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[front:]
Mem: for Philadelphia.
| French Reviews at Athenæum. | >>Review in Courier.<< Courier with Raven. | |
| Grotesque & Ar. | Grahams with my life. Feb. 45 | |
| Ligeia. | Dollar Newsp. With New-Year’s Address. | |
| Epig. In “Graham” |
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Versification
— about no treastises on Eng. Verse. Everett
— accent is simply time. It may be said that it is a more forcible enunciation; but it amounts to the same thing; for, either it is the duplicate time wh. [[which]] causes the force; or the force which gives the dup. Time.
— why there are no feet of more than 3 syllables. — accent. Introduce amphibrach — give first line of “Ulalume” as specimen.
— Hexameter — what causes the tripping or dactylic character of our verse — monosyllables short generally not always — shortness depends upon the importance of a word’s meaning as well as upon its diff. Of enunciation. Thus “should “ is short because unimportant — auxiliary — although dif. Of syllabification. Aux verbs & preps: short — none of these in Greek or Latin. Greeks not only had 10 natural spondees to our one; but, owing to inflection (tense & case) making final syllables empathic, were able to make innumerable artificial spondees out of the end of one word & the beginning of another.
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Do tell | when shall we | make common | sense men | out of the | >>owl-eyed<< | pundits
<Out> of >>The<< >>Frog-faced<< | stupid old | God-born | Pundits who | lost in a | fog-bank |
Strut about | all along | shore there | somewhere | close by the | Down East
<Frog> >>Duck<< Pond | munching of | pea nuts and | pumpkins and | buried in | big-wigs |
Why ask | who ever | yet saw | money made | out of a | fat old
Jew or | downright | upright | nutmegs | out of a | pine-knot |
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Schiller accounts for the elegiac stanza thus:
Im Hexameter steigt des Spring-quells flüssige Saüle —
Im Pentameter drauf fallt sie melodisch herab —
Coleridge without acknowledgment translates it thus —
In the Hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column
In the Pentameter are falling in melody back
A System of English versific. contg. [[containing]] “Rules for the structure of the different kinds of Verse. by Erastus Everett A. M. April 1848”
“All rules for the structure of English verse must be drawn from the standard poets & not laid down à priori
“The ignorance prevalent on this >>topic<< subj. even among men of consid. [[considerable]] pretense to crit. [[critical]] acumen is really aston. [[astonishing]]
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Notes:
The manuscript of this item is currently at the Boston Public Library among the Griswold Papers.
T. O. Mabbott refers to this item, and quotes from “Evangeline” but does not include the preliminary notes. See Mabbott, Poems, 1969, pp. 392-396.
The model verse given here under the title “Evangeline” was first printed at the end of Poe’s essay “The Rationale of Verse” in 1848. There, it appears with some variations and no title.
Erastus Everett, A. M. (1813-1900) was the author of A System of English Versification, containing Rules for the Structure of Different Kinds of Verse; Illustrated by Numerous Examples from the Best Poets, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1848.]
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[S:0 - MS, 1849 (photocopy)] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Misc - Mem for Philadelphia (manuscript notes)