Amelia, Tamerton church-tower, etc.,

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WITH PREFATORY STUDY ON ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. BY COVENTRY PATMORE. LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1878.

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PAGE PREFATORY STUDY ON ENGLISH METRICAL LAW 3 AMELIA 87 L'ALLEGRO . 100 TAMERTON CHURCH-TOWER; OR, FIRST-LOVE. 107 THE YEW-BERRY 145 THE RIVER 155 THE FALCON. 168 THE WOODMAN'S DAUGHTER . 184 THE STORM 191 .

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PREFATORY STUDY ON ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. B

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PREFATORY STUDY ON ENGLISH METRICAL LAW.* * The adoption, by Surrey and his immediate successors, of certain foreign metres into our poetry, and the un- precedented attempt of that accomplished writer to establish “blank verse" as a narrative vehicle, first aroused conscious and scientific interest in the subject of the mechanism of English verse.

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I have made it my business to ascertain whether any of the musical grammarians, whose science is, in great part, a mere abstraction of the laws of metre, have supplied the deficiencies of the prosodians.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 5 important fruit can be looked for in such investigations. George Puttenham's “Art of English Poesy” is by very much the most bulky and laborious of the early metrical essays; but at least nine-tenths of this book consist of as unprofitable writing as ever spoilt paper.

Indeed, the early poetical critics commonly manifest a much clearer discernment of the main importance of rhyme and accentual stress, in English verse, than is to be found among later writers.

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The dissertations of the second class of critics, of whom Foster was the best example, are rendered comparatively useless by the adoption of false or confused opinions as the groundwork of their theories ; such, for instance, as Foster's assumption that the time of syllables in English keeps the proportion usually attributed to long and short quantities in Greek and Latin, and that the metrical ictus or stress in English, is identical with elevation of tone ;-mistakes which seem also to have been made by Dr.

Joshua Steele has the praise of having propounded more fully than had hitherto been done, the true view of metre, as being primarily based upon isochronous division by ictuses or accents; and he, for the first time, clearly declared the necessity of measuring pauses in minutely scanning English verse. He remarked the strong pause which is required for the proper delivery of adjacent accented

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 7 syllables, and without which the most beautiful verses must often be read into harsh prose.

This work, though far from containing the whole, or the unmixed truth, has not yet been superseded by any of the several elaborate essays on the same theme which have since appeared. Mr. Guest's work on English Rhythms is a laborious and, in some respects, valuable performance; but many of his observations indicate an ear defective to a degree which seriously impairs their value, when they concern the more subtle kinds of metrical effect.

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The radical faults of nearly all the writers I have mentioned, and of those who have followed in their steps, are, first, the mistake of working in ignorance of the truth declared by Quintilian, "that mere literature, without a knowledge of sounds, will not enable a man to treat properly of metre and rhythm;" and, secondly, that of having formed too light an estimate of their subject, whereby they have been prevented from sounding deep enough for the discovery of the philo- sophical grounds and primary laws of metrical ex- pression. No one, with any just sense of the exalted but unobtrusive functions of art, will expect to derive much artistic instruction from the writings of men who set about their work, perhaps their life's work, with such sentiments as Dr.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 9 would rather be pronounced trivial than tiresome; for music being, at best, but an amusement, its history merits not, in reading, the labour of intense applica- tion.”

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10 PREFATORY STUDY ON spiritual, the more powerful and unmistakable should be the corporeal element;—in other words, the more vigorous and various the life, the more stringent and elaborate must be the law by obedience to which life expresses itself. The co-ordination of life and law, in the matter and form of poetry, determines the different degrees and kinds of metre, from the half-prosaic dramatic verse to the extremest elaboration of high lyric metres. The quality of all emotion which is not ignoble is to boast of its allegiance to law. The limits and decencies of ordinary speech will by no means declare high and strong feelings with efficiency.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 11 thought and expression. “Bacon,” says Mr.

