makes use, most likely unconsciously, of this most regular stanza in main rhythm:

The solitude that had been soothing, the silence that seemed like an enchantment on the other broad in the day's vigorous prime, was a solitude that saddened here, a silence that struck cold in the stillness and melancholy of the day's decline.

This passage must have struck many, doubly conspicuous as it is by a near approach to a rhymed close. It is the elevation of his subject that has lifted the writer to verse, for the story actually culminates at that passage, and from that point declines in every element of interest. The piece may be variously arranged in lines to wear more the aspect of verse, but its thorough proportionate structure appears the more marked the longer it is observed.

Looking into the structure that main assumes, it appears that very little curbing would be required to reduce any particular line of it to the regulations of ordinary metre. But what would be gained by so doing? A specious regularity, and that is all, which, to impose to the abolition of freedom, would be totally unwarranted. Understand, those who confine themselves to feet will have to look to syllables, while the rhythmic rhapsodist need only regard his words, a difference greater than perhaps many at first imagine. Finally, main is the easiest and most powerful metre in the language, and with its invention, the shackles that have for ever restrained the highest flights of the poet may be said to have been knocked away; especially let the improvisatore's heart rejoice, for this is the metre for him.

If five-main be attempted, the line, as used in four, will not readily receive any accession to its length; so room for the additional accent must be found within, consequently lowering the effect of those in previous possession. The re sult is a degradation into a nondescript perhaps not unsuitable for comedy.

Good that your lawful wedded wife should have that to do;
Deuce a bit deserves such a wicked old wretch as you are.
That one of my virtuous precocity should be so treated.
O if I had my choice again wouldn't I have a pious man,
One with scripture on his lips and a bible always in his pocket.

The tendency appears to be still to four-main, but with strong accents secondary, which serve to neutralise its power and bring it to something of an irregular foot-structure.

The field that main offers to take up is most wide, a guide over what has hitherto been regarded, for poetical purposes, a profitless and trackless waste.

XXIII.

ON THE RENDERING OF GREEK METRE.

THE limits of metric possibilities in English are now nearly traced, nothing more but the question of regular prosody remaining.

In English, if a vowel is long, the accent seems to dwell on it, as in nóte; if short, it seems to pass it over and strike more on the following consonant, as in not'; but this has no connection whatever with the importance of the words metrically, nor is the accentual stress less on one than on the other. Thus the length or shortness of a vowel has no connection with the beat, or with the emphatic importance of the word or syllable.

Where there is no accent the vowels are as incommensurate as can well be, but in prosody, such as are followed by two consonants or more are held long by position; others, as a rule, short. Did not custom blind the sense, surely the absurdity of such a distinction would strike every one. The purpose of prosody, where native, was to smoothe the way to singing, the ordering of consonants and vowels therefore reasonable, which is more than can be said for English attempts which have no such aim.

Those who would bring prosodial metre into English should first do it in Greek and Latin, for there, to Englishmen, it little more exists as a reality than in their own tongue. It seems to be quite overlooked that our pronunciation of the

L

classics is altogether accentual, and that the metres of the ancients, as we know them, are altogether our own inventions. In the verses of Homer, as pronounced by a Greek, Englishmen are as much at a loss to recognise the measure as they are the words, the home distortion having been as great in one as in the other.

Those who would have that an accented syllable in English answers to a long one in Latin and Greek have indeed a certain degree of warrant for their assertion; it is the rule they have applied to the dead languages already. In adopting so-called Greek metres they are but endeavouring to reclaim their own misbegotten progeny.

The argument against all quantitative arrangement with us lies in the fact that, while no form of English can be without accent, this beat has such a robust nature that no other measuring quality with which it comes in contact has any chance against it, nor even in competitive union therewith can make itself the least felt. Witness this attempt, a straight mark to indicate length, a curved shortness after the usual method:

Ō mighty mouthed | in||ventor of | hārmõniēs
Ō skilled to sing | of || time or ĕļternity,
Gōdgift ĕd ōr ganvõice of England,

Milton ǎ name to re sound för | āgés;
Whose Titan angels Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starred from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries,
Tower as the deep-domed empyrean

Rings to the roar of an angel onset-
Me rather all that bowery loveliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches,
Charm as a wanderer out in ocean
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,

And crimson-hued the stately palm woods

Whisper in odorous heights of even.—TENNYSON.

The verse is supposed to be meted as indicated, but, to speak sooth, the balance by which the verses of Euripides. were comically weighed against those of Eschylus would be

needed to determine, even in this choice example, which were the long syllable and which the short. The verse laughs at such finnicking, and asserts its true division thus:

O míghty-mouthed | invén |tor of hár monies.

This imitation of an Alcaic is good, not because it resembles an Alcaic, but because all the requirements of a good piece are satisfied.

A point deserving especial notice is the poet's constant use of long words, accent three back, such as hármonies, etérnity, for the closing place in the long lines. Dactyls are out of the question, but the metric effect is of course the same, whatever appellation it goes under. One exception, and one only, to this long word regimen is found in the second line of the last stanza, the run of which it alters considerably.

Were it not for the effectual relief afforded by the different ending of the shorter pair, the effect of this long-word ending would be intolerable; witness another form of it:

While about the shore of Mona, these Neronian legionaries
Broke and burnt the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,
Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
Mad and maddening all that heard her by her fierce volubility,
Near by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camalodune,
Yelled and shrieked between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy.
They that scorn the tribes and call us Britain's barbarous populaces,
Did they hear me, would they listen, did they pity me supplicating?
Shall I heed them in their anguish ? shall I brook to be supplicated?
Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant !
Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us?
Tear the noble heart of Britain, leave it gorily quivering.

But doubtless its author only intended this piece as a joke, and would not thank us to suppose it for more than styled a metrical experiment.

Measurement in quantity is then impracticable, and, what is more, any mere metre of accent that resembles prosodial only by the palpable error of the same nominal feet aforesaid is by no means to be trusted as giving an equivalent. Better throw the reins on the neck of Pegasus at once, and trust

that he will find his way home to Parnassus aright by instinct.

Better results may be arrived at by taking estimate of the resources at command of the original poet to be imitated, than by following his metre step by step.

Take now the elegy. Given that the hexameter is known, how could a Latin poet impart an elegiacal tone to his composition? Clearly not, as in English, by altering the succession of feet, for that is a point that does not seem very material in his language.

The efforts of the Latin poet result, as known, in the pentameter alternated with the hexameter. Why the pentameter is what it is, and not other, we will attempt to explain.

It begins as its fellow measure begins, then suddenly at the middle of the third foot halts at a fixed cesura; then begins again hexameter-wise, only always with two dactyls, and again breaks. Wherefore these breaks on the long syllable? In that appears to be the key of the mystery.

Et tua Lethæis || actă dă buntur ǎ quis.

The aim is to produce a break in the run of words, which, as said, no mere change of succession in the feet will bring about; an effect which, on the other hand, want of syllabic weight in our tongue will not allow us to reproduce by the same method.

The pentameter then is but a modified hexameter, the two members ending broken. Why both members are thus treated, instead of the first only, and then a regular close, or vice versa, may be for euphony, or symmetry, or what—a slight question apart from the other, that we may let rest. Such explanation as has been offered is not done so on full assurance, for on matters foreign one may be in error.

The English verse that answers to the pentameter is that elsewhere described as crown verse, with the fall cadence in the first member; but owing to its, to a great measure, preserving the same final run, and being of the same length as other crown verses, there is no need for the two forms to