23 
na-vuolich,’’ or purely quantitative, like Mr. Robert 
Bridges’, or partly accentual partly quantitative like 
Kingsley’s. And this last kind seems to me the best. 
When we say that Greek poetry was ruled by quantity 
whereas English is by accent, we are but roughly right. 
We know so little of the really ancient Greek pronunciation 
that we cannot speak confidently of the manner in which 
the accent of their words interplayed with the quantitative 
rythm of their verse. But we may be sure there was such 
interplay ; there is much pathos in a certain passage in 
Aeschylus where the speaker’s weary sorrow is expressed in 
a series of unaccented syllables and rises suddenly to 
indignation with the accent at the end. When the 
Romans took over the Greek metres we can appreciate this 
interplay thoroughly, for the Latin accent is nearly the 
same as our own, and the rules with which they stiffened 
their borrowed metres are almost entirely due to the need 
of adapting them to their own pronunciation. Hence at 
last the hexameter of Vergil, whom Tennyson calls the 
““ wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the 
lips of man.’’ As the Romans did, so does Kingsley. He 
takes the hexameter from Greece and Rome and adapts it 
once more to the requirements of a new language. That 
language is one which insists on accent having the first 
place, and Kingsley frankly gives it the first place. But in 
all smooth-running English poetry quantity does count also. 
Look at Milton and Tennyson and you will see how largely 
it counts. So in his hexameters Kingsley makes accent 
coincide. with quantity as often as he conveniently can. His 
letters shew how carefully he had thought about this ; he 
had made a system of English quantity for himself almost 
as thorough as Mr. Bridges has made. Almost ; not quite. 
Kingsley’s masters were the Greeks not the Romans. The 
characteristic of the Greek hexameter is its freedom. That 
freedom was what Kingsley allowed to develope on the 
larger lines which English speech indicated. He binds 
himself by no hard and fast rules of quantity which may 
not be broken when some other natural rule requires it. 
His verse moves in sweeps of rythm and sometimes 
overflows the traditional barriers of ‘‘ feet.’’ He allows 
““ compensation ;’’ one ‘‘ foot ’’? may go quicker than it is 
supposed to go if another makes up for this by going more 
slowly. And he is apt to let the metre change from true 
hexamicter to anapaests, that is to say, instead of the ‘‘long’’ 
syllable leading the way, the two short syllables get the 
lead. Thus this line in ‘‘ Andromeda ’’ should be scanned 
according to classical models thus— 
Now lét thé | work_of thé | smith try | stréngth with 
thé | arms of Im |! mortals 
