SOUNDING SYLLABLES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 85, 20 January 1928, Page 7

SOUNDING SYLLABLES.

ALLITERATION IN LITERATURE. Alliteration seems to come naturally to the tongue. An infant's first words are "ma-ma," "pa-pa." Moreover in popular sayings or proverbs we nnci numerous examples which come trippingly off the tongue by reason of the repetition of the opening consonant. For exanrale, "safe and sound " neck or nothing," "weal or woe," "many a mickle makes a muckle," and so "it may not be generally known that in Anglo-Saxon and some early Lng'isb poetry alliteration combined with accent marked its difference from prose; rvhme was not used, lake a couple of lines from 'Piers Plowman : Put in a May morning on Malvern M.% befel a ferly of fairy methought. Uss, and Abuse.

After the introduction of rhyme alhteiation. gradually diminished, till, except for special effects it was abandoned. , a Not that our poets were not aware or the value of the recurring letter or syllable when rightly used. Thus Shakespeare writes "Pull Fathom five thy father lies" : and Pope similarly wrote "Up the high hill he heaved the round stone" ; whilst Byron has "that bitter boon our birth." Similar instances could fee culled 1 trom all our poets, especially from Tennvson and Swinburne. The latter was too lavish in its use, as he was well aware, for in a burlesque of his own style, 'Nephelidia,' he ridicules his failm~ by exaggerating it: Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, And its binding is blacker" and bluer. ....

But Shakespeare had been before him. In 'Love's Labor's Lost"he makes the pedant Holofernes remark: "I will something effect the letter, for it argues facility," in proof of which he produces lines which show the absurdity of over-rndidgence in a legitimate poetic device: The preyful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty pleasing,pricket; Some say a sore, but not a sore, till now made sofe by shooting. . . ! A Thousand C's. In prose the same use of alliteration occurs to give added emphasis. An excellent example occurs in Mortimer Collins's 'The Princess Clarice,' where he speaks of a bishop "who had the respect of rectors, the veneration of vicars, the admiration of archdeacons, and the cringing courtesy of curates." . „ That alliteration is not ot modern growth is clear from a passage in Cicero, where he blames the uoet Ennius for indulging' in it too freely. Everything is liable to abuse, 'and in medieval times the Latin poets prided themselves on their -ability to compose verses in which every word should begin with the tame letter. O. Pierius wrote one of a thousand lines, each word beginning with "C." But a poem is no better because it proves the ingenuity of its author; indeed, it loses its value as a poem in proportion as it obtrudes the method of its composition.