the proportion of the number of trochaic pauses in Homer and in Virgil should be in the high ratio of 2 1. This very superior liveliness in the style of the narrative of the Greek has, without doubt, a large share in contributing to the feeling that Homer is telling us what he has seen, Virgil what he has read; and is one of the means of that unapproachable superiority, on the whole, which he must ever maintain among the composers of epic poetry.

64

CHAPTER VII.

ON THE PAUSES OF THE TRIMETER.

54. NOTHING displays the richness of the resources of the Greek tongue, as to the various and suitable means of expression, than the invention of two metres of such distinct character for two distinct departments of poetry, as the Hexameter and Trimeter. Here, as elsewhere, all the modern tongues exhibit poverty itself in the comparison. On going from one measure to the other we are immediately struck with the essential difference. It is indeed a descent; for the trimeter is very inferior in its capability. It is constructed of a shorter foot, which however is admitted to the same number of six. And it allows of fewer pauses, and is deficient in variety and sonorousness of close. All, in short, warns us that we are come nearer to the province of prose, and from the recitation of the bard to the declamation of the actor -from narrative to conversation.

55. We find at once quite a different principle

of construction. The spondee is introduced not as an exact equivalent in time, but as an avowedly different foot called in to modify the pace of the line, and impart stability to its undulating movement. And this foot brings in also its equivalents under certain regulations, so that this dissyllabic measure allows of three trisyllabic feet, the tribrach as the equivalent of the iambus, the dactyl and anapæst as equivalents of the spondee. A great variety is thus obtained. But since it arises from foreign help, and not out of a development of the measure itself, it wants both the extent, and force, and beauty of that which the hexameter affords.

56. The introduction of these feet must of course be kept within such bounds that it shall not derange the line. And therefore, where greater care was bestowed, as by the two earlier tragedians, who maintained a higher tone than the third, provision was made that those essential features, the pauses of the line, should not be affected. Therefore the two short syllables, which, on the resolution of the spondee, take place of the one short of the iambus, were not allowed to interfere with their regulation, and no pause was admitted after either one or both, but the anapæst to which they belonged was contained in one word, such as μεγάλην, not in two, as in τρὶς | ἔπειτα, μέγα ¦

TOUTO; the former of which gives an iambic instead of trochaic movement after the pause, as in that place it should: the latter comes after two short syllables instead of one, and so quite deranges the proper pause. Other ways, in which these substitutions are restricted, will appear when we come to consider the pauses in particular.

57. The number of pauses is altogether eleven: for six can fall in the middle of the foot; after each of these the movement becomes trochaic: and five can fall at the end of a foot; after which the movement still continues iambic. The following scheme will show the comparative frequency of the occurrence of these pauses within the range of 100 lines of Sophocles.

Or 3.66 to a line, i. e. about 7 to two lines.

58. In the first foot the more regular construction restrained not only the anapest, but the

dactyl also within a word. It is obvious that it never could be allowed to be broken into a trochee followed by a short syllable, as ταῦτα | μελετᾶτε, since such a pause is inadmissible at the beginning of an iambic line, uttering the very reverse of its measure at starting. And there would be a reluctance to inclose in any place a pyrrhic within two pauses, since they should, on the principles of the verse, inclose but one short syllable. Hence a dactyl distributed between two words, the first of which was a long syllable, such as Tóow, was avoided. But in fact the dactyl is rare at all in the first place in the more regular measure. Nor can we wonder, since it runs in the contrary direction, that of the trochee, and is therefore not very suitable for opening an iambic movement. Hence the anapast is much more common in this place.

A favourite pause falls in the middle of the second foot. This pushes the line as it were into a brisk movement as early as a sense of the trochaic pace could be borne. Compare the sixteenth line with the seventeenth of the Edipus Tyrannus. At the end it is rare, on account of the close neighbourhood of the principal cæsura.

As in the Virgilian hexameter, we find the principal pauses, that is, cæsuras, in the middle of the third and fourth feet: supplying also a similar variety by change of foot to the opposite, the