408 " APPENDIX. 



and sine and per atonic. If J. S. replies that his ear only acknowledges viden and dbhinc; 

 let him for once give thesa words the accent which he gives to the while and awhile. 



Or let us apply his reasoning to cognate cases. What I would ask are the usual 

 English metres but accentual adaptations of quantitative Latin measures, iambic, trochaic 

 and the like? What is the English ten-syllable line of Shakespeare and Milton? Has 

 not accent here replaced the Latin metrical beat, and is not caesura, essential to Seneca's 

 verse, altogether unnecessary ? or if it be said you cannot fairly compare a verse of five 

 feet with one of six, let us take the present French Alexandrine. This may not be an 

 attractive measure to an English ear. But we cannot deny that it has been brought to 

 its present perfection by the labour and genius of centuries ; and that it gives entire 

 satisfaction to a nation exquisitely alive to beauty and precision of form. Now in it there 

 miist be no caesura ; the sixth syllable cannot be the middle, must be the end of a word. 

 Suppose I quote the opening lines of the ffidipus Tyrannus, 



CO TCKva, Ka'Sjiou rov iraXai vea Tpcxpti, 

 TiVa? irod' eZpai TOffSe fioi doa^ere 

 iKTt]pioK K\c^oi(Tiv e^ea-T€pfievot, 



and reading them with the Anglo-Latin accent exclaim : ' Can anybody produce nie a 

 French Alexandrine resembling in the succession of sounds any one of these three lines ? 

 I think not. But if I shift the accents a little and write, 



u> rov iraKai KaSjuov via Tpo<j)t], TeKva, 



. iKTifpioti TOVToii nXdZof! iovcppevoi, 

 do we not recognise at once the movement of our old friend, with whom we are all so 

 painfully familiar ? 



Je chante ce heros qui regna sur la France, etc' 



I neither defend nor attack the English or German hexameter. No lengthened com- 

 position in either language, not even ' Hermann und Dorothea,' gives me full satisfaction. 

 The monotony is too killing. But then what a dull heavy lumbering verse our English 

 ten-syllable line was in the first half of the l6th century ! What a glorious measure it 

 soon became in the hands of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden ! Yet the five 

 accents form the basis of all their infinite diversity of movement. With this analogy 

 before my mind I can conceive it, though I do not know it, to be possible that in the 

 hands of genius the English hexameter might be rendered even more majestic and sonorous 

 than the iambic ; might come in time to have somewhat of the same relation to it that the 

 hexameter of Homer has to the senarius of Sophocles. However that may be, I feel 

 convinced that six accentuated syllables must take the place of the six rhythmical beats, 

 though the skilful and varied arrangement of some of these may give scope to great di- 

 versity of movement, just as the accent of our iambic is shifted about in certain places 

 with such success by Shakespeare or Milton. Quantity must be utterly discarded; and 

 longer or shorter unaccentuated syllables can have no meaning, except so far as they may 

 be made to produce sweeter or harsher sounds in the hands of the master. 



Tbiitiit Collbqk. July, 1861. 



