308 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE 



poetry constructed as part of the musical art was to a certain extent put out 

 of Nature the moment it was translated into the region of spoken verse. In 

 this case a collision between the musical beat and the accented syllables was 

 unavoidable, and some sort of compromise would naturally be the result. This 

 compromise, however, would on the whole be decidedly to the advantage of the 

 musical rhythm, as opposed to the colloquial accent. For metre, as we have 

 seen, was metre only in virtue of the regularly recurrent musical beat ; and to 

 abolish this was to destroy metre, and to turn verse into prose, as, in fact, we 

 often hear English schoolboys do, when reading Horace, and as the modern 

 Greeks do when they read Homer accentually. But that the ancients could 

 not have done this is manifest both from the prominence of music in their 

 national culture and from the effect of the rhythmical stroke in lengthening the 

 shortest vowels, even in the verse of Virgil, which certainly was not sung. 

 The poet who wrote 



Liminaque' laurusque Dei, 



must have had his ear tuned to the march of a verse which gave that marked 

 preponderance to the first syllable of a foot, which is musically given to the first 

 note of a bar, and which allowed the license of lengthening a short vowel in such 

 a position after the example of Homer, specially before a word beginning with 

 a liquid. Meetkerche and Voss were therefore right in reading classical verse 

 mainly by this rhythmical beat, and practically disregarding the spoken accent. 

 It does not follow, however, that though the rhythmical accent remained 

 dominant even in spoken verse, it therefore exercised an exclusive sway. In 

 many cases, of course, there would be no clash, and this, indeed, regularly 

 happened in the two last feet of a Latin hexameter. But in other cases, where 

 a clash did occur, the occasional bringing forward of the spoken accent might 

 serve to break the monotony of a merely musical rhythm, and cause it to 

 approach nearer to the march of dignified prose eloquence. Thus, the first line 

 of Virgil may either be accented 



Arma viumque cano' Trojce' qui primus ah oris, 

 or 



Arma viumque cdn'o Tro'jde qui primus ah oris ; 



and in both cases the true quantities are preserved ; but in the second method 

 the spoken accent is allowed to control two words to the prejudice of the 

 musical beat, by whose regular recurrence the hexameter verse was originally 

 framed. In this way it was quite easy to recite Latin hexameters or Greek 

 iambics in such a manner that, while the rhythmical beat mainly ruled, and no 

 short syllable was ever heard where the music had a long note, the spoken 

 accent to which the ear had been habituated in conversation did neverthe- 

 less generally shine through, and in special cases assert itself with that natural 



