natural condition of well-written accentual verse and as an important element in all English measures.

He realized that both accent and quantity exist in English verse, frequently independently of each other. In this he was broader and more realistic than Ellis, who according to Professor Spingarn tried for combinations in which all accented syllables would be long and all unaccented syllables short. Campion pointed out that although accented syllables in English words are normally long, many unaccented syllables take equally long to pronounce, therefore, must also be considered long, As an example, he offered the word “Trumpington,” the second syllable of which is “naturally long, and so of necessity must be held of every composer.”¹¹ One easily perceives that a normal, careful pronunciation of this word dwells nearly as long, though not so sharply, upon the second syllable as upon the first; the first is distinguished from the last by stress, pitch, and length, from the second merely by stress and pitch. In a verse of poetry, the word would be scanned Trumpīngton.

Conversely, certain short syllables may bear the accent without thereby adding to their length.¹² We find an example in the line—“Some trade in Barbary, some in Turky trade”¹³—in which Campion called the second “some” short, though it is obviously distinguished from the syllables on either side of it both by stress and pitch. He also gave a list of words, “misery,” “any,” “pretty,” “holy,” etc., no syllables of which are to be construed as long, regardless of the fact that we “accent” a syllable in each word. Certain crucial places in a line demand syllables that are both long and accented, but in other places accents and long syllables may be used independently of each other.

In Campion's reasoning, the facts of pronunciation were no invitation to disregard the force either of accent or quantity and build metres solely upon one of them; instead, realizing that both are normal to English poetry, he attempted to regularize the use of quantities by rules corresponding in importance to the accepted rules for the use of accents. As a basis for this undertaking, he felt it necessary to come to a better understanding of the principles regulating English quantities than his predecessors or contemporaries had displayed. This accounts for his compilation of rules, which must have impressed many readers as discouragingly compendious, yet at the same time, too meager to be authoritative. It is difficult otherwise to account for the persistency with which they have been misunderstood.

Their empiricism, also, may put off the reader, yet it is our surety that they were devised in no spirit of classical pedantry. Although Campion started from the classical rule of position (a vowel is long when followed by two consonants), he stood out against the rigid application of position to English syllables. His greatest concern seemed to be to modify this canon in accordance with the vagaries of English pronunciation. His directions tried to exclude surds and liquids (“sliding and melting consonants”),¹⁴ doubled consonants and other freaks of spelling, from the consonantal combinations that lengthen precedent vowels. He considered the influence of meaning upon pronunciation. In three lists of monosyllables, short ones, long ones, and ambiguous ones, words occur that must owe their appearance in different lists to their meanings, since they are alike in structure: “fly” and “die” for example may be either long or short, but “thy” is always short; “no,” “go,” and “so” are always short, but “flow” and “grow,” though pronounced like them, are always long. Like many of Campion's discriminations, this one was not thoroughly worked out in his hasty compilation of examples; nor was the informing principle articulated. We must be content that it passed through his mind and found its way into his poetry. When we find the word “true” in two lists, one of short, one of ambiguous words, we may conclude, not that his lists are utterly irresponsible, but that different senses of the word occurred to him, and that he wished these differences to be reflected in the sound-texture of others' verses, as in his own: “For they are good whom such true love doth make”¹⁵ and—“I cannot call her trūe that's false to me.”¹⁶

Thus far Campion's contribution, though a real one, was mainly to Elizabethan theory or criticism. He cut the famous knot of controversy that troubled many of his fellow poets by giving critical standing to their normal poetic practice of combining both accents and quantities in English verse. What may be called his second contribution, though it stemmed logically from the first, involved an important refinement in poetic practice. He sought to bring back into English lyric verse the idea of conscious control over the time element of the verse as an essential quality of rhythm. This is the purpose to which all else in the Observations is subsidiary.

