The codex in which the Beowulf is written is through-written. That is, it is unlineated. Was this a desire on the part of the scribe to conserve precious sheep-skin? Probably. Joe Terry gave me volume B of Longman's new World Lit Anthology in Beaumont two weeks ago. Dick Davis' brilliant heroic couplets, his translation of al Attar's Conference of the Birds, are there printed as prose! Dick is outraged, as you would expect. Nonetheless, whether I am looking at Longman's typographical outrage or the Beowulf codex, my trained ear lineates the literature. With the overwhelming majority of free verse, and Whitman is no exception, I cannot do that.
Clive, when did lineation first occur, about 300 BC? I am put in mind of an interview with Wilbur which I read years ago. He expressed his befuddlement that poets would not utilize every arrow in the ancient quiver, meter, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, etc. OK, I'm just a hopeless throwback for whom poetry exists in the mind and ear, and not on the page. But so are most of the poets of the last century whose work inspires me.
What I should like to see, Clive, is your analysis of effective and ineffectual lineation in the poetry which matters to me: metered verse.
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