University of Virginia Library

ALLITERATION.

“Why the art of poetry should be so much neglected,
and the inferior art of music so extensively cultivated
in this age of intelligence?” is a question more easily
asked than answered. There are many young ladies, and
young gentlemen, able to discourse, almost pedantically, of
chromatics and dynamics; of staccatos and appoggiaturas;
who would not be ashamed to confess they had not the remotest
idea of an iambus, or a dactyl. I speak now of
the elementary principles of those arts; of acquaintance
with the mechanism, by which certain effects are produced
in either. I do not think a mere knowledge of the catechism
of verses sufficient to create a Byron or a Shakspeare.
I am sure cultivation in music has produced very
few Mozarts or Rossinis, this side the Atlantic. But

if we aspire neither to be great poets, nor great composers,
why devote so much attention to acquire the art of the latter,
and neglect entirely the art of the first?

Why not understand the iambic measure as well as
common time?

Why not a trochee as well as a crotchet?

Why not language in its divinest form as well as
sound?

Why not cultivate conversation as well as music?

The essays of Edgar A. Poe, and “Imagination and
Fancy,” by Leigh Hunt, are not only valuable, but agreeable
text-books, relating to an art, a knowledge of which
should be one of the indispensable requisites of polite education.
As for the cast-aside prosodies of the school-room,
they had better be left where they are. They hold freedom
of expression in bondage and load invention with shackles.
They are retrospective, not introspective. They teach us
what has been done, not what may be done.

Imagination and fancy, pathos and humor, are born, not
made.[1] But these rare gifts take various forms of expression.
The poet sees a moonlight and describes it. The
painter paints it. Harmony is translated differently by

sculpture and music. But the same feeling for, or sense of
beauty, pervades either and all.

Imagination takes a poetic form through versification.
Ben Jonson, in his “Discoveries,” observes this. “A poem,
as I have told you, is the work of the poet; the end
and fruit of his labor and study. Poesy is his skill or
craft of making; the very fiction itself, the reason or form
of the work. And these three voices differ as the thing
done, the doing, and the doer; the thing feigned, the
feigning and the feigner; so the poem, the poesy (or versification),
and the poet.”

Versification is made up of many elements. In this
art as in others, certain latent principles exist, even in the
rudest productions. These have been more or less developed
by various poets in various ages. To one of these elements,
which is in truth only a minor embellishment, I purpose
to devote this essay.

That alliteration, as an element of the art, has been
carefully studied by almost all English poets, must be obvious
to every reader of English poetry. The illustrations
I shall present, by way of simplifying the matter will be
confined to a single letter of the alphabet. The liquid consonant
“L” will suit the purpose best, because it is a favorite,
and justly so, on account of its euphony.

“The letter L,” says Ben Jonson, “hath a half-vowelish
sound,” and “melteth in the sounding.” Many of the
softest words in our language hold it (so to speak) in solution.
Amiable, voluble, golden, silvery, gentle, peaceful,
tranquil, glide, glode, dimple, temple, simple, dulcet,
blithely, vernal, tendril, melody, lute, twinkle, lonely,
stilly, valley, slowly, lithe, playful, linger, illusion, lovely,
nightingale, philomel, graceful, slumber, warble, pool, pensile,
silken, gleam, lull, are all more or less expressive of
softness, sweetness, and repose. To this may be objected,
that the word “hell!” with its double consonants, is suggestive
of neither. This is not because the word itself is
at fault; the meaning becomes confounded with the sound.
A friend suggests “that if hell were the name of a flower,
it would be thought beautiful.” “Helen” is a pretty
female name, and it is united with the story of her who
won the golden apple on Mount Ida—the loveliest woman
of the world.

Are not drowsily, dreamily, lullaby, super-euphonisms?

What can replace those two delicious words of that matchless
line of Shakspeare?—
“Cling'd upon my lips!”—exquisite Dryden!

Do we not apprehend, in these lines of Tennyson, a
sense of beauty quite as dependent upon the melody as
upon the image?—

Our own great poet, Drake, alliterates in the musicallest
verses;—
Coleridge's famous stanza begins—
Poe, too, in The Sleeper—
Coleridge again—
Of which Leigh Hunt remarks, “the very smoothness and
gentleness of the limbs, is in the series of the letter l's.”

Let us take a few examples from Milton:—

In Gray's Elegy we find—
A marvellous collocation of l's.

It lingers throughout the pages of Shelley—

There are many instances in Spenser; I will quote
one as an ensample:

And Marlowe—
Raleigh—
We observe Shakspeare quotes this.

How glibly the pen of that old gourmand, Ben Jonson,
wrote—

Milton again—

Need I point out the charming echo in these lines?
Sometimes there is a musical ring in repetition—

Shakspeare.

Chaucer.

Poe.

Ibid.

I might, in addition to these, make other selections,
from various writers, but it is scarcely necessary. Doubtless
many will suggest themselves to the reader. It is
easy to quote texts in support of any theory, however fanciful;
but these selections, embracing some of the most
celebrated lines in the language, remarkable for sweetness
and fluency, have one property in common—they are all
alliterations of the letter 1.

“And would you infer from that,” quoth the reader,
“it is necessary to have such alliterations in every poem,
to make it pass muster?”

By no means; I wish only to direct your attention to
one element, which, as I have said before, is but a minor
embellishment in versification. I have taken up a single letter—you
have the whole alphabet before you, with imagination,
fancy, humor, pathos, and sentiment to boot. If
we do not know the value of a trochee, an anapæst, or an

iambus, then, as far as we are concerned, have Shakspeare,
Milton, and Spenser written poetry in vain. They might
as well have limited themselves to prose.

“And do you think those great poets made these alliterations
knowingly and systematically?”

Amigo mio, either they knew what they were doing, or
they did not. If they merely blundered into beauty, then
their merits have been somewhat overrated. I am inclined
to believe those master weavers of verse understood the fabric,
woof and warp, quite as well as any threadbare critic
or grammarian—perhaps better.

The poetic student will find many valuable hints in
Ben Jonson's “Discoveries,” from which I have quoted
briefly. I will conclude this essay (the amusement of a
long winter evening) by another excerpt from the same
source. He says, speaking of poetry—

“The study of it (if we will trust Aristotle) offers to
mankind a certain rule and pattern of living well and happily,
disposing us to all civil offices of society. If we will
believe Tully, it nourisheth and instructeth our youth, delights
our age, adorns our prosperity, comforts our adversity,
entertains us at home, keeps us company abroad,
travels with us, watches, divides the time of our earnest
and sports, shares in our country recesses and recreations,

insomuch as the wisest and best learned have thought her
the absolute mistress of manners, and nearest of kin to
virtue. And whereas they entitle philosophy to be a rigid
and austere poesy; they have, on the contrary, styled
poetry a duleet and gentle philosophy, which leads on and
guides us by the hand to action, with a ravishing delight,
and incredible sweetness.”

O rare Ben Jonson!