Campion believed that each verse of a poem should occupy the same amount of time in pronunciation, the only exception being of poems composed of lines of different metrical length. That is, in a stanza of alternating pentameter and dimeter lines, the pentameter lines should occupy equal amounts of time, as should the dimeter lines. Many of his apparently pedantic strictures are thence seen to aim at insuring each line's having the proper amount of syllabic material to fill it out.

From the treatise alone, it is difficult to ascertain beyond question that Campion held this belief.¹⁷ Twice he seems almost to make the point, but each time fails to clinch it beyond doubt. The treatise gives us, as it were, clues for understanding Campion's poetics, but to interpret the clues we must go to his poetry, where the rules were put into practice. Far from ignoring his own poetry, as has sometimes been suggested, the treatise is narrowly based upon it. The experimental material for the most valuable portions of the Observations can be found, not in the crude samples of verse it contains, but in the poems published the previous year (A Booke of Ayres, 1601) and throughout his later songs. But until we turn to the poems, we can be sure only that he had the habit of listening for the length of each line as well as for the judicious disposition of its weak and strong syllables. Upon the line, “Was it my desteny, or dismall chaunce,” he commented as follows:

In this verse the two last sillables of the word Desteny, being both short, and standing for a whole foote in the verse, cause the line to fall out shorter then it ought by nature.¹⁸

From the fact that his objection is to a defective line rather than to a defective foot, the direction, if not the conclusion of his thought may be inferred. Also, we infer that the only possible “nature” a line might have prescribing its proper length would be derived from its context of other lines having a certain length. The same inference may be less certainly drawn from a later passage comparing the length of Latin with English lines:

I have observed, and so may any one that is either practis'd in singing, or hath a naturall eare able to time a song, that the Latine verses of sixe feete, as the Heroick and Iambick, or of five feete, as the Trochaick, are in nature all of the same length of sound with our English verses of five feete; for either of them being tim'd with the hand, quinque perficiunt tempora, they fill up the quantity (as it were) of five sem'briefs;¹⁹

Rhythm in poetry is based on differences in syllabic value. To understand the aims and achievements of Campion, the usual distinction in value, accented against unaccented syllables, must be refined upon. Four classes of syllables must be noted: weak or neutral syllables, and three other kinds distinguished from the first by one of three qualities, by stress, by pitch, or by length. In practice, we tend to merge these qualities, to pronounce a stressed syllable higher in pitch and longer in time than surrounding weak syllables, but this merging is by no means invariable. Length and pitch frequently occur separately, and either may occur without stress.

Stress, a force of voice denoting rhythmical or grammatical importance, is almost always a rhythmical determinative, but neither pitch nor length can be so regarded.²⁰ Hence the common habit of regarding rhythm as any regular pattern of weak syllables, marked with the breve, and other syllables, marked with the macron or accent regardless of the quality that distinguishes them from the weak syllables, has no basis in fact. Rhythm is a time-pattern in a span of time; pitch has no time-value; length may equally create or destroy either the pattern or the span.

The time-span must be longer than the unit of the pattern, for it must, naturally, include recurrence of this unit. Commonly the line is regarded as the time-span, but actually the rhythm continues only as long as the feet continue to be equal in time-value. A source of difficulty in understanding rhythm is in the interpretation of “variation.” The only allowable variation in such a measure as has just been described is in the total number of syllables within the feet. If a pyrrhic foot follows a spondaic foot, it is not strictly speaking a variation, but a breaking of the rhythm. This need not be displeasing. Experience shows that we demand very little rhythm. We are customarily satisfied by a quick succession of various rhythms, or by a rhythm that disappears for a time to crop up later in the same line or the same poem. Traditionally, we describe a destruction of rhythm as a rhythmical variation.

