were unsuccessful; cp. Stanyhurst's translation of Virgil II, 1 ff.:

Wyth ten tiue lyst ning eeche | wight was | setled in | harckning,

Thus father | Aene as chronicled from | lofty bed |

hautye.

You me byd, O Princesse, too | scarrify | a festered old

soare.

How that thee Troians wear | prest by | Græcian | armye. Whose fatal misery my | right hath | wytnesed | heauye: In which sharp byck ring my self, as | partye, re mayned.

For Stanyhurst's rules see Wölk, p. 26ff.

At the end of the nineteenth century Stone, On the Use of Classical Metres in English (1898 and contained in Bridges' Milton's Prosody, Oxford 1901) gave definite rules with regard to the quantity of English syllables. R. Bridges has written quantitative hexameters based on these rules (Wölk pp. 112-123), e.g.:

Now in wintry delights, and | long fire side meditation, 'Twixt studies | and routine paying due | court to the

Muses,

My solace in solitude, when | broken | roads barricade

me

Mudbound, unvisited for | months with my merry | children,

Grateful t'ward Providence, and | heeding a slander against me

Less than a rheum, think | of me to-day, dear | Lionel, | and take

This letter as some account of | Will Stone's | versifi

cation;

but these attempts are not successful. As Wölk says, Bridges' verses are "the best quantitative hexameters hitherto written, but they cannot be called English verses".

If classical hexameters are to be imitated in English, the normal foundation of English rhythm, the interchange of stressed and unstressed syllables, must be observed. Since the eighteenth century we have such hexameters, based on accent, partly in translations (Homer's Iliad, Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea etc), partly in original poems by Coleridge, Southey (The Vision of Judgment), Longfellow (Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles Standish, Elizabeth), Clough (The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich etc.), Kingsley (Andromeda) cp.

Thus did the long sad | years glide | on, and in | seasons and places

Divers and distant | far was seen the wandering

Now in the tents of grace of the meek Moravian | Missions,

Now in the noisy | camps and the | battle-fields of the|

army,

Now in secluded | hamlets, in towns and | populous |

cities.

Like a phantom she came and passed away unree-| membered.

Fair was she and young, when in | hope began the long journey;

Faded was she and | old, when in | disappointment it |

ended.

Each succeeding | year stole | something away from her |

beauty,

Leaving behind it, | broader and | deeper, the | gloom and the shadow.

Then there appeared and spread faint | streaks of | gray o'er her forehead,

Dawn of another | life, that | broke o'er her | earthly ho-| rizon,

As in the eastern | sky the | first faint | streaks of the | morning.

(Longfellow, Evangeline IV, end.)

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,

Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the| darkness;

So on the ocean of | life, we pass and speak one an

other,

Only a look and a voice, then | darkness again and a silence.

(Longfellow, Elizabeth IV, 1ff)

The chief mistake made by Longfellow and others is that the quantity, the natural weight of the syllables (§ 207), is too little considered. As Wölk says (pp. 132. 144), the dactyl of classical languages (~~) must be represented by a trisyllabic foot, of which the first syllable is stressed and the other two syllables unstressed and capable of being uttered quickly, xxx or rather xuu. Good or tolerable dactyls are: populous, wandering now in the, fields of the, only a etc., but trisyllabic feet, in which the second or third syllable has a stress of its own or cannot be uttered quickly, e.g. still stands the, so came the (be)gan the long, do not make good dactyls (Wölk p. 132f.).

Just as in classical languages a spondee (--) may take the place of a dactyl, but

except in the last foot not a trochee (_~), so in hexameters, based on accent, disyllabic feet

except at the end of a verse are permissible only when they correspond to spondees, i.e. when the second syllable has a stress of its own or, at least, a subsidiary stress, and when it cannot be uttered rapidly (long vowel or short vowel before several consonants), thus or or . Thus long sad, years glide, first faint eastern, distant are correct spondees; but disyllabic feet like seen the, sky the, like a battle, other because of the shortness and lack of stress of the second syllable are only trochees and cannot, therefore, be substituted for dactyls (Wölk, p. 134ff.). Feet like ships that, voice then faded are doubtful, and can perhaps be treated as spondees when the next foot begins with a consonant (cp. Wölk p. 136 f.). Curiously enough poets are fond of using a spondee in the last foot, where a trochee is sufficient (Wölk p. 137f.).

The objection so frequently raised against the English hexameter, viz. that coincidence of word and foot is too common, because so many English words are monosyllabic, and thus the verse loses harmony, is, as Wölk (p. 139 ff.) shows, unjustified; for we must consider not the individual words, but groups of words grammatically connected (see § 209). We then see that in verses

which contain only monosyllables the feet and speech-groups do not often fall together; e.g.

White as-the-snow were-his-locks and-his-cheeks asbrown as-the-oak-leaves.

The skill of the poets in the use of the hexameter is, of course, various. Clough's hexameters are very bad and scarcely readable; Kingsley and Longfellow write fairly good hexameters, although they make mistakes. It is to be hoped that hexameters, which are very suitable for certain subjects, will continue to be written and improved.

Matthew Arnold approved of the English hexameter as the best means of translating classical hexameters. He says that a translation of Homer should be "rapid in movement, plain in words and style, simple in ideas, and noble in manner." Concerning hexameters he says:

"This metre affords to the translator the immense support of keeping him more nearly than any other metre to Homer's movement; and since a poet's movement makes so large a part of his general effect, and to reproduce this general effect is at once the translator's indispensable business, and so difficult for him, it is a great thing to have this part of your model's general effect already given you in your metre, instead of having to get it entirely for yourself."

Matthew Arnold quotes some hexameters from a translation of a passage in the third book of the Iliad by Dr. Hawtrey. The passage quoted begins as follows:

Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of

Achaia;