syllabics, are (by a licence hardly allowable even in poetry) sounded pu-issant, pu-issance*, as in Somerville's Hobbinol, 3, 131– ......Though great the force Of this pu-issant arm, as all must own * In the original French, the Ul of Puissant and Puissance (as is well known to all who pronounce that language with propriety) is an inseparable diphthong, though very difficult of utterance to those who have not, in early youth, enjoyed good opportunities of acquiring the genuine French pronunciation. Witness the broad W in our Etwee, instead of the thin delicate French U in the original Etui-and the words Suite, Cuisse, and Cuirass, which even our pronouncing dictionaries pervert into Sweet, Quiss, and Queer-ass; by which pronunciation, the true sound of the French diphthong is destroyed. But, notwithstanding the difficulty of utterance, Milton has used the word as a dissyllable- Our puissance is our own our own right hand... (P. L. 5, 864. ...His puissance, trusting in th' Almighty's aid.... (6, 119. Shakespear also has employed it as a dissyllable, in his Henry V. Guarded by grandsires, babies, and old wōměn, Or past or not arrived at pith and püissănce— the latter being, not an Alexandrine of six feet, but a common five-foot Iambic with a redundant un-accented syllable at the end, like the verse immediately preceding it, and ten thousand others every-where occurring, more particularly in dramatic poetry. Spencer, too, (F. Q.1.) has the puis- in this word a single syllable To prove his puissance in battle brave— the final E, with its consonant, being sounded as a separate syllable; a practice very frequent with Spencer and our other But it were utterly wrong to shelter under this title the very improper division of the diphthong EU, in Orpheus, and many other Greek names of similar termination—a division, unsanctioned by our poets, and justly reprobated by classical scholars, for reasons which will be found in a note to No. 248 of the following Exercises. early bards, who, in that particular, imitated the example of the French poets, but with this difference, that, in French, even to the present day, the final un-accented E, though mute in prose, must necessarily be accounted syllable in verse, unless elided by a vowel immediately following: e. gr. Je chantě le héros qui regna sur la France, Et par droit de conquête et par droit de naissance whereas, in English poetry, it was optional with the writer either to leave it mute, or to make it sound in a separate syllable, as Spencer has here done-pronouncing it, I presume, nearly like puis-san-cy; for we can still catch a last dying echo of the antique pronunciation in the words Bravery, Slavery, Finery, Nicety, Roguery-to say nothing of Handiwork, Handicraft, and the vulgar Workyday, which were originally Hande-work, Hande-craft, Worke-day, i. e. in modern orthography, Handwork, Hand-craft, Work-day. From the licence of thus arbitrarily sounding or not sounding the final E, seems to have arisen that very convenient duplicity of termination (ANCE, ANCY -ENCE, ENCY) which our language has allowed to a pretty uumerous class of words adopted from the French, as Repugnance, Repugnancy, Indulgence, Indulgency; though, as most of those words were originally borrowed from the Latin, which terminates them in ANTIA and ENTIA, if any person choose to maintain that we took ANCY and ENCY from the Latin, ANCE and ENCE from the French, I am not disposed to quarrel with him on that account. Verses. Every species of English verse, of whatever denomination, regularly terminates with an accented syllable but every species, without exception, admits, at the end, an additional un-accented syllable, producing (if it be rhimed verse) a double rhime, that is to say, a rhime extending to two syllables, as Beauty Pursuing Resounded and this additional syllable does not at all affect the measure or rhythm of the preceding part of the verse, which remains precisely the same as if the supernumerary syllable were not added. But, in all such cases, it is indispensably necessary that the rhime should thus begin on the penultimate accented syllable, which receives so great a stress of pronunciation otherwise, there would, in fact, be no rhime at all, as Party, for example, could not be said to rhime with Beauty, nor Retreating with Pursuing, though the final syllables are, in both cases, the same. : A verse, of whatever kind, thus lengthened with a redundant syllable, is called hypērměter (which literally signifies over-measure, or exceeding the due measure). In our blank heroic verse, this addition to the metre frequently renders a very important and advantageous service, in producing a soft easy cadence at the close of a long period, where the hypermeter verse stands single: but, in our rhimed Iambic distichs, of whatever measure, the hypermeter (neces sarily coupled in pairs) is, little, adapted to solemn, grand, or lofty themes; it generally gives to the couplet a cast of levity and flippancy, better suited to light compositions on more familiar subjects*. In the Trochaïc verse, on the other hand, it produces a very happy and pleasing effect: in that light, sprightly, dancing metre, it is perfectly in character; the duplicate rhime-or, to speak more correctly, the supernumerary un-accented syllable, indepen-. dent of the rhime-improving its natural lightness and sprightliness. English verses may be divided into three classes, and, from the feet of which they principally consist, may be denominated Iambic, Trochaic, and Anapastic +. * Mrs Barbauld, however, has not unhappily employed double-rhimed Iambics in some of her Hymns. It might be thought improper to pass, wholly unnoticed, a fourth species-the Dactylic-of which Mr. Murray observes, that it is" very uncommon :" and indeed he has not quoted any admissible example of such metre; for, as to that which he adduces, thus marked with the appearance of three dactyls— From the low pleasures of this fällén näture— I cannot discover in it even one real dactyl.—If the fault be mine, I am sorry for it; but I have been taught (whether right or wrong, I leave to better scholars than myself to determine) that, in scanning verse, whether Greek, Latin, or English, we are not allowed arbitrarily to connect or disjoin syllables, with the view of producing whatever kind and number of feet we choose; much less to alter, at our pleasure, the accent or quantity of syllables for that purpose, as in From, Low, and Fall, in the exam B Iambic Verses. Pure Iambic verses contain no other foot than the Iambus, and are uniformly accented on the se ple above quoted; but that each foot must independently stand on its own ground, without any violation of accent or quantity; and that we must produce the due number of feet, whatever those feet may be otherwise there would be an end of all metre; and no reader could tell the difference between verse and prose. The observance of those rules, of which I never have heard the propriety disputed, compels me, however reluctant, to differ from Mr. Murray, and to scan the verse as follows From the low plea-l-sŭres of this fall-|-ĕn nâ-||-tŭre— making it a five-foot Iambic, with a redundant syllable at the end, as is common in every kind of English metre, without exception. And, with respect to the measure of the five feet (exclusive of the odd syllable), it is only such as may often be found in our five-foot Iambics, as in the following examples, which have the words From the rich, and Treasures of, in exactly the same positions, and to be of course accented and scanned in the same manner, as From the low and Pleasures of in the verse above From the | ich stōre | one fruitful urn supplies, Whole kingdoms smile, a thousand harvests rise. (Goldsmith. ...Extols the trea-\-sures of | his stormy seas, And his long nights of revelry and ease. (Goldsmith. On the subject of dactylics, let me observe, that, of fourteen different forms of dactylic metre, which I have described in my "Latin Prosody," twelve are utterly repugnant to the genius of our language, except indeed that some few of the twelve might perhaps, by means of that troublesome expedient, the double rhime, be rendered tolerable to an English ear.-Some attempts were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to intro |