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MUSAS NONNULLI SACRO VENERANTUR AMORE;
PLURES INDOCTI DILACERARE SOLENT.

Incerti auctoris.

London:

PRINTED FOR J. WALTER, CHARING-CROSS,
By LUKE HANGARD,

No. 6, Great Turnstile, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields,

1799.

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A1

THE

PREFACE.

N eafy and familiar treatise on the Nature of the English verfe, with practical directions for reading poetry, has been long wanted for the ufe of fchools, and thofe, who have formed no regular ideas on the fubject.

Some learned writers

would perfuade us,

that our verses are composed of iambics, trochees, fpondees, pyrrhics, dactyls, &c. or a mechanical arrangement of long and fhort fyllables. This notion has involved the subject in darkness and perplexity. In the following Effay, the author has rejected all thofe fcholaftic terms, which have been used in Greek and Latin profody, and confidered the English verfification as founded, not on Greek and Roman feet; but on a certain or

* Fofter on Accent and Quantity, ch. iii. &c.

der

der and fucceffion of accented and unaccented

yllables. This order depends on the nature of the poem; and wherever it is violated, he does not attempt to vindicate fuch an irregularity by claffical authority, or the principles of a foreign language, with which it has no concern; but, though he allows, that fuch a violation of an established rule may fometimes be admitted, with a defign to make the found an echo to the sense, he prefumes, that it is more frequently owing to the negligence of the poet, and fometimes to his want of tafte for the harmony of numbers.

A small lift of poetical names of gods, goddeffes, heroes, cities, &c. is fubjoined, in order to give young students some idea of the accuracy and uniformity, with which the Greek and Latin poets have afcertained the quantity of their fyllables; and to enable them to avoid those grofs

It is very remarkable that the ancient Greek and Roman poets fhould agree in fixing the quantity of almost every fyllable, in their refpective languages, .even in cafes where no modern

reader

grofs and vulgar errors in pronunciation, which betray the ignorance of the fpeaker.

It is to be lamented, that many of our English poets have run into needlefs deviations from the legitimate pronunciation of ancient names, merely because the accentuation they chofe to adopt, was more eafily accommodated to the measure of their verfe.

We smile at the foppery of the French for ufing fuch finical appellations, as Herodote, Ariftote, Polybe, Denys d'Halicarnaffe, Etienne

de

reader can poffibly afcertain the length of a fyllable by any reafons, à priori. The Greeks paid the moft fcrupulous attention to their numbers. And Cicero informs us, that if a Roman actor made the fmallest mistake in the measure of a verfe, or the quantity of a fyllable, he was hiffed off the stage, Hiftrio, fi panlum fe movit extra numerum, aut fi verfus pronuntiatus eft fyllablâ unâ brevior aut longior, exfibilatur, et exploditur, Cic. Parad. iii. To an Englishman, who pretends to claffical learning, it is a difgrace to violate the rules of profody, and to have less taste and discernment, than the common auditors of a Roman theatre.

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