Some writers, by a peculiar facility of lan- guage, have attained to write perfect metre with almost as little metrical effect as if it were prose. Now this is no merit, but very much the reverse.

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Metre never attains its noblest effects when it is altogether unproductive of those beautiful exorbitancies on the side of law. Milton and Shaks- peare are full of them; and we may declare the excel- lence of these effects without danger to the poorer pro- prieties of the lower walks of art, since no small poet can originate them, or even copy them, without making himself absurd.

In the finest speci- mens of versification, there seems to be a perpetual con- flict between the law of the verse and the freedom of the language, and each is incessantiy, though insignifi- cantly, violated for the purpose of giving effect to the

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 13 other. The best poet is not he whose verses are the most easily scanned, and whose phraseology is the com- monest in its materials, and the most direct in its ar- rangement; but rather he whose language combines the greatest imaginative accuracy with the most elaborate and sensible metrical organisation, and who, in his verse, preserves everywhere the living sense of metre, not so much by unvarying obedience to, as by innumerable small departures from, its modulus.

The reader will already have discovered that I am writing under a conviction that the musical and metrical expression of emotion is an instinct, and not an artifice.

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On examination, however, it will be found that the most ordinary speaking involves the musical and metrical element in an easily appreciable degree, and as an integral part of language, and that this element commonly assumes conspicuousness and importance in proportion to the amount of emotion in- tended to be expressed.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 15 so verse is but an additional degree of that metre which is inherent in prose speaking. Again, as there is this difference between prose and verse generically, so the same difference gives rise to specific kinds of prose and of verse; and the prose of a common law report differs from that of an impassioned piece of oratory, just in the same way that the semi-prosaic dramatic verse differs from an elaborate lyric.

And, again, Quintilian, “Nihil est prosa scriptum quod non redigi possit in quædam versicu. lorum genera.” The metrical and musical law in prose has been dis- regarded and forgotten, because its nature is so simple that its observance may be safely trusted to instinct, and requires no aid from typographical divisions.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 17 a far is it from being true that the time and tone of prose reading and speaking are without law, that their laws are more strict than those of grammar itself.

The isochronous division of common spoken language, though quite as natural, necessary, and spontaneously observed as the laws of inflection, is more difficult to prove, by reason of the difficulty which most persons must experience when they for the first time attempt at once to speak naturally, and to take note of the time in which they speak.

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Thus, on meeting in prose with such a passage as “ Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace,” which is an exquisitely cadenced « iambic tetrameter brachy- catalectic,” we give the entire metrical effect in the ordinary reading. An argument of wider power of influence is, however, to be discovered from the con- sideration of a passage like the following, which, while it refuses to be read into verse, differs greatly from the ordinary character of English prose :-" These are spots - in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 19 one unpractised reader in ten but would feel slightly embarrassed by having to read this passage of St.

The peculiarity of the passage, how- , ever, consists in its singular departure from the metrical constitution of ordinary English phrases, which exhibit a great preponderance of emphatic and unemphatic syllables in consecutive couples, whereas here the accents fall, for the most part, either upon adjacent syllables, or upon every third syllable,—an arrange- ment requiring an exceedingly bold and emphatic style of delivery, in order to sever accent from accent by equal measures of time.

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Yet, strange to say, the nature of accent itself has puzzled the brains even of those who have spoken most clearly concerning its metrical functions. The word “accent” is notorious for the variety of meanings which have been attached to it. We are of course chiefly interested in its meaning as it is con- cerned in English and most modern European verse, and it is only in this regard that it is afflicted with apparently incurable ambiguity of significance.

With us, the places of the a metrical accent or ictus” —of the accent in the sense of change of tone, and of long quantity, coincide; with the Greeks, the separation of these elements of verse

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 21 was not only permissible, but sought after; and the ictus, accent, quantity, and verbal cæsura advanced, as it were, in parallel order.

Most people find it hard to believe what they cannot easily represent to their senses; and the fact of the above diversity is sometimes even now shirked, or confusedly admitted, by metrical critics. Mitford, however, very justly remarks, that the difficulty in question, though next to insurmountable, is not greater than that which a Frenchman ordinarily finds in regard to English versification.

