tities of syllables, too freely to be exactly limited by rule. A certain balance of quantities, however, throughout the the verse, is required, so that deficiency be no where striking. Long syllables, therefore, must predominate.” I do not feel the force of this inference, and much less do I acknowledge it, as one of the essentials of our "heroic verse." Verses may be found in every poet that has written our language, which have neither a balance of quantities, nor a predominance of long syllables; and it asks but little stretch of imagination to suppose a case, in which the predominance of short quantities, so far from being a defect, might be a beauty.

One of our leading reviews has stated, that, “independent of accent, quantity neither is nor ought to be neglected in our versification." In this, if I understand it rightly, I agree. The time is, occasionally, of great importance to the beauty of a verse, but never an index of its rhythm. I suspect, however, that the reviewer looked upon quantity in a more important light. He gives us the following stave, in which the "long syllables" are arranged as they would be in a Latin sapphic, with an accentual rhythm, such as is often met with in our dramatic poets. The object is to show, that such "coincidence of temporal metre" gives a peculiar character to the verse, notwithstanding the familiar arrangement of the accents.

O liquid streamlēts to the main returning,
Mūrmuring waters that adōwn the mountains,
Rūsh unobstructed, never in the ocean,

Hope to be tranquil.

The following stave is then given with the same accentuation, and the same pauses, to show how " a difference of quantities will destroy the resemblance to Latin sapphic."

The headlōng tōrrent from īts nātīve caverns
Bursting resistless, with destructive füry

Roars through the valley, wasting with its deluge
Forests and hamlets.

I cannot help thinking, that the reviewer has deceived himself. I do not believe one man in a hundred would be sensible of the artful collocation of the long syllables in the first stave. True it is, that in both these staves, the verse has a peculiar character; but one, I think, quite independent of the quantity. The sameness of the rhythm. would alone be sufficient for this purpose. There is no doubt also a great difference in the flow of the two stanzas, but this too, I think, is in a very slight degree owing to the difference in their quantities. The first stave is made up of easy and flowing syllables, while the latter is clogged throughout with knots of the most rugged and unyielding consonants. The mere difficulty of pronunciation might account for that difference of flow, which the reviewer attributes solely to the difference of the quantities.

It is not, however, denied, that the effect may be partly owing to the change in the quantity. There is no doubt that such a change will sometimes force itself upon our notice in a very striking manner. In the staves that follow, the same rhythm has been employed as above, but any jostling of consonants has been studiously avoided;

The busy rivulet in humble valley
Slippeth away in happiness; it ever
Hurrieth on, a solitūde around, but
Heaven above it.

The lonely tarn that sleeps upon the mountain,
Breathing a hōly calm arōund, drinks ever
Of the great presence, ēven in īts slumber
Deeply rejoicing:

The striking difference in the flow of these two stanzas is almost entirely owing to the difference of their quantities.

Before we close this section, I would make an observation on a passage in the review last quoted, which, though it relate to a foreign language, has an indirect bearing on the question now before us. The law of French verse, as regards quantity, is stated to be-the thirteenth

syllable short, the sixth long. Now a French verse can never take a thirteenth syllable, unless it consist of the short vowel sound, which is usually indicated by the e final; and as this is the shortest syllable in the French language, the critic risked little, in laying down the first part of his canon. The latter part, I think, is not correct. A strong accent indeed falls on the sixth syllable, but every page of French poetry contains syllables so situated, which cannot, with any show of reason, be classed among the long syllables of the language.

This notice may be useful as showing that, as regards the French, no less than our own tongue, the rhythms that depend on accent are independent of quantity. I believe the same remark might be extended to every living language from India westward.

QUANTITY AS AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RHYTHM.

Our great poets certainly have not paid the same attention to the quantity of their syllables, as to the quality of their letter-sounds. Shakespeare, however, seems to have affected the short vowels, and particularly the short i, when he had to describe any quickness of motion.

Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw love,
And, therefore, has the wind-swift Cupid wings.

R. & J. 2. 5.

The nimble gunner

With linstock now the dev'lish cannon touches

H 5. 3,

Chorus.

Milton also sometimes aided his rhythm by a like atten

tion to his quantities,

And soon

In order, quit of all impediment,

Instant, without disturb they took alarm,

P. L. 6.

In the following verses long syllables predominate.

A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man.
Unweildy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.
The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea.

Lear, 3. 2.

R. & Jul.
Gray.

Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole,
Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay

Round a holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace, and lonely musing,

In hollow murmurs died

away.

Where Meander's amber waves

In ling'ring lab'rinths creep.

Lo! where Mootis sleeps, and hardly flows

The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows.

Collins.

Gray.

The last example is said to have been Pope's favourite couplet; but his reasons for the preference are by no means obvious. The voice, to be sure, lingers with the river; but why so many sibilants?

CHAPTER VI.

RHIME,

is the correspondence, which exists between syllables, containing sounds similarly modified.

When the same modification of sound recurs at definite intervals, the coincidence very readily strikes the ear; and when it is found in accented syllables, such syllables fix the attention more strongly, than if they merely received the accent. Hence we may perceive the importance of rhime in accentual verse. It is not, as is sometimes asserted, a mere ornament; it marks and defines the accent, and thereby strengthens and supports the rhythm. Its advantages have been felt so strongly, that no people have ever adopted an accentual rhythm, without also adopting rhime.

Every accented syllable contains a vowel; hence a rhiming syllable may be divided into three parts—the initial consonants, or those which precede the vowel, the vowel itself, and lastly the final consonants. Rhime may be divided into different kinds, accordingly as one or more of these elements correspond.

The first species is the perfect rhime, or that which requires a correspondence in all the three. It is called by the French the rich rhime, and by that people is not only tolerated but sought after. With us it has been very generally discountenanced.

The second kind is alliteration, or that in which only the initial sounds correspond. It pervades all our earlier poetry, and long held control over our English rhythms. We do not, however, stop here to discuss its properties;