122- 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2»*-S. VI. 137.,Auo. 14. '58. 



ment a metrical development may occasionally be 

 traced; as in the first chapter of the Epistle of S. 

 James, where tv/o hexameter lines occur in the 

 1 7 th verse : — 



aud 



' Ilaa'a Boffis ayaOr) koX nav 5wpij/Aa Te'Aeioi'/* 



" OuK en TrapaWayri, tj rpoTr^s arocKiacr/xa." 



The first of these is so elegant, that it has been 

 conjectured by several critics to l)e a quotation ; 

 and the technical phraseology of the latter verse 

 might perliaps warrant the supposition that both 

 lines are a fragment of some lost astronomical 

 poem. 



" Our own language and the French," adds 

 Dryden's preface, " can at best but fall into blank 

 verse." It is quite true that it is blank verse into 

 which our own prose style seems most prone to 

 run, but it is by no means the only form of in- 

 voluntary metre to which it is subject. Mr. 

 Crowe, the iate Public-orator at Oxford, says very 

 truly that an anapasstic cadence is prevalent 

 through the whole Book of Psalms in our beau- 

 tiful Prayer Book version. And he gives the fol- 

 lowing examples, taken from the first psalm 

 alone : — 



"That will bring forth his fruit in due season." — V. 3. 



" And, look, whatsoever he doth it shall prosper." — V. 4. 



"Away from the face of the earth." — V. 5. 



"Be able to stand in the judgment." — V. fi. 



"And the vf:\y of the ungodly shall perish." — V. 7. 



The very next psalm (in the Bible version) afibrds 

 an example of the hexameter cadence, pointed 

 out long ago by Harris in his Philological In- 

 quiries : — 



" Whv do (he heathen rage, and the peojile imagine a 

 vain thing?"— V. 1. ' T 



And again : — 



" Kings of the earth stand up, and rulers take counsel 

 together." — V. 2. 



couplets also occur in the 



The following 

 Psalms : — 



" Great peace lave they that love thy law, 

 And nothing shall offend them." 



" Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace 

 Whose mind is staved on thee." 



" let thine cars consider well 

 The voice of my complaint." 



The following line is in the 1st Book of 

 Samuel : — 



"Surely the bitterness of death is past." 



Sometimes the Nesv Testament version also runs 

 into metrical forms : e. g , — 



" When his branch is yet tender and putteth forth 

 leaves, 

 Ye know that the summer is nigh." 



" Husbands love your wives, and be not bitter against 

 them," 



Great poets have " lisped in numbers," and Ovid 

 says of his own boyhbod, — 



" Sponte sua carmen numcros veniebat ad aptos, 

 Et quod conabar scribere, versus erat." 



Old Fuller, in his Good Thoughts, tells us, in his 

 own quaint way, that " there went a tradition of 

 Ovid, that when his father was about to beat him 

 for following the pleasant, but profitless study of 

 poeti-y, he, under correction, promised his father 

 never more to make a verse, and made a verse in 

 his very promise : — 



' Parce, precor, genitor, posthac non versificabo.' 

 ' Father on me pity take, 

 Verses I no more will make.' " 



Even in ordinary conversation there is a ten- 

 dency (o run into the cadence with which the 

 speaker is most familiar, and it is recorded of 

 John Kemble, as well as of his accomplished sis- 

 ter, Mrs. Siddons, that their table-talk often flowed 

 into blank verse. Sir Walter Scott used to repeat 

 an amusing anecdote of the latter, who, when 

 dining with him one day, unconsciously frightened 

 a footboy half out of his wits, by exclaiming, with 

 the look and tone of Lady Macbeth, — 



" You've brought me water, boy, — I asked for beer." 

 The following scrap of metre occurs, strangely 

 enough, in a scientific treatise by the learned 

 Master of Trinity, Dr. Whewell ; but I am at this 

 moment unable to lay my hand on the more precise 

 reference : — 



" There is no force, however great, 



Will draw a line, however fine. 

 Into a horizontal line 

 That shall be accurately straight." 



But perhaps the oddest instance of involuntary 

 versification is one mentioned by Twining in a 

 note to his translation of Aristotle's Poetics, and 

 found where nobody would expect to find such a 

 thing, in Dr. Smith's System of Optics. The 47th 

 section, ch. ii. book i., begins thus : 



" When parallel rays 

 Come contrary ways, 



And fall upon opposite sides : " 



" What," adds Twining, " would Quintilian have said 

 to half an anapajstic stanza, in rhyme, produced in a ma- 

 thematical book, the author of which was supposed to 

 have possessed an uncommon delicacy of ear? " 



The possession of such a faculty is, however, no 

 security ; for the finer ear of Addison, who would 

 stop the press to add a conjunction, or to erase a 

 comma, allowed tlie following inelegant iinslinLj 

 sentence to pass without detection : 



" What I am going to mention, will perhaps deserve your 

 altenthn." 



Dr. Smith's ludicrous deviation into verse re- 

 calls to mind an equally absurd stanza introduced 

 by the poet Cowper into one of his playful letters ; 

 although it can scarcely fall under the category 

 of involuntary metre, inasmuch as it was the pro- 