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22 PREFATORY STUDY ON shifting the metrical ictus from one place in a word to another, and of severing “accent,” in the sense of tone, from long quantity, quite intelligible.

The “ acute accent” is always spoken of as if it had a permanent position in polysyllables; the fact being, that the accent is neces- sarily “acute," or high, only so long as the word stands without context or relative signification, in which case the acute accent is always used as being, in English,

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 23 generally indicative of that which is most positive and characteristic in the constitution of the word.

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24 · PREFATORY STUDY ON the word is commonly used in speaking of its function in English verse ?—for I may dismiss the Greek meaning as being well defined in its independence of ours, which, whatever it is, is certainly not pure tone. Some writers have identified our metrical accent with long quantity; others have placed it in relative loudness; others have fancied it to consist, like the Greek, in pure tone; others have regarded it as a compound of loudness and elevation of tone; and others, as a compound of height and duration of tone; others, again, have regarded it as the general prominence acquired by one syllable over another, by any or all of these elements in combination. Now, it seems to me that the only tenable view of that accent upon which it is allowed, with more or less distinctness, by all, that English metre depends, in contradistinction to the syllabic metre of the ancients, is the view which attributes to it the function of marking, by whatever means, certain isochronous intervals.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 25 - metrical critics, it will probably seem a startling novelty.

But time measured implies something that measures, and is therefore itself unmeasured ; an argument before which those who hold that English accent and long quantity are identical must bow.

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Those qualities which, singly, or in various combination, have hitherto been declared to be accent, are indeed only the conditions of accent ; a view which derives an invincible amount of corroboration from its answering exactly to the character and conditions of accent in vocal and instrumental music, of which the laws cannot be too strictly attended to, if we would arrive at really satisfactory conclusions con- cerning modern European metre.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 27 fancy they are employing a figure of speech when they talk of the music of poetry.

Rhythm, when the term is not meant to be synonymous with a combination of varied tone and measured time, must signify an abstraction of the merely metrical character extremely difficult to realise, on account of the curious, though little noticed, ten- dency of the mind to connect the idea of tone with that of time or measure.

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In all such cases, however, the original sounds, though monotonous, are far from being pure monotones; they are metrical recurrences of the same noise, rather than the same tone; and it is very interesting to observe, that we cannot evoke what we thus erroneously term “ rhythm” from the measured repetition of a perfectly pure tone.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 29 " would rightly appreciate either, “ The musical art,” says G.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 31 or transitions of feeling of which the human breast is cognisant.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 33 together that it is extremely difficult to disentangle them.” Mitford, and other writers, who have treated of Latin and Greek verse as being “metrical” and “ temporal," and of our own as “ rhythmical” and “accentual,” have fallen into the strange error of not perceiving that these four epithets must apply to all possible kinds of metre, as far as they really are metre; and that, although the non-coincidence of the grammatical with the metrical ictus, and other peculiarities of Greek and Latin verse, give rise to differences in kind between these and the English and other modern European modes of verse, the difference of metre can be only one of degree.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 35 sequently, the trochee, “Lords of," and the iambus, “the world,” are both temporarily deficient when considered as feet, the two unemphatic syllables, of the, being pronounced in the time of one of any of the other three unemphatic syllables in the line.

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The chief source of confusion in modern writings on metre is the nature of the metrical value of the separate syllables of which feet and cadences are composed.

The time occupied in the actual articulation of a syllable is not necessarily its metrical value. The time of a sylluble in combination, is that which elapses from its commencement to the commencement of the succeeding syllable ; so that the monosyllables, a, as, ask, asks, ask’st, though

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 37 be This may requiring five degrees of time for their articulation, may have precisely the same temporal value in verse, just as, in music played staccato on the pianoforte, the actual duration of sound in a crotchet or a quaver note may the same, the metrical value depending altogether on the difference of the time which elapses before the commencement of the succeeding note. reconcile the fact, noticed by Dionysius and others, that “one short syllable differs from another short, and one long from another long," with the apparently con- tradictory rule, “Syllaba brevis unius est temporis, longa vero duorum.” It is furthermore very necessary to be observed, that the equality or proportion of metrical intervals between accent and accent is no more than general and approximate, and that expression in reading, as in singing or playing, admits, and even requires, frequent modifications, too insignificant or too subtle for notation, of the nominal equality of those spaces.