The foregoing account of rhythm supposes the ability of the mind to register the length of a foot of verse retentively enough to be aware of its recurrence in subsequent feet. There seems no reason why this awareness should not extend beyond the foot to the line itself, apprehending the line in turn as a unit of rhythm in the time-span of the whole stanza. Campion's habit of listening for equality of line-lengths directs our attention to this larger possibility, and his poems show that he composed according to this principle. In the examples that follow shortly, two points should be noted: first, that the lines are remarkably equivalent in length, and second, that far from making for rigidity or monotony of cadence and emphasis, the principle permits greater freedom within the line. That is, greater liberties may be taken without destroying rhythm. If the larger pattern is adhered to, interruptions in the basic pattern, that based upon the foot, do not affect the continuous, over-all rhythm of the poem. The interruptions then constitute or become absorbed in true variations.

In order to give some substance to my earlier statement that the poems in A Booke of Ayres closely illustrated the more important ideas of the Observations, I have taken from this book the three following examples of Campion's care in equalizing the quantities, hence the time-spans, in his lines. One finds the same care throughout the book; also in his later poems. The syllabic markings on the poems here given follow as closely as possible Campion's own rules for determining quantities. The macron indicates a long syllable, the breve a short one. When a given syllable seems not to be covered by Campion's rules, or when his rules permit that syllable to be regarded as either long or short, both markings have been used. Since his rules do not in any direct way regulate the position or accents, these have not been marked.

Let us look first at two poems in iambic pentameter.

Thou ārt not fāire for āll thy rěd ănd white,
For āll thōse rōsie ōrnămēnts in thěe,
Thou ārt not swěet, though māde of mēer dělight,
Nor fāire nor swēet, unlēsse thou pītle měe.
I will not sōoth thy fānciěs: thou shālt prove
Thăt bēauty Is no bēautie withōut lōve.
Yēt lōve not mě, nor sēeke thōu to ăllūre
My thōughts with bēautie, wěre It mōre děvine,
Thy smiles ănd kissěs I cănnōt ěndūre,
I'le not bě wrāpt up In thōse ārmes of thine,
Nōw shēw it, if thōu bě ă wōmăn right,—
Embrāce, ănd kisse, ănd lōve mě, in děspight.(21)

Each line of the above poem has ten syllables, five of which are long, except that the presence of ambiguous syllables in lines 5, 6, and 8 might seem to stretch out those lines by an extra long syllable, whereas lines 9 and 12 might seem to fall a bit short. It must be remembered, however, that this ambiguity is not an absolute quality but merely a sign of some uncertainty in the marker. In reading, we could and probably would make a decision about the ambiguous syllables and read them in a way that produced regularity exact enough to satisfy our ear. Campion seemed to value a certain amount of this quantitative ambiguity, possibly as making it easier for the reader to achieve the experience of true measure. “Every man,” he said, “may observe what an infinite number of sillables both among the Greekes and Romaines are held as common.”²² In our next poem, one much finer than this, a greater proportion of the syllables are ambiguous, or common.

Whěn thou mūst hōme to shādes of ūnděr grōund,
And thēre ărīv'd, ă nēwe ădmīrěd gūest,
Thě bēauteous spīrīts do ingīrt thěe rōund,(23)
Whīte Iopě, blīth Hēllěn, ănd thě rēst,
To hēare thě stōriěs of thy fīnīsht lōve
From thăt smōothe tōong whose mūsicke hēll căn mōve;
Thěn wīlt thou spěake of bānquětīng dělīghts,
Of māsks ănd rěvěls whīch swēete yōuth did māke,
Of Tūrnies ănd grěat chāllēngěs of knīghts,
And āll thěse trīūmphes for thy bēautiěs sāke:
Whěn thou hăst tōld thěse hōnoūrs dōne to thěe,
Thěn těll, O těll, how thou dīdst mūrthěr mě.(24)

In this, as in the preceding poem, each line has ten syllables and it is reasonable to conclude that each also has five long syllables. Yet the situation is obviously not quite the same, since here there are many more ambiguous syllables to account for, so many that if one should insist on construing them all as long, lines 10 and 11 would have no less than seven long syllables. That, however, would be unreasonable. Probably few syllables, whether marked long or not, have exactly the same time-duration; our auditory interpretation of the must be subjective within certain limits, and it is those limits that Campion wished not to transgress. Readers sharing his demanding ear, reading these lines against a metronomic hand marking the end of each line, could without “a ridiculous and unapt drawing of their speech,”²⁵ make them fall out as they should by nature—equal in length. In the above poem, lines 2, 4, and 12 have exactly five long syllables; all the others have the possibility of more than five. We may explain this by quoting a sentence Campion used to explain another case:

