eters really please very few moderns-although so many pretend to fall into ecstasies about them. In the hexameters quoted, several pages ago, from Silius Italicus, the preponderance of the spondee is strikingly manifest. Besides the natural spondees of the Greek and Latin, numerous artificial ones arise in the verse of these tongues on account of the tendency which inflection has to throw full accentuation on terminal syllables; and the preponderance of the spondee is farther ensured by the comparative infrequency of the small prepositions which we have to serve us instead of case, and also the absence of the diminutive auxiliary verbs with which we have to eke out the expression of our primary ones. These are the monosyllables whose abundance serve to stamp the poetic genius of a language as tripping or dactylic.

Now paying no attention to these facts, Sir Philip Sidney, Professor Longfellow, and innumerable other persons more or less modern, have busied themselves in constructing what they supposed to be "English hexameters on the model of the Greek." The only difficulty was that (even leaving out of question the melodious masses of vowel,) these gentlemen never could get their English hexameters to sound Greek. Did they look Greek?-that should have been the query; and the reply might have led to a solution of the riddle. In placing a copy of ancient hexameters side by side with a copy (in similar type) of such hexameters as Professor Longfellow, or Professor Felton, or the Frogpondian

VOL. X. 5.

Professors collectively, are in the shameful practice of composing "on the model of the Greek," it will be seen that the latter (hexameters, not professors) are about one-third longer to the eye, on an average, than the former. The more abundant dactyls make the difference. And it is the greater number of spondees in the Greek than in the English-in the ancient than in the modern tongue-which has caused it to fall out that while these eminent scholars were groping about in the dark for a Greek hexameter, which is a spondaic rhythm varied now and then by dactyls, they merely stumbled, to the lasting scandal of scholarship, over something which, on account of its long-leggedness, we may as well term a Feltonian hexameter, and which is a dactylic rhythm, interrupted, rarely, by artificial spondees which are no spondees at all, and which are curiously thrown in by the heels at all kinds of improper and impertinent poirts.

Here is a specimen of the Longfellowian hexameter.

Also the church with | in was a | dorned for | this was the season

In which the young their parents' hope and the loved ones of Heaven |

*

Should at the foot of the altar re | new the | vows of their baptism |

Therefore each nook and corner was | swept and

cleaned and the | dust was!

Blown from the walls and ' ceiling and | from the | oil-painted | benches.

• Poe's quotation.-EDITOR.

Mr. Longfellow is a man of imagination—but can he imagine that any individual, with a proper understanding of the danger of lockjaw, would make the attempt of twisting his mouth into the shape necessary for the emission of such spondees as "parents," and "from the," or such dactyls as "cleaned and the" and "loved ones of? " 'Baptism" is by no means a bad spondee-perhaps because it happens to be a dactyl;-of all the rest, however, I am dreadfully ashamed.

66

But these feet-dactyls and spondees, all together, should thus be put at once into their proper position:

'Also, the church within was adorned; for this was the season in which the young, their parents' hope, and the loved ones of Heaven, should, at the feet of the altar, renew the vows of their baptism. Therefore, each nook and corner was swept and cleaned; and the dust was blown from the walls and ceiling, and from the oil-painted benches."

There!--That is respectable prose; and it will incur no danger of ever getting its character ruined by any body's mistaking it for verse.

But even when we let these modern hexameters go, as Greek, and merely hold them fast in their proper character of Longfellowian, or Feltonian, or Frogpondian, we must still condemn them as having been committed in a radical misconception of the philosophy of verse. The spondee, as I observed, is the theme of the Greek line. Most of the ancient hexameters begin with spondees, for the reason that the spondee is the theme; and the ear is filled with it as with a

burden. Now the Feltonian dactylics have, in the same way, dactyls for the theme, and most of them begin with dactyls-which is all very proper if not very Greek-but, unhappily. the one point at which they are very Greek is that point, precisely, at which they should be nothing but Feltonian. They always close with what is meant for a spondee. To be consistently silly, this should die off in a dactyl.

That a truly Greek hexameter cannot, however, be readily composed in English, is a proposition which I am by no means inclined to admit. I think I could manage the point myself. For example:

Do tell! when may we hope to make | men of sense out of the Pundits |

Born and brought | up with their snouts deep | down in the mud of the Frog-pond?

Why ask? who ever | yet saw money made ¦ out of a | fat old |

Jew, or downright | upright | nutmegs | out of a pine-knot?

The proper spondee predominance is here preserved. Some of the dactyls are not so good as I could wish-but, upon the whole, the rhythm is very decent-to say nothing of its excellent

sense.

OLD ENGLISH POETRY*

(Published in the Broadway Journal, May 17, 1845.

It should not be doubted that least one-third of the affection with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be attributed to what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetrywe mean to the simple love of the antique-and that, again, a third of even the proper poetic sentiment inspired by their writings, should be ascribed to a fact which, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and with the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the authors of the poems. Almost every devout admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology, and in general handling. This quaintness is, in fact,

• A review of "The Book of Gems," edited by S. C. Hall.