Les vrais sages, ayant la raison pour lien. (V. Hugo, Contemplations, i. p. 66.) (Ibid. p. 86.) Quelques ormes tortus, | aux profils irrités. A Paris! Oh! l'étrange et la plaisante affaire. (A. de Musset, Prem. Poés., p. 130.) Aux grands sourcils arqués; | aux longs yeux de velours. (Gautier, Poés. Compl., i. p. 11.) A fortiori many of the lines in the Romantic poets which as the result of the free use of enjambement often contain pauses more marked than that at the cesura: Je pris pour osciller une fosse ; j'avais Les pieds transis, ayant des bottes sans semelle. (V. Hugo, Légende des Siècles, iv. p. 57.) Il nous apparaissait des visages d'aurore (Id., Contemplations, i. p. 99.) But it is unconsciously and in complete ignorance of the importance of the pause as annulling hiatus that modern poets have reached this result, or if not they would freely admit the succession of vowels in like cases, which they do not1. On the contrary, the poets of the sixteenth century were conscious that they were avoiding hiatus in such cases, as all final consonants were then pronounced before a pause of any kind. This was possibly still the case when Malherbe wrote, but, even if we exclude this possibility, we know that in his eyes a pause did not exclude liaison, and that he too thus avoided hiatus consciously in such cases. 1 A good proof of this is that La Fontaine felt bound to ruin the rhythm of the following lines by adding the article to 'on': Ce que je vous dis là, l'on le dit à bien d'autres. (Euvres, i. p. 252.) Une vache était là: | Pon l'appelle; elle vient. (Ibid. ii. p. 231.) 2 All the grammarians of the sixteenth century, from Palsgrave (1530) to Henri Étienne (1582), are unanimous on that point. See Thurot, De la pronation française depuis le commencement du xvie siècle, ii. p. 10 sqq. 3 See Thurot, ii. p. 14. 4 As this view is new and somewhat startling at first sight, it may not seem irrelevant to state that the proof of it is afforded by those notes of the Commentaire in which Malherbe pulls up Desportes for cacophonie: Mais vous, belle tyranne, | aux Nérons comparable : Tira, noz, nez. (Euvres, iv. p. 252.) It is tempting at first sight to conclude that Malherbe had no objection to hiatus provided the eye was satisfied, but we also know from his remarks on the words pied, nid, and nud1, in which the d is merely a false etymological letter which was never pronounced, that such was not his view. It is the assumption that such was his view that explains the practice of French poets from the time of the classicists till the present day. These considerations make it clear that the rules governing the use of hiatus are irrational as they now stand 2. It is doubtful if French poetry would gain by a remodelling of these rules, which in itself would be an admission that such a delicate subject as poetic euphony is capable with advantage of being confined within hard-and-fast limits. It seems rather that the avoidance or admission of the concurrence of vowel sounds had better be left entirely to the poet's ear. De même, en mes douleurs j'avais pris espérance. (Euvres, iv. p. 260.) Et que je suis constant, | étant désespéré. : Tan, té, tant. (Ibid. p. 268.) Et que mon âme libre | erroit à son plaisir. (Ibid. p. 303.) : Re, roi, ta. Hâte le beau soleil | à la tresse dorée. : Leil, la, la. 1 Euvres, iv. pp. 353, 416, 456, 469. (Ibid. p. 373.) 2 Several theorists (compare e. g. D'Alembert's letter of March 11, 1770, to Voltaire) have contended that the rules prohibiting hiatus between a vowel sound at the end of a word and another at the beginning of the next are invalidated by the fact that such concurrences of vowels are found in the body of many French words. But, whatever may be said against the rules in general, the two cases are in no way identical, as when two vowels meet in the body of a word the first vowel is invariably atonic (criér, criá, créér, avouér, tuér, &c.), and even occasionally the second (liaisón, &c.), the result being that the shock is considerably weakened in the first instance and almost totally annulled in the second, at any rate sufficiently so to prevent the concurrence of the vowels from producing an unpleasant sensation. CHAPTER VII THE SO-CALLED POETIC LICENCES I. The poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. occasionally take the liberty of omitting the final s in the first person singular of the present indicative of the noninchoative verbs of the second conjugation, and also of the verbs of the third and fourth conjugations: Si Cléon pour ma fille a le goût que je croi; (Gresset, Le Méchant, Act iv. Sc. 3.) Est-ce toi, Cléotas, toi, qu'ainsi je revoi? (A. Chénier, Poésies, p. 47.) Quittons ce sujet-ci, dit Mardoche, je voi (A. de Musset, Prem. Poés., p. 124.) Oh! mes amis sont morts! oh! je suis insensé ! (V. Hugo, Hernani, Act iii. Sc. 5.) Ils trouvent tout de suite? oh! cela va de soi, (Rostand, Cyrano, p. 127.) Such forms are found quite commonly in the poetry of the Classicists: Elvire, où sommes-nous? et qu'est-ce que je voi? Hors de cour. Comme il saute! (Corneille, Cid, 1. 