The causes why these verses differing in feete yeeld the same length of sound, is by reason of some rests which either the necessity of the numbers or the heaviness of the sillables do beget.²⁶

The three lines which have five and no more long syllables are distinguished from the others by more sharply marked rests, required by grammar as well as by necessity of the numbers or heaviness of the syllables. It would seem, then, that the lines of this poem are stabilized at 5-plus long syllables, instead of five, as in the first example. This of course gives it slightly more density and slower pace than the other, characteristics which are reinforced and exaggerated by such other considerations as diction and subject.

The third specimen of Campion's poetry shows some interesting, intentional variations on the principle of equivalent lines. Only the second of three stanzas is here given.

7 If ī love Amărīllis, 4
7 Shě gīves mě frūit ănd flōwěrs, 3
7 But īf wě lōve thēse Lādiěs, 4
7 Wě mūst gīve gōlděn shōwěrs, 4
6 Gīve thēm gōld thăt sēll lōve, 5
6 Gīve mě thě Nūtbrōwne lāsse, 4
6          Who whēn wě cōurt ănd kīss, 4
6          Shě crīes, forsōoth, lēt gō. 4
8          But whēn wě cōme whēre cōmfort īs, 5
6          Shě nēvěr wīll sāy nō.(27) 4

For convenience, I have given the number of syllables, both long and short, in the left hand column of figures, and the number of long syllables in the right hand column. To obtain these figures, I have passed judgment upon the ambiguous syllables.

In the stanza proper, lines 5 and 6 have only six syllables, as against seven in the others. Campion, I think, would have marked their accents and quantities as follows:

Gīve thēm gōld thăt sēll lōve,
Gīve mě thě Nūtbrōwne lăsse.

The purpose of this syllabic variation is readily felt. The first of these lines has greater syllabic density (five, or 5-plus, long syllables), which adequately compensates for the missing short syllable; this density appropriately slows down the reader just where the nub of the meaning comes. In the second of these lines, an accent falls upon short “me,” which is distinguished by pitch, not by length. The line, in time-value, acts as a transition to the livelier movement of the refrain, a movement which, I feel, somewhat curtails the value of the long syllables, so that there is an actual time-difference between the lines of the stanza and the lines of the refrain not reflected in my figures. Then we reach the unique second from last line, with its eight syllables, at least five of which are long. This line may be taken to echo the time-span of the first six lines; in order that it may do this effectively, the extra syllables are necessary, for the faster pace of reading established for the refrain naturally carries over to this line, so that it needs slightly more syllabic material to make it fill out the time-span of the lines it echoes.

The following examples,²⁸ given in less detail, show the degrees of intricacy achieved by Campion in contrasting lines of different lengths within a single stanza. The first figure represents the syllables, the second the long syllables, in each line.

XII of A Booke of Ayres [Shall I come, if I swim? wide are the waves, you see]²⁹ has this scheme, the second stanza being identical with the first:

12-6, 11-6, 11-6, 8-4, 12-6

VII of The Third Booke of Ayres [Kinde are her answeres] has this scheme, the second stanza being identical except that the lines corresponding to 5 and 6 are transposed:

5-3, 8-5, 5-3, 8-5-plus, 8-5-plus, 5-3, 11-5-plus, 7-5-plus, 6-4

VI of The Fourth Booke of Ayres [There is a Garden in her face] has the following normal scheme, the famous first line being defective with only four long syllables, and the lines corresponding to three and four transposed in the third stanza:

