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symmetrical English ones.-The following is the notation of the extract from the "Siege of Corinth" in the preceding chapter:

Now many Latin metres present a recurrence of accent little more irregular than the quotation just analysed. The following is the accentual formula of the first two stanzas of the second ode of the first Book of Horace.

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A longer list of examples would show us that, throughout the whole of the classical metres, the same accents recur, sometimes with less, and sometimes with but very little more irregularity than they recur in the unsymmetrical metres of our own language; and this in a prosody based upon quantity.

§ 587. Conversion of English into classical metres.—In the preface to his Translation of Aristophanes, Mr. Walsh has shown, that, by a different distribution of lines, very fair hexameters may be made out of the well-known lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore :

Not a drum was

Heard, not a funeral note, as his corse to the rampart we hurried,
Not a soldier dis-

Charged his farewell shot o'er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him

Darkly at dead of night, the sods with our bayonets turning;

By the struggling

Moonbeam's misty light and the lantern dimly burning.

Lightly they'll

Talk of the spirit that 's gone, and o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,

But little he 'll

Reck if they let him sleep on in the grave where a Briton has laid him.

Again, such lines as Coleridge's

1. Make réady my gráve clothes to-morrow;

or Shelley's

2. Liquid Péneus was flowing,

are the exact analogues of lines like

and

1. Jam lácte depúlsum leónem,

2. Gráto Py'rrha sub ántro.

The rationale of so remarkable a phænomenon as regularity of accent in verses considered to have been composed with a view to quantity only has yet to be investigated. That it was necessary to the structure of the metres in question is certain; a fact which lead us to the consideration of the Casura.

§ 588. Casura.-The casura of the classical metrists is the result of

1. The necessity in the classical metres of an accented syllable in certain parts of the verses.

2. The nearly total absence in the classical languages of words with an accent on the last syllable.

From the joint effect of these two causes, it follows that in certain parts of a verse no final syllable can occur, or no word can terminate.

Thus, in a language consisting chiefly of dissyllables, of which the first alone was accented, and in a metre which required the sixth syllable to be accented, the fifth and seventh would each be at the end of words, and that simply because the sixth was not.

Whilst in a language consisting chiefly of either dissyllables or trisyllables, and in a metre of the same sort as before, if the fifth were not final, the seventh would be so, or vice versá.

Casura means cutting. In a language destitute of words accented on the last syllable, and in a metre requiring the sixth syllable to be accented, a measure (foot) of either the formula x a, or x x a (i. e. a measure with the accent at the end), except in the case of words of four or more syllables, must always be either itself divided, or else cause the division of the following measures-division meaning the distribution of the syllables of the measure (foot) over two or more words. Thus

a. If the accented syllable (the sixth) be the first of a word

of any length, `the preceding one (the fifth) must be the final one of the word which went before; in which case the first and last parts belong to different words, and the measure (foot) is divided or cut.

b. If the accented syllable (the sixth) be the second of a word of three syllables, the succeeding one, which is at the end of the word, is the first part of the measure which follows; in which case the first and last parts of the measure (foot) which follows the accented syllable are divided or cut.

As the casura, or the necessity for dividing certain measures between two words, arises out of the structure of language, it only occurs in tongues where there is a notable absence of words accented on the last syllable. Consequently there is no

cæsura in the English.

§ 589. As far as accent is concerned, the classical poets write in measures rather than feet.

Although the idea of writing English hexameters, &c., on the principle of an accent in a measure taking the place of the long syllables in a foot, is chimerical; it is perfectly practicable to write English verses upon the same principle which the classics themselves have written on, i. e. with accents recurring within certain limits; in which case the so-called classical metre is merely an unsymmetrical verse of a new kind. This may be either blank verse or rhyme.

The chief reason against the naturalization of metres of the sort in question (over and above the practical one of our having another kind in use already), lies in the fact of their being perplexing to the readers who have not been trained to classical cadences, whilst they suggest and violate the idea of quantity to those who have.

§ 590. Synapheia.-Of all metres that of English blank verse is the simplest. Perhaps, throughout the whole range of literature and art, no style of composition equally simple and severe can be found, the paucity of rules being the measure of the simplicity and severity.

A single rule gives the form of a noble metre-this rule being that on every even syllable there shall be an accent.

More than this is unnecessary. With this a poem of the magnitude of the "Paradise Lost" may be written the licences

and accessory ornament that lie beyond being unnecessary and unimportant. This will become clearer when we have realized the fact that in English blank verse, even the division into lines is unnecessary, except so far as it is required for the division of words, and breaks in the sense.

With these the ends of lines should coincide.

If it were not so, the whole of such a poem as the "Paradise Lost" might form one line of indefinite length.

Certain Greek metres are thus framed; e. g. the Acatalectic Anapæstic Dimetre.

So complete is each part in itself, that the metre may be taken up anywhere, and all the lines cohere together-this cohesion being called Synapheia (= connection).

Now, English blank verse is as capable of a Synapheia as the Acatalectic Anapæstic.

For the sake of showing the extent to which the accentual element must be recognised in the classical metres, I reprint the following paper On the Doctrine of the Casura in the Greek Senarius, from the "Transactions of the Philological Society," June 23, 1843

In respect to the cæsura of the Greek tragic senarius, the rules, as laid down by Porson in the Supplement to his Preface to the Hecuba, and as recognised, more or less, by the English school of critics, seem capable of a more general expression, and, at the same time, liable to certain limitations in regard to fact. This becomes apparent when we investigate the principle that serves as the foundation to these rules; in other words, when we exhibit the rationale, or doctrine, of the cæsura in question. At this we can arrive by taking cognizance of a second element of metre beyond that of quantity.

It is assumed that the element in metre which goes, in works of different writers, under the name of ictus metricus, or of arsis, is the same as accent, in the sense of that word in English. It is this that constitutes the difference between words like týrant and resúme, or súrvey and survéy; or (to take more convenient examples) between the word Aúgust, used as the name of a month, and avgúst used as an adjective.

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