851.) Ho! Monsieur, je vous tien. - Aụ voleur! Au voleur! Ho! nous vous tenons bien. (Racine, Plaideurs, 1. 65.) Elle n'a fait ni pis ni mieux que moi. (La Fontaine, Euvres, iv. p. 218.) But with the poets of the seventeenth century they were not poetic licences introduced to facilitate rime, or generally for the sake of convenience, as is sometimes erroneously stated, the forms without s being then used side by side with the forms with s in prose as well as in verse. According to the regular laws of phonology, Old French had s only in the first person singular of the present indicative of verbs that were inchoative or had an inchoative radical (finis, crois, conois, &c.), and in a few others the s of which belonged to the stem (puis, cous, &c.). In all other verbs the first person singular of the present indicative lacked s, and although the s began to spread by analogy as early as the thirteenth century, yet the regular and etymologically correct forms of O.F. were the rule in the Middle Period and still preponderated in the sixteenth century: Quand je te voy seule assise à par toy. (Ronsard, Poés. Chois., p. 17.) Ha! quel plaisir dans le cœur je reçoy! (Ibid. p. 39.) although analogy forms are already fairly common at that period: Aussi je prens en gré toute ma passion. (Ibid. p. 57.) (Ibid. p. 58.) II. The same may be said of the second person singular of the imperative, except that since the beginning of the nineteenth century the suppression of the s is not tolerated in that case: Fais donner le signal, cours, ordonne et revien (Racine, Phèdre, 1. 579.) La, la, revien. Non, morbleu! je n'en ferai rien. (Molière, Amphitryon, 1. 1434.) Si je chante Camille, alors écoute, voi: Les vers pour la chanter naissent autour de moi. (A. Chénier, Poésies, p. 247.) It results from this explanation that the term poetic licence can be fitly applied to these forms lacking s only when they occur in the poets of the eighteenth century and their successors. III. Archaic too are the few examples of the use of die (dicam) found in modern poets, since that form was replaced by dise at the end of the seventeenth century, after having existed alongside of it for some time: MU (A. de Musset, Poés. Nouv., p. 42.) Enfin je l'aime. Il faut d'ailleurs que je vous die (Rostand, Cyrano, p. 80.) IV. Old, and Middle French also, had an s only in the first person singular of the perfect of those verbs in which that letter was the result of a regular phonetic development, but analogy forms began to appear early in this case too, and all the first persons of the perfect had assumed the s by the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the sixteenth century both forms exist side by side: Icy chanter, là pleurer je la vy. (Ronsard, Poés. Chois., p. 15.) Pour qui je fus trois ans en servage à Bourgueil. (Ibid. p. 60.) V. Conjointly with -ois (-oys) and -erois (-eroys) of the first person singular of the imperfect indicative and present conditional, the endings -oi (-oy) and -eroi (-eroy) were likewise current in the sixteenth century, as also the etymologically correct -oie (-oye), -eroie (-eroye), the latter more especially in the Picard dialect. The first two were the usual prose forms, but poetry admitted also the third form, which was not unknown to prose. Ronsard says in the Art Poétique: Tu ne rejetteras point les vieux verbes Picards, comme voudroye' pour voudroy,' aimeroye,' 'diroye,' 'feroye'; car plus nous aurons de mots en nostre langue, plus elle sera parfaicte, et donnera moins de peine à celui qui voudra pour passe-temps s'y employer1. Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, -ois and -erois have been exclusively used, with change of spelling to correspond to the change in pronunciation. VI. A real poetic licence in the sixteenth century is the occasional omission of the s of the second person singular of the present indicative or present subjunctive: Maintenant le vivre me fasche: Et à fin, Magny, que tu sçache (Du Bellay, Euvres Choisies, p. 292.) 1 Œuvres, vii. p. 333. |