by Coleridge · Cluster: Artist and Society · Truth · Regency Georgian England
Abstract
Saintsbury’s prosodic commentary on Coleridge’s metrical experiments (anapaests, trochaics, dochmiacs, Pindarics); editorial literary criticism of Coleridge as a metrical pioneer.
Connections
Themes & Concepts: Artist and Society Forms & Genres: Literary Criticism, Essay, Pindaric Ode, Nonfiction Historical References: Romantic Movement (Sensibility)
Testo integrale / Full text
- I think most ears would take these as anapaestic throughout. But the introduction of Milton’s Drunk with Idolatry, drunk with wine as a leit-motiv is of the first interest. Description of it, l. 4, very curious. I should have thought no one could have run ‘drunk with wine’ together as one foot.
- Admirable! I hardly know better trochaics.
- Very interesting: but the terminology odd. The dochmius, a five-syllabled foot, is (in one form — there are about thirty!) an antispast Ø ¯ ¯ Ø plus a syllable. Catalectic means (properly) minus a syllable. But the verses as quantified are really dochmiac, and the only attempts I have seen. Shall I own I can’t get any English Rhythm on them?
- More ordinary: but a good arrangement and wonderful for the date.
- Not nonsense at all: but, metrically, really his usual elegiac.
- This, if early, is almost priceless. It is not only lovely in itself, but an obvious attempt to recover the zig-zag outline and varied cadence of seventeenth century born — the things that Shelley to some extent, Beddoes and Darley more, and Tennyson and Browning most were to master. I subscribe (most humbly) to his suggestions, especially his second.
- Very like some late seventeenth-century (Dryden time) motives and a leetle ‘Moorish’.
- Like 6, and charming.
- A sort of recurrence to Pindaric — again pioneer, as the soul of S. T. C. had to be always. 10 and 11. Ditto.
- Again, I should say, anapaestic — but this anapaest and amphibrach quarrel is ÃÀ¿½´¿Â.