8-5, 8-5, 8-5, 8-6, 8-6, 8-5

In the stanza quoted above, “If I love Amarillis,” the disposition of long syllables, in addition to helping regulate the time-span of the lines, comes to the support of the meaning of the poem. This is the rule, not the exception, in Campion's best poetry. The infractions of strict alternation between long and short syllables almost invariably supply grammatical emphasis (as well as rhythmical variety) where it is needed. Notice, for instance, the meanings expressed by all the collocations of long syllables in the first poem quoted: “all those rosie,” “unlesse thou pitie,” “thou shalt prove,” “without love,” and “Now shew it.” Such effects are not, of course, peculiar to Campion; they can probably be found in the work of every good poet. But there is this distinction between such effects as found in Campion's poetry and in the poetry of many other poets whom we would not think of callingless “good.” In Campion's poems, the quantities create the time-span of the line along with any contribution they may make to grammatical emphasis; in most other poets, they seem to exist for the latter purpose alone. The emphasis is secured, but whatever the rhythmical effect may be, it is of a different order from Campion's. It is not, in his sense, “measure.”

The importance of Campion's contributions to metrics is confirmed by the use he made of them in his own poems. To a surprising extent, their superb vitality comes from controlled richness of rhythm. Sprinkled here and there throughout his work, we find happy examples of the sharply imaginative imagery, the teasing metaphor, and the startling employment of words so characteristic of his period. But felicities of this kind are not the rule. For the most part, his imagery and vocabulary are calm, often routine. But the cadences rise to unsurpassed heights of rhythmical flexibility, of firm, musical quality that enhances a characteristic natural, speech-like vigor.

His less successful songs suffer from a variety of defects we need not consider here. Some of them, banal in subject and language, nevertheless display the rhythmical regularity for which he stood. One stanza will amply represent this type.

8 Fāst to thě rōofe clēave măy my tōngue, 4
8 If mīndelěsse I of thěe bě fōund: 3-4
8 Or īf, whěn āll my jōys ăre sūng, 4
8 Jěrūsălēm bě nōt thě grōund.(30) 4

Probably, in addition to other defects, the rhythm is here too regular; Campion has not taken advantage of the possibilities for rich and emphatic variation offered by his principles. This suggestion is made because many times his utterly charming effects seem to owe almost everything to rhythm, being commonplace in diction, imagery, and subject-matter.

In the bad poems, however, we find more departures from strict measure than in the good ones. The following triplet illustrates the extent, by no means great, to which Campion sometimes departed from his own strictures:

          13 Why prěsūmes thy prīde on thāt that mūst so prīvăte bě, 6-7
          13 Scārce thăt it cān gōod bě cāl'd, though it sēemes bēst to thěe, 6-7
13-14 Bēst of āll thāt Nāture frām'd or cūrious ēye căn sěe?(31) 8-10

“Curious,” in the third line, may be two or three syllables. However we interpret the ambiguous syllables, our efforts to read the lines in equal time are not aided by equal numbers of long syllables.

The pentameter couplets that Campion used for the dramatic portions of his masques show no signs that he attempted to make their lines equivalent in value. They vary from line to line, apparently without plan. If their variations are less great than those of Shakespeare's dramatic passages in blank verse, a weaker feeling for dramatic effect, more than a sharper ear for equivalence, is doubtless responsible.

In conclusion, let us glance at some lines by other Elizabethan poets,³² not with the intention of proving them inferior to Campion's work, but at least with the hope of hearing them as Campion did, of understanding better the grounds of his inordinate contempt for other lyricists of the period. First, the opening stanza of an Elizabethan poem by Robert Greene.

