Familiar Verse

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Title:     Familiar Verse
Author: William Davenport Adams [More Titles by Adams]

There is a species of verse, hitherto not classified distinctively, for which it seems desirable to find a name. In the first place, it may be necessary, perhaps, to emphasize once more the simple distinction between verse and poetry. There are, indeed, excellent and happy people for whom there is no difference between the two--for whom all that is not prose is poetry, and who recognise no other varieties in literature. Fortunate are they, and great is their reward. They are not disturbed by the necessity of distinguishing between this and that--of pronouncing upon what is poetry, and what is not. And, no doubt, if the critic were careful only for his individual comfort, he would adopt this rough-and-ready classification, and say no more about it. Unluckily, the distinction must be made. Rhythmical poetry must needs be in verse of some sort, but verse need not be poetry. What rhythmical poetry is in essence, the critics have not yet agreed to say; but, roughly speaking, it may be described as the language of imagination and of passion, as opposed to verse which is the vehicle, merely, of fancy and of feeling. Many can attain to the latter; the former is open only to the few. The one is the natural expression of poetic genius; the other is that of the natures which can lay claim only to poetic sentiment. The one is exceptional; the other, luckily, is tolerably widespread. The writers of verse which is not poetry have been many and able, and much enjoyment is derivable from their work.

They must not, however, all be grouped together under one embracing appellation. If there is poetry and verse, there is also verse and verse. Poetry may be said to be a fixed quality; but that is not so with the inferior article. There are many different sorts of verse. There is that which is strongly sentimental, there is that which is broadly comic, and there is that which is something between the two--neither over-sentimental nor over-comic, but altogether light in tone, and marked in the main by wit and humour. Now, to this last class of verse has been given, in general, the name of vers de societe or vers d'occasion--verse of society or for the moment. Mr. Frederick Locker, nearly twenty years ago, thus labelled his volume of 'Lyra Elegantiarum'--still, even at this distance of time, the best available collection of our lighter verse. But the label is not sufficiently distinguishing; it is too haphazard and too narrow. The term vers de societe will not include all that is commonly ranged under it. For what, in reality, is vers de societe? It is what it professes to be--it is the verse of society, the verse which deals with the various phenomena of the fashionable world. The writers of genuine vers de societe have themselves been men and women of society, who had caught its tone and could reproduce it in their rhythmic exercises. Mr. Locker's 'St. James's Street,' Mr. Dobson's 'Rotten Row,' Prior's lines 'To a Child of Quality,' and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's 'Ode to Miss Harriet Bunbury'--these are the true vers de societe, the true 'poetry' of the ball-room and the salon.

What, then, is to become of the large amount of verse which remains unaccounted for--which is neither distinctively sentimental nor distinctively comic, and yet has no right to the designation of society-verse? Well, this is the class of verse which, as we have said, has hitherto not been christened, and for which it is desirable to find a name. It is a very delightful species of rhythmic work, and deserves a denomination of its own. It has the tone, less of society and of the Court, than of the familiar intercourse of every day--of the intercourse, that is, which goes on between people of ordinary breeding and education. It does not dabble in the phrase of drawing-rooms, nor does it rise to the height of sentiment or sink to the depths of low comedy. It is 'familiar, but by no means vulgar.' Its first quality is ease--absence of effort, spontaneity, freedom, a degage air. It is in rhythm what the perfect prose letter should be and is--flowing and unpremeditated without slovenliness--having the characteristics of the best conversation, as differentiated from mere argument or harangue. Its second quality is playfulness--a refusal to be too much in earnest in any direction, and a determination not to go to any unwelcome extreme. It has touches of sentiment and traces of wit and humour; but its dominant note is one of tempered geniality. Sometimes it may lean to the sentimental, sometimes to the witty, sometimes to the humorous; but always the style and atmosphere are those of familiar life, of everyday reunions; and hence the suggestion that it should be recognised as 'Familiar Verse.'

I have said how numerous are its producers. Often it has been written by those who were poets as well as verse-writers; often by those who are well-known as wits and humourists. It has flourished, naturally, in, periods of tolerance rather than in strenuous times, and has been at its best, therefore, in the Caroline, Augustan, and Victorian ages of our literature. There was not much of it in the Elizabethan days, though some bears the signature of rare Ben Jonson. It came in, in full force, with the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease--with Suckling, whose 'Prithee, why so pale, fond lover?' is in exactly the right tone; and with Dorset, whose 'To all you ladies now on land' is another typical specimen. By-and-by Dryden showed how well he could write in the familiar style, when he composed the song about fair Iris:

'She's fickle and false, and there we agree,
For I am as false and as fickle as she;
We neither believe what either can say,
And neither believing, we neither betray.'

Then came the reign of Pope, and Swift, and Prior, and Peterborough--Pope, with his truly playful 'What is Prudery?' Swift, with his charming lines to Stella; Prior, with his 'Dear Chloe, how blubber'd is that pretty face!' and Peterborough, with that masterpiece of the familiar genre:

'I said to my heart, between sleeping and waking,
Thou wild thing, that always art leaping and aching,
What black, brown, or fair, in what clime, in what nation,
By turns has not taught thee this pit-a-pat-ation?'

Then there were the Lady Wortley Montagu, with her lines to Congreve; and Chesterfield, with his 'Advice to a Lady in Autumn'; Fielding, with his inimitable epistles to Walpole; and Goldsmith, with his incomparable 'Retaliation.' Later, again, came Cowper, with his 'Nose and Eyes' and 'Names of Little Note'; Byron, with his verses 'To Tom Moore'; Moore himself, with his 'Time I've Lost in Wooing'; Barham, with his 'Lines left at Hook's'; Peacock, Canning, James Smith, Praed, and Mahony; and, still later, Hood, with his 'Clapham Academy'; Brough, with his 'Neighbour Nelly'; Mortimer Collins, with his tribute to his 'Old Coat'; and a hundred others, all of whom could play delightfully on the familiar string.

And, happily, the manufacture of familiar verse still goes on swimmingly. The Laureate has engaged in it, and even Mr. Browning has condescended to it. It has never, in the whole course of its career, been written better than by Mr. Holmes and Mr. Lowell, and, among ourselves, by Mr. Frederick Locker and Mr. Austin Dobson. No age, indeed, was ever more favourable than our own for the composition of verse which should, above all things, never be betrayed into exaggeration--which may have, if it please, a soupcon of wit and humour, and even of sentiment, but which should, in particular, be tolerant and urbane.

[The end]
William Davenport Adams's essay: Familiar Verse

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