third and fourth feet of a verse of six feet, as the hexameter and trimeter, in the latter of which measures they were never both of them omitted, except in two or three examples, where expression has been sought at their expense, as in the trimeter lines last quoted. And Spenser sometimes employs them, as in "Fairy Queen":— Upon his foe, a dragon | horrible and stern.-I. i. 3. 41. The absence of pauses is no less expressive than their presence. When we have missed them at their usual places in the early part of the line, we, both from want of relief to the breath and disappointment, experience a drag which finds a vent when at length a pause comes towards the end of the line, and leaves an impression of slowness, heaviness, and difficulty. Thus, how expressive of something protracted is Addison's line, And in the smooth description | murmur still; and of the torpor of incessant grief in Lucret. iii. 920, Insatiabiliter deflebimus | æternumque. 42. Since the pauses arising out of the metre are weak towards the beginning and end of the line, and it is advisable that the pauses arising out of the sense should not jar with them, but go along with them, hence the full stops are seldom used in those places, except in the short questions and quick replies of dramatic poetry, but occur rather towards the middle of the line. 43. We are now enabled to estimate the advantage which the pauses supply for defining the close of a verse. They throw a great difficulty in the way of a verse being made up, to the ear, out of the end and beginning of consecutive lines, if at least they be arranged with common care. It requires some search to find an undoubted example of such a verse in either the heroic or dramatic poetry of the ancients; but in modern poetry, it must be allowed, the case is very different. It would seem that the habitual use of so decided a close as rhyme gives has drawn away the attention of our poets from the arrangement of the pauses, even where rhyme had been dispensed with. Let us take, for example, "Paradise Lost," i. 41. If he opposed, Raised impious war With vain attempt. | and with ambitious aim in heaven, and battle proud It is plain that if the hearer lost his reckoning, as amid such loose construction he easily might, D and took if he opposed for the end of the line, the series of verses would be entirely altered to his ear, the end and beginning of consecutive lines making perfect verses between them. But such confusion cannot happen in Ib. i. 22. And mad'st it pregnant. | What in me is dark But this fault can be avoided by no possible care by the composer of the Alexandrine. It is plain that "Polyolbion," xi. 1, &c., owes the distinction of its verses entirely to rhyme : With as unwearied wings, As when we first set forth, The Muse from Cambria comes And having put herself and in as high a gait, observing every state, with pinions summ'd and sound, upon the English ground. Can we wonder that such a metre was broken down into a measure proper for ballads? 44. We have confined our notice to the longer, which are also the more ordinary, measures, because they exhibit the most plain examples. The shorter, which are the lyrical measures, are indeed subject to the same rule, but their shortness prevents such predominance of any pause, that it should become almost indispensable; for instance, the Sapphic has a favourite cæsura after the fifth syllable, but not so indispensable but that a very regularly constructed ode, as Hor. Od. i. 10, will do without it three times in the space of fifteen lines. The following verses of that ode show the favourite pauses : And the following the like in the two last lines of the alcaic, from Hor. Od. ii. 1: 52 CHAPTER VI. ON THE PAUSES OF THE HEXAMETER. 45. WE will begin with the longest of the ordinary and regular measures which are known in recognized European poetry. From this greater length it has its principal pauses more marked and fixed than any other. It will be worth while, therefore, to dwell upon it with some minuteness, and derive from it such illustration as will save much discussion on the other measures. Consisting of six feet, all which must be either dactyls or spondees, the hexameter must commence every foot with a long syllable. Hence there will be six places for pause after this. And since, also, there may be five dactyls, there will be five places for pause after the trochee contained in the dactyl: and since there are five feet before the final, there will be five places for pause after a foot. Hence altogether there will be sixteen places where the pause may fall. The average of the number of places where it actually does fall |