10 Swēet ăre thě thōughts thăt sāvour of contēnt; 4-5
10 Thě qūiět mīnd is rīchěr thăn ă crōwn; 4
10 Swēet ăre thě nīghts in cārelēss slūmběr spēnt; 6
10 Thě pōor ěstāte scōrns fōrtūne's āngry frōwn; 7
10 Sūch swēet contēnt, sūch mīnds, sūch slēep, sūch blīss, 9-10
10 Bēggărs ěnjōy, whěn prīncěs ōft do mīss. 5-6

However we take the ambiguous syllables in this stanza, the time-spans of the verses are necessarily different.³³ Equivalence could only be attained by a wrenched pacing and pronunciation that would offend any ear. Furthermore, to establish the iambic pentameter metre, “of” in the first line and “than” in the second have to be accented; “scorn” in the fourth line must be unaccented. Rather than do this, the reader will prefer to read the first two lines as irregular tetrameter and the fourth as iambic pentameter with a spondee (which Campion would allow); he will also wish further to drag out the fifth line by reading it as a succession of spondees or near-trochees. Campion permitted many variations in what he called “licentiate iambick,” but not such untutored variations as these. According to his views, the stanza is metrically confused and disorganized.

The next poem, by Dekker, embodies other qualities especially associated with the Elizabethan lyric. The first two stanzas only are given here.

11 Ō, thě mōnth of Māy, thě měrry mōnth of Māy, 5-6
12 So frōlīc, so gāy, ănd so grēen, so grēen, so grēen! 6
11 Ō, ănd thēn did I ūnto my trūe lōve sāy, 5-7
9 Swēet Pēg, thou shālt bě my Sūmmēr's Quēen. 6-7
11 Now thě nīghtingāle, thě prětty nīghtingāle, 4-5
11 Thě swēetēst sīngěr in āll thě fōrēst quīre, 7
12 Entrēats thēe, swēet Pēggy, to hēar thy trūe lōve's tāle: 7-9
12 Lō, yōnděr shě sīttēth, hěr brēast ăgaīnst ă brīer. 7-8

In this poem the metrical license far exceeds that in Greene's, amounting to what Campion called a “confusd inequalitie of sillables.” Yet we must not overestimate the extent to which it is marred, or made, by lack of measure. In other qualities as well, it is “abandoned”—full of unrealized potentialities, parts setting off in indiscriminate directions from a vaguely located center, as for example the untied-in implications of the last quoted line. Nevertheless its effect of pretty chaos, of heedless exuberance, has great charm. Its spontaneity may be achieved by, or in spite of, the poet's prodigal expenditure of material. The disorganized metrics, however, probably actually impede, by constantly forcing the attention to start over, the expression of abundance and license. Whatever our final judgment of it may be, the poem certainly owes none of its success to measure, or to an established rhythm, if that term be correctly understood. The aesthetic effect of definite but different rhythms, following each other in quick succession, comes within the scope of the present paper but to this extent: it is abundantly clear that effects so produced gave only pain to the ear of Thomas Campion.

Notes

1. RES, [Review of English Stories] (Jan., 1939), p. 100, reviewing M. M. Kastendieck, England's Musical Poet. Thomas Compion (Oxford, 1938).

2. Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (Oxford, 1904), ii, 358.

3. Campion's Works, ed. Percival Vivian (Oxford, 1909), p. 33. All quotation of Campion have been taken from this edition of his works.

4. Op. cit., p. 36.

5. “Iambick and Trochaick feete, which are opposd by nature, are by all Rimers confounded.” Op. cit., p. 36.

6. Op. cit., p. 36.

7. Op. cit., p. 40.

8. Elisabethan Critical Essays, 1, 205.

9. A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (New York, 1912), pp. 301, 302.

10. Ibid., p. 304.

11. Op. cit., p. 53.

12. It should perhaps be emphasized that Campion's postulate: “But above all the accent of our words is diligently to be observ'd, for chiefely by the accent in any language the true value of the sillables is to be measured” (Op. cit., p. 53), refers mainly to the determination of “value” within words rather than within lines. As shown, Campion was clear that accenting a short syllable in a line of poetry did not necessarily increase its quantity.

13. Op. cit., p. 41.

14. Op. cit., p. 54.

15. Op. cit., p. 29.

16. Op. cit., p. 132.

17. G. Gregory Smith, however, had no doubt that this point was expressed in the Observations: “If he is aiming at anything tangible it is at equality in the reading length of the lines, and his rules to this end assume the propriety of syllabic equivalence.” Op. cit., 1, liv.

