that he has made, and thus to lay a foundation for correct and elegant reading; being taught, of course, in repeating his lines, to give no emphasis to un-accented syllables, but to lay the chief stress of utterance on those which are accented—and carefully to observe the cæsura, with its attendant pause*. 3. Let him have distichs, in which the words of the two lines are blended together. 4. When his ear is well attuned to metre-when he thoroughly understands all the admissible variations of the feet, and has sufficiently accustomed and reconciled his ideas to those frequent deviations from the natural order of syntax, produced by the poetic inversions of style-let him undertake single lines, and afterwards blended distichs, in which, besides the derangement of the words, the teacher has suppressed one or more epithets †, to be supplied by the pupil; as, for example, the following distich Hear, how the birds, on ev'ry bloomy spray, With joyous music wake the dawning daymay thus be given for an exercise Hear, how, on ev'ry spray, the birds care being taken to point out the particular words which require epithets. 5. At a more advanced stage of the pupil's progress, besides the derange * See page 56. † See the note in page 177. ment of words, and the suppression of epithets, let an occasional word or phrase be altered; and, in lieu of the new word or phrase introduced, let the pupil be directed to substitute a word or phrase of his own, either synonymous, or in some degree equivalent, as -to exemplify again in the same distich Hear, how, on every bush, the birds Some of my readers may perhaps be surprised that I have not made nonsense verses a preliminary part of my plan. Of that expedient, or of another practice which usually follows it in our British system of education - I mean the practice of writing themes --it would ill become me to speak with disrespect, since both have long enjoyed the sanction of so many teachers in this country. I hope, nevertheless, that I may, without offence to any person, be allowed to state a simple, but important fact, which is well entitled to serious consideration. In some highly and justly celebrated schools on the continent, where the delicate and difficult art of education has been carefully studied and systematically cultivated, both the nonsense verses and the themes (though calculated to save trouble to the preceptor) have long since been exploded, as less useful, less efficacious, than other methods, which at once prove more simple, easy, and pleasant to the learner, and are found perfectly to answer the desired purpose in each respective case. With all due deference, therefore, to the advocates of nonsense verses and theme-writing, I must take the liberty of saying, that, when I consider the simplicity, the utility, and the success of the continental methods, I cannot with-hold from them my approbation, though I am far from presuming to censure the practice of those teachers who differ from me in opinion, and who still continue to follow the old modes. But, to return to my subject The mode, above proposed, is perfectly easy and simple: it is the mode in which I myself was taught Latin versification in my youth, and have since taught it to others. From my experience of the pleasantness and efficacy of the method in Latin, I thought I could not do better than adopt the same in English; and, accordingly, such is the plan that I have pursued both in private practice, and in the versificatory Exercises which here follow the Prosody* Easy as the first of those Exercises are, I have studied to render the task still more easy, by premising near thirty pages of Scanning Exercises, that the learner's ear may be formed to the metre, and he may understand the poetic licences in the different variations of feet, before he attempt to make a single verse. In the Exercises, 'in consequence of my necessary transposition of the original words, the reader will find occasional instances of harsh or ambiguous phraseology-sometimes perhaps an aukward anti And on a plan as nearly similar as the difference of the two languages will allow, I am preparing for the press "Exercises in Latin Versification." climax, or other violation of the rules of elegant writing but it is to be remembered that these Exercises are not given as models of style: they are only the rude materials, from which, by a new and better arrangement, the young student is to produce more polished and harmonious lines; and those defects were absolutely un-avoidable, unless I had fastidiously determined to reject every verse, however elegant in its poetic form, which should not appear equally elegant when deranged into prose. To have indulged in that over-nice delicacy of selection, although it would have multiplied my labor ten or twenty fold, could not have benefited the student, who, when once apprised of the nature and design of those transpositions, incurs no greater danger of having his taste corrupted by them, than the young grammarian incurs from the exercises in bad English, which are every-where put into his hands to be corrected. With respect to the pupil's performance in the latter stages of his progress, where he has to furnish epithets, to alter terms, and supply poetic periphrases, it cannot be expected that he shall always give the same words which appear in the original lines. Every object is capable of being viewed in various points of light; and, according to the light in which he views it, he will characterise it by an epithet, or describe it by a term or phrase, which, though it happen to differ from that in the " KEY," may be equally good and commendable; or, if gifted with a poetic genius, he may, in some cases, surpass the original. And here the teacher will have an opportunity of exercising his own judgement, guiding that of the pupil, developing, appreciating, and improving his talents, and forming his youthful taste on principles of sound criticism. In my selection of examples for exercise, I have labored under a very aukward and unpleasant difficulty, more particularly in the first half of the book, where the words are barely displaced from their metrical arrangement in the verse. I have frequently been compelled to omit the very best lines of a passage, because I could not satisfactorily transpose the language from the order in which I found it; and it would have been useless to the end which I had in view, to present the pupil with ready-made verses, which he could only transcribe. And, although, in some few instances, I have, for the sake of preserving the continuity of a piece, admitted a ready-made distich, it is what I do not myself approve, and would, as far as possible, wish to avoid; the object of this publication being, not to produce a selection of the best poetry, but a selection of poetry best calculated to instruct and exercise the learner in versification. Respecting the sources from which I have derived those examples, I am sorry that I cannot, by affixing to each piece the writer's name, gratify that very natural wish, felt by every reader, to know the author of what he reads. A compliance with that |