SOUNDING SYLLABLES

Evening Star, Issue 19760, 10 January 1928, Page 9

SOUNDING SYLLABLES

ALLITERATION IN LITERATURE Alliteration seems to come naturally to the tongue. An infant’s first words are “ nia-ma,” 11 pa-pa.” Moreover, in popular sayings or proverbs we find numerous examples which come trippingly off the tongue by reason of the repetition of the opening consonant. For example, ‘‘safe and sound,” “ nock or nothing,” “ weal or woe,” “ many a mickle makes a muckle.” and so on. It may not be generally known that in Anglo-Saxon and some early English poetry alliteration combined with accent marked its difference from prose; rhyme was not used. Take a couple of lines from ‘ Piers Plowman ’ : But in a May morning on Malvern hills Me befel a fcrly of fairy methought. USE AND ABUSE. After the introduction of rhyme alliteration gradually diminished, till, except for special effects, it was abandoned. Not that our poets were not aware of the value of the recurring letter or syllable when rightly used. Thus Shakespeare writes “ Full Fathom five thy father lies ”; and Pope similarly wrote “Up (he high hill he heaved the huge round stone ”; whilst Byron lias “ that bitter boon our birth.”

Similar instances could be culled from all our poets, especially from Tennyson and Swinburne. The latter was too lavish in its use, as he was well aware, for in a burlesque of his own style, ‘ Nophelidia,’ he ridicules his failing by exaggerating it; Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old,

And its binding is blacker than bluer But Shakespeare had been before him. In 1 Love's Labor’s Lost ’ he makes the pedant Holoferues remark: " I will something effect the letter, for it argues facility,” in proof of which he produces lines which show the absurdity of over-indulgence m a legitimate poetic device: j,..0 Min .ii: princess pierced and prick’d a pretty pleasing pricket; Some say a sore, but not. a sore, till now made sore 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 of modern growth is clear from a passage in Cicero, where he blames the poet 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 same letter. C. 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.