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Thomson in the Castle of Indolence, and Byron in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage are chief among the more modern writers of the Spenserian stanza.

3. The Iambic Tetrameter (four feet,) in couplets was Scott's favourite metre :

Woe wo'rth the cha'se! | woe wo'rth | the da'y!

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That cost thy life, my gallant grey !-SCOTT.

This measure is often used in alternate rhymes :-
A moment, while the trumpets blow,
He sees his brood about thy knee;
The next, like fire, he meets the foe,

And strikes him dead for thine and thee.

TENNYSON.

Or thus (a couplet between two rhyming lines) :-
I hold it true whate'er befal;

I feel it when I sorrow most.
'Tis better to have loved and lost,

Than never to have loved at all.

TENNYSON.

4. Common Metre consists of Iambic Tetrameters and Iambic Trimeters, arranged in alternate rhymes :

Let old | Timo' | theus yield | the prize, |

Or bo'th divi'de | the cro'wn: |

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He raised a mortal to the skies;

She drew an angel down.-DRYDEN.

This metre, which is also called Service Metre, owing to its use in the English metrical version of the Psalms, is often written thus, in two long lines :—

Night sunk upon the dusky beach, and on the purple sea; Such night in England ne'er had been, nor e'er again shall MACAULAY.

be.

5. The use of the Anapaest, instead of the Iambus, produces a beautiful undulating music, much used in Lyric poetry.

For the moon | never be'ams, | without brin'g | ing me dre'ams,

Of the beautiful An'n | abel Le'e: |

And the stars | never ri'se, | but I feel the bright ey'es,

Of the beautiful Ann | abel Lee. | —POE.

6. The Dactylic Hexameter, the Heroic Measure of Greek and Latin, does not suit the genius of the English language. Longfellow's Evangeline affords perhaps the most favourable example of its use in English :

This is the forest primeval. pines and the hemlocks,

The murmuring

Bearded with moss and with | garments | green, indis | tinct in the twilight,

Stand, like Druids of | eld, with ] voices | sad and prophetic.

SKETCH

OF THE

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

SKETCH

OF THE

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Descent of English.
Celtic Element.

Early Latin Influences.
Teutonic Invasions.
The Five Stages.
Anglo-Saxon.

Scandinavian Element.
Semi-Saxon.

Ascendency of Norman-
French.

Revival of English.

Middle English. Cradle of
Literary English.

Modern English.

Various Influences.

1. English belongs to a great family of languages, called INDO-EUROPEAN, because nations speaking them are found from the Ganges to the Tagus and the Thames.

The Teutonic group of the Indo-European tongues is subdivided into High-German and Low-German. The HighGerman, spoken on the southern uplands of Germany, gave birth to the language of Goethe and Schiller. Upon the flat heaths between the Eyder and the Rhine arose the AngloSaxon and the Dutch, which are kindred forms of the LowGerman tongue.

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