to mark the quantity of any syllables in the Anapæstic verses, except the final syllable of each foot, which, at all events, must necessarily be accented. There is a variation, or violation, of this metre, which here requires notice, as it not unfrequently It consists in the omission of one syllable from the third foot, which thus becomes a spondee or an iambus; e. gr. occurs. In fil-l-lets of brass, | rōll'dūp | to his ears. (Swift. And observe, while you live, that no man is shy To discover the goods he came honestly by. (Swift. But such lines, by whomsoever written, cannot be considered in any better light than that of lame, aukward, imperfect verses, which, though they may sometimes be tolerated for the sake of the matter, can certainly not be praised, and ought never to be imitated. The same remark is, in general, applicable to a similar licence sometimes occurring in the fourth foot, when a spondee is substituted for the anapæst. On particular occasions, however, this latter species of spondaïc Anapæstic may (like the Greek and Latin Scazon, or limping Iambic) prove a perfectly eligible metre. In skilful hands, it may sometimes be successfully applied to the purposes either of ridicule or of pathos. Some striking word or words, forming a grave spondee at the close, thus become the more impressive, where the reader, after having lightly skimmed over the preceding anapæsts, finds his speed un expectedly checked by that heavy foot, as when a racer, in his rapid course, is suddenly startled and stopped by some unforeseen impediment. -In the following line of Mr. Campbell, who concludes several stanzas with the same two words, the final spondee will probably please many reade"And, where-e--ver I went, was my poor dog Tray. Hypermeter, with double rhime— But thanks to my friends for their care in my breed-\-ing, Who taught me betimes | to love work--ing and read-j-ing. (Watts. Anapastic of three feet. But the sweet-j-ěst of mō-|-měnts will fly. She shi--ver'd with cold, as she went. (Anon. (Southey. This metre (as observed in page 32) is very pleasingly combined in stanzas with the anapæstic of four feet, as Ye powr's, who make Beau- ty and Vir--tue your Let no sor--row my Phyl--lis molest! [care! Let no blast of misfor--tune intrude on the fair, To ruf--fle the calm | of her breast. (Anon. Used by itself in stanzas with alternate rhime, it is ineffably sweet, and is perhaps the happiest metre in our language, for soft tender themes, as Ye shepherds, so cheerful and gay, Whose flocks never carelessly roam! Should Corydon's happen to stray, Ah! lead the poor wanderers home. (Shenstone. Hypermeter, with double rhime So foul and so fierce | are their nā-|-tures. (Watts. Anapastic of two feet. The bent of the mind, From its plea--sŭres, wě find. As I cannot say much in praise of this metre, I briefly dismiss it, in company with its fellow Hypermeter, double-rhimed If sor--rows corrōde || us, ǎs you write în despite of the Muse, Anapastic of one foot. ǎnd refuse To ǎmend What you've penn'd....(Anon. This trifling metre cannot be used to advantage in continuation, but may sometimes be usefully employed in giving variety to the stanzas of irregular odes, or other compositions. Hypermeter, with double rhime— It is plea-\-sure Without mea--sure. (Anon. Mixture of Feet in the Iambic Metre. I shall here exclusively confine my view to the heroic line of ten syllables: but the same remarks, which I make on it, will equally apply to the other forms of Iambic metre-with only this difference, that, according as they are longer or shorter, they allow more or less scope for poetic licence. D As already observed in page 14, pure Iambic verses properly contain no other foot than the Iambus, as Her beau-l-ty nought impair'd by length | of years, exceed-\-ing fair * | her an-l-gel fōrm appears. 单 Exceeding fair-Some modern writers appear to have conceived an irreconcilable antipathy to the word "Exceeding," thus used in conjunction with an adjective, and have, on every occasion, substituted " Exceedingly" in its stead. Nevertheless, if I rightly understand the import of the former, as used by very respectable authors, (and, among others, our translators of the Bible, who have furnished us with near sixty examples of " Exceeding," in conjunction with adjectives) it is not only a legitimate, but a fine, significant, emphatic expression. When, for example, it is said of a woman, that she is exceeding fair, passing fair, or surpassing fair (which are all synonymous phrases), if we but rightly parse the sentences, we shall readily come at the true meaning, which is, that she is fair, not merely in the positive and ordinary degree, but superlatively fair, * exceeding," " passing," or" surpassing," what is usually deemed "fair;" the participle being in the nominative case agreeing with" she," and "fair" in the accusative [or objective] case, governed by the participle:or, both the adjective and the participle may be considered as nominatives; i. e. "She is fair, surpassing all others in that respeet."-Thus, when Goldsmith, in his "Deserted Village," describes the curate, as ......passing rich with forty pounds a year— the meaning is obviously this, that the good man, according to his own ideas, surpassed in riches all the rich-fancied himself as rich as Croesus. See the note on "Ever so" and "Never so," in page 64, But, however sweet and pleasing this construction may appear in a few verses-however superior it may be (or be thought) to any other-certain it is, that, if continued with unvarying uniformity, it would soon cloy the taste by its unmixed, uncontrasted sweetness-would finally prove nauseous and disgusting, and would grievously disappoint that love of variety, which the Almighty has, for a wise and beneficent purpose, made a characteristic of the human race. In the present, as in many other cases, our taste happily accords with the condition in which Nature has placed us: we dislike uniform sameness; and lucky it is that we do, since uniform sameness is here un-attainable: for no poet, however great his talents and his patience, could possibly produce a good poem of any considerable length, entirely consisting of pure Iambics. To obtain an accent on every second syllable, he must be obliged entirely to exclude from his pages a very great number of fine expressive words-to lengthen, curtail, new-mould, and transform many others frequent violations of syntax, with as frequent perversions of style and sense: and, after having tired himself with this laborious trifling, he would tire his reader with the monotonous drone of his stiff uniform to commit * After the example of Homer and other ancients, who blended various dialects in their verse, and used poetic licences of every kind, in a manner which never could be endured in our language, though custom has reconciled us to it in the Greek. |