394 Mr munro, on a metrical 



Jlammas, But he felt with his unerring tact that the inordinate employment of this cadence 

 necessarily occasioned monotony ; and he gained ease and variety with the sacrifice perhaps of 

 some grandeur. In a speech of Jupiter to Mercury in the fourth Aeneid there are many con- 

 secutive lines twice repeated with this movement ; but the result is to my ear unsatisfactory, 

 stiff not stately. 



I will now refer to a studied pursuit of such a rhythmical movement as produced a 

 general contradiction between accent and ictus, a stronger proof perhaps of the increasing 

 power of the former, than a studied agreement. Horace, wishing in his satires to produce 

 verses Sermoni propiora, nearer to the style of ordinary conversation among the polite 

 and educated, and hating the ' profanum vulgus', must have clearly felt, as Seneca did, 

 that the rhythm which produced that almost unvarying coincidence between ictus and accent 

 now prevailing in the last two places of the hexameter, occasioned, where the verse was not 

 very elevated, a vulgar monotony pleasing to the common ear, like the chants of Caesar's 

 soldiers. While therefore in the first four feet he allows his rhythm to proceed much in 

 the same way as that of other poets, he has in the last two places, one or both, made accent 

 and ictus to disagree in a proportion extraordinarily great, if he be compared with his con- 

 temporaries or successors, even those in his own line, Persius and Juvenal. The first two 

 satires will give I believe more than forty illustrations of what I mean ; and the result 

 thereby produced is certainly very striking and, as he meant it to be, unpoetical. 



If time allowed, I might illustrate my views of the increasing influence of the accent 

 by various peculiarities in his odes also. I will mention but one which I have carefully 

 noted. In his earlier alcaic odes be not unfrequently has an iambus for the first foot in any 

 of the first three lines of the stanza. The first book contains, if I have counted right, thirteen 

 instances of an iambus so placed. Of these thirteen instances, six have the cadence vfdea 

 ut alta, friii paratus, where the accent is on the short syllable of vides, frui, etc. In the 

 second book out of eight cases only one c6hors gigantum has this cadence. In the third, 

 out of seven instances not one has that cadence. In the fourth, in which he generally 

 observes more stringent rules, there is no instance of an iambus whatever. This can hardly be 

 accidental. As Horace disliked generally the short syllable at the beginning, the accent 

 must have brought it out in stronger relief, and have induced him to avoid the conflict 

 between it and the short syllable. In his sapphics the poet, in striking contrast to his 

 mistrefs Sappho, never has a trochee for the second foot. Catullus however in his two short 

 sapphic odes, which seem to some extent to have been followed by Horace as his model, 

 has three instances of a trochee in that place. In all the short syllable is unaccentuated 

 Seu Sacas sagittiferosque Parthos, Pauea nuntiate meae puellae, Otium, Catulle, tibi 

 molestutn est; and yet in the sapphics of Catullus as of Horace the fourth syllable of the 

 verse is commonly accentuated. Of course to Sappho a short syllable in this place was just 

 as acceptable as a long, under any conditions whatever. But the magnificent freedom with 

 which she wielded this noble measure, was quite unattainable by Horace, or even by Catullus. 

 Similarly the first and fifth syllables of the first three lines of the alcaic stanza of Alcaeus 

 were indifferently short or long. 



I have thus endeavoured to shew that already in the Augustan age accent exercised a certain 



