406 APPENDIX. 



contains two shocking false quantities,' conveys to my mind no intelligible idea. To me 

 rapidly is an accentual dactyl, cometh and Jalleth alike accentual trochees; and nothing more; 

 although I am of course aware that two or more consonants take longer time in enunciating 

 than one. The argument of quantity is a mere paralogism arising from our misreading 

 Virgil. ' Contemplate,' says Rogers, ' is bad enough ; but balcony makes me sick.' Let us 

 adopt Rogers' pronunciation and construct an Anglo- Virgilian verse : 



Comfortably the world from a high balcony contemplate, 



Read now balcony and contemplate, and we get assuredly ' two shocking false quantities.' 



Of course I feel puzzled when I find so accomplished a critic holding such contrary 

 opinions. He utterly repudiates accentual hexameters. Then after constructing several 

 verses in what he calls Virgilian measure, he adds that to him the effect of such metre 

 is not bad. And indeed if he goes back to the sixteenth century, he may find many 

 zealous allies both in England and in France, Even so great a master of harmonious verse 

 as Spenser was at one time enamoured of them. In a letter to his friend Gabriel Harvey 

 he informs him that Mr Sidney and Mr Dyer ' have proclaimed in their dpeiio Trdyo) a 

 general surceasing and silence of bald rhymers... By authority of their whole senate they 

 have prescribed certain rules and laws of quantities of English syllables for English verse, 

 having had thereof already great practice and almost drawn me into their faction.' In 

 another letter he goes farther. He likes Harvey's hexameters so well that he also ' enures 

 his penne sometime in that kinde.' Thus for instance : 



See ye the blindefoulded pretie god, that feathered archer ? 

 Wote ye why his mother with a veale hath covered his face ? 



' Do we not all recognise at once the movement of our new friend ? ' 



Verses so modulate, so tuned, so varied in accent. 

 Rich with unexpected changes, etc. 



But there were difficulties in the way; 'the chiefest hardness is in the accent. ..as in 

 carpenter the middle syllable being used short in speech, when it should be read long in 

 verse, seemeth like a lame gosling '...Yet 'why, a God's name, may not we, as tlie Greeks, 

 have the kingdom of our own language and measure our accents by the sound, referring 

 the quantity to the verse. I would heartily wish you would either send me the rules or 

 principles of art which you observe in quantities, or else follow those which Mr Sidney 

 gave me, being the very same which Mr Drant devised, but enlarged with Mr Sidney's own 

 judgement and augmented with my observations, that we might both agree and accord in 

 one, lest we overthrow one another and be overthrown of the rest.' 



Think of the author of the Faerie Queene talking in this style ! Imagine Demodocus 

 writing to his friend Phemius in Ithaca, and telling him to send the rules which he observed 

 in quantity, or else to accept those which Orpheus invented, Musaeus enlarged and he 

 himself further improved ; that they might not overthrow one another, and be discovered 

 to be ' impostrous pretenders to knowledge' of quantity by those long-eared Achaians who 

 had up to this time listened with rapture to their songs; but who might at length find out 