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38 PREFATORY STUDY ON as verse. great an expense of law, and the most approved style of reading is that which ignores the metre as far as is consistent with the possibility of recognising the verse It is certain that such reading as this would ill bear me out in my assertion of the metrical iso- chronism in English and other accentual verse, but the constant presence of a general intention of, and tendency towards the realisation of this character, will assuredly be always manifest in good verse, well read. Not only may metrical intervals differ thus from their nominal equality without destroying measure, but the marking of the measure by the recurrent ictus may be casionally remitted, the position of the ictus altered, or its place supplied by a pause, without the least offence to a cultivated ear, which rather delights in, than , objects to, such remission, inversion, or omission, when there is an emotional motive, as indicating an ad- ditional degree of that artistic consciousness, to the expression of which, Hegel traces the very life of OC- I metre.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 39 A complete and truly satisfactory metrical analysis of any passage even of classical verse, would include a much fuller consideration of the element of pause than has commonly been given to that subject, even by analysts of modern metre. In the works of the most authorita- tive prosodians—in the work of Hermann himself-the various kinds of catalexis, and measurable cæsural pause, appear rather as interruptions than subjects of metrical law. Campion, Joshua Steele, and O'Brien (“ Ancient Rhythmical Art Recovered”), have indeed noted middle and final pause as being the subject of measure; but the two former have done so only incidentally, and the latter has failed to obtain the consideration which, with all the deficiencies of his little work, the boldness and partial truth of his views deserve. Unless we are to go directly against the analogy of music, and to regard every verse affected with catalexis (or a deficiency in the number of syllables requisite to make it a full di- meter, trimeter, tetrameter, &c.) as constituting an entire metrical system in itself, which is obviously

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40 PREFATORY STUDY ON absurd,* we must reckon the missing syllables as substi- tuted by an equivalent pause; and, indeed, in reading cata- lectic verse, this is what a good reader does by instinct. The idea of metrical sequence between verses is equally contra- dicted by the notion of “hypercatalectic verse.”

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 41 scanned without allowing for it.

The most common and injurious of such errors, is that of identifying metrical pauses with grammatical stops. Some of the early English poets were at great pains to try the experiment of making these two very different things coincide.

The great magnitude of metrical, as compared with grammatical pauses, seems not to have had so much notice as its curiosity deserves.

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Even in the reading of prose, the metrical pauses—for so the pauses between adjacent accents may rightly be called—are of much greater duration than is given to most of the “stops." It is very questionable, indeed, whether English verse has gained by the entire disuse of the cæsural dot, which was always employed, until the middle of the fifteenth century, to indicate the position of the cæsura in those kinds of verse of which a marked cæsura was an essential quality. Of this metrical sign Mr. Guest says, “No edition of Chaucer and his contemporaries can be com- plete without it.”

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 43 as the following, which have been attributed to Surrey, and of the like of which plenty are to be found in the writings of him and his predecessors and immediate successors :- “And some I see again sit still, and say but small, That can do ten times more than they that say they can do all.”

In a language like ours, abounding in monosyllables to such a degree, that ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or even fifty of them, may follow in uninterrupted sequence, as in a passage in the third Act of King John, quoted by Mitford, this assistance is absolutely required in verses exceeding the length of the common "heroic;" and the consequence of its disuse has naturally been the disuse of those of the ancient English metres, some very fine ones, which required it.

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Hitherto I have had occasion to speak only of that primary metrical division which is common to verse and prose.