18. Op. cit., p. 37.

19. Op. cit., p. 39.

20. “Pitch, as William Thompson has strenuously maintained, has nothing whatever to do with rhythm, but one of its many functions is the heightening of logical emphasis, for we frequently elevate the pitch of a syllable when we give it heavy stress. In those cases, not altogether infrequent in modern English verse, when we are obliged to reduce the stress of a logically emphatic syllable in order to preserve the metre, we often allow it to keep the higher pitch, thus saying, in effect: ‘I cannot stress this syllable as fully as its meaning requires, because the metre demands that I give accentual precedence to its neighbor. Take note, however, that it is logically superior’.” John Collins Pope, The Rhythm of Beowulf (New Haven, 1942), p. 13n.

21. Op. cit., p. 12.

22. Op. cit., p. 55.

23. This line presents a special question: “beauteous” might be divided into three syllables and “spirits” considered as having only one. My treatment seems preferable, because Campion usually indicated by spelling which of the two current forms, “spirits” or “sprites,” he intended. Cf. esp., “With a Spirit to contend,” Op. cit., p. 185, where there can be no doubt that two syllables are needed.

24. Op. cit., p. 17.

25. Op. cit., p. 37.

26. Op. cit., p. 39.

27. Op. cit., p. 7.

28. Op. cit., p. 26, 163, 178.

29. Ralph W. Berringer, arguing that Rosseter rather than Campion composed the lyrics of A Booke of Ayres, Part II, cites this poem as a climax of ineptitude. “Finally, it is almost impossible to believe that the author of ‘Thou art not faire for all thy red and white’ could have had anything to do with such a confused and faitering appeal as ‘Shall I come, if I swim?’” PMLA, lviii (Dec., 1943), 943. I concur rather with T. S. Eliot's estimate of the poem. In “Swinburne as Poet,” from Selected Essays (Faber and Faber, 1932), p. 311, Mr. Eliot refers to the poem, then after quoting a lyric by Shelley, comments: “I quote from Shelley, because Shelley is supposed to be the master of Swinburne; and because his song, like that of Campion, has what Swinburne has not—a beauty of music and a beauty of content.”

30. Op. cit., p. 124.

31. Op. cit., p. 163.

32. Random samplings of Paradise Lost suggest that the musician's ear of Milton also sought lines of the same time-value. Groups of lines, from four to ten in number, were found to possess a given number of long syllables. The groups vary considerable in density.

    Great variation was found in Shakespeare's highly dramatic and highly colloquial passages of blank verse, much less variation in the “set pieces” of sustained splendor. A good example occurs in the Tempest, iv, i, l. 146, through Prospero's famous speech. The opening lines addressing Ferdinand are irregular in time-span. The first three lines of the “set piece” have 5 long syllables each; then beginning with “And like the baseless fabric of this vision,” the next five lines have 6 long syllables. Three more lines of 5 long syllables each conclude the incomparable dirge. In the last five lines, Prospero addresses Ferdinand and present reality. These lines have 7, 5, 3, 6, and 7 long syllables respectively.

33. The “fairness” of subjecting others' poetry to Campion's rules for determining quantity might be questioned. The rules are especially deficient in meeting the problem, merely hinted at, of the influence of meaning on quantity, a defect more apparent when scanning other poetry than when scanning Campion's own marvellously controlled harmonies. Yet whereas a more complete system might ascribe different values to some individual syllables, it is doubtful if the conclusions would be different. The troublesome empiricism of the rules is their best guarantee of approximate accuracy. We may apply them with no more humble an apology than Campion's own: “Others more methodicall, time and practise may produce. In the meane season, as the Grammarians leave many sillables to the authority of Poets, so do I likewise leave many to their judgments; and withall thus conclude, that there is no Art begun and perfected at one enterprise.” Op. cit., p. 56.