Nothing but the un- accountable disregard, by prosodians, of final pauses could have prevented the observation of the great general law, which I believe that I am now, for the first time, stating, that the elementary measure, or integer, of English verse is double the measure of ordinary prose,—that is to say, it is the space which is bounded by alternate accents; that every verse proper contains two, three, or four of these “ metres,” or, as with a little allowance they may be called, "dipodes ;" and that there is properly no such thing as hypercatalexis. All English verses in common cadence are therefore dimeters, trimeters, or tetrameters, and consist, when they are full—i.e., without catalexis, of eight, twelve, or sixteen syllables.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 45 in triple cadence obey the same law, only their length never-except in the Anglo-Saxon alliterative metre, of the peculiar laws of which I shall have to speak- exceeds that of the trimeter, on account of the great number of syllables or places of syllables (twenty-four) which would be involved in a tetrameter in such cadence.

A few simple considerations will place this sectional admeasure- ment of English verse beyond question. It has been rightly felt by Mitford and others, that "verses” of less “ than six syllables are essentially absurd and burlesque in their character.

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The six-syllable “iambie” is the most solemn of all our English measures. It is scarcely fit for anything but a dirge; the reason being, that the final pause in this measure is greater, when compared with the length of the line, than in any other verse.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 47 slowest and most mournful, to the most rapid and high- spirited of all English metres, the common eight-syllable quatrain ; a measure particularly recommended by the early critics, and continually chosen by poets in all times, for erotic poetry, on account of its joyous air.

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48 PREFATORY STUDY ON fact of this amount of catalexis being of the essence of this metre, seems to have been unconsciously felt and acknowledged by almost all who have written or at- tempted to write in it; for almost all have tried to re- present the varying pauses, and to prepare the ear for them, by printing the lines affected with catalexis with shorter or longer blank spaces at the beginning; a pre- caution which seems to me to be unnecessary; for, if the feeling justifies the metre, the ear will take naturally to its variations; but if there is not sufficient motive power of passionate thought, no typographical aids will make anything of this sort of verse but metrical non- sense—which it nearly always is, even in Cowley, whose brilliant wit and ingenuity are strangely out of harmony with most of his measures.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 49 it by no means follows that the verse must begin or end with the commencement or termination of a section.

It will generally be found that in verses which strike the ear as extraordinarily musical, the peculiarity is mainly owing to an unusually distinct and emphatic accentuation of the first syllable in the metrical sec- E

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Shakspeare, the most musical of writers, affords more examples of lines of this constitution than any other English poet. Dryden and Pope would have called these verses weak.

Curiously enough, Mitford quotes the above lines an example of departure from the modulus of heroic verse, although his own principle of referring the metre of verse and that of music common law, should have taught him that they exemplify the most exact fulfilment of that to a

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 51 modulus. The lovely song in “ Measure for Measure," beginning- " Take, oh take those lips away,” Gray's Ode— " Ruin seize thee, ruthless king,” and probably most other pieces which have become famous for their music, will be found, on examination, to depend for much of their mysterious charm upon the marking of the section by extra emphasis on the first accent. Indeed, this indication of the section would seem to be a necessity deducible from the fact of verse being measurable by sections, which would have no meaning, unless their existence were made apparent by at least an occasional marking of them. English poetry including Anglo-Saxon) divides itself into three great classes : alliterative, rhyming, and rhymeless.

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ENGLISH METRICAL LAW. 53 “ ornament” of versification : it is a real and powerful metrical adjunct, when properly employed. If rhyme, as I shall soon show, is the great means, in modern languages, of marking essential metrical pauses, allitera- tion is a very effective mode of conferring emphasis on the accent, which is the primary foundation of metre.

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Furthermore, as rhyme gracefully used has a certain charm proper to itself, and apart from its metrical value, so alliteration is sometimes a real ornament when it is little else, as in this epitaph “On a Virgin,” by Herrick :- “ Hush'd be all things; no noise here, But the toning of a tear; Or a sigh of such as bring Cowslips for her covering.”