the chapel. While our building, like too many specimens of modern Gothic, can distinguish neither; and, if it does not put a chimney to the chapel, puts a crocket to the kitchen. Pope's translation of the "Iliad" is an example, however extreme and partial, of this defect. 73. Some perhaps may think that these tetrameters are only such to the eye, and are in reality broken into two parts, so that two tetrameters in sequel would form a staff, just as in English, the second and fourth lines being shorter by a syllable than the first and third, as Ω βαθυζώνων ἄνασσα, Χαῖρε Δαρείου γύναι. It must be confessed that the cæsura is so strong and constant in them all that we could not distinguish it from a close, and must have allowed of such a disposition of lines, if tetrameters had always occurred in an even number, so as to produce pairs, and the sense had almost always terminated with the end of each pair. But as this is far from being the case, there could have been no such stanzaic arrangement, and the lessons of the grammarians, which tell us that such tetrameters were whole verses to the ear as much as they are in print to our eyes, must be accepted. 74. But if with us the trimeter broke down, as we have already seen (64), how much more the tetrameter. Indeed the only species that was ever attempted is the iambic, which Chapman employed in his translation of Homer, and often with much felicity, since it is a measure in more apt correspondence with the length of the hexameter, and moves with a sufficiently imposing roll. But its exceeding monotony was a vital objection to its use in a poem of any length, nor has it been able to stand its ground entire since his time. It is now to be found but in its broken state in hymns and songs, the latter of which, from the double termination, are commonly of a ridiculous nature, and therefore also the former are rare, and require very cautious handling. Every one remembers Great God! what do mine eyes behold? The end of things created! The Judge of mankind doth appear On clouds of glory seated. The trochaic in its broken form is familiar to every one in some of our very best sea songs, as “Cease, rude Boreas," and "As near Porto Bello." The anapastic tetrameter is not found in our poetry. Indeed the ancient anapastic measures are, according to our recitation, purely dactylic. We have, therefore, no real sense of the substitution of the dactyl for the anapast, and such anapæstic measures as we do admit must consist entirely of anapasts. Hence the metre is of far too jumping a nature, as well as too difficult of construction, not to say that the length of the lines, when even thus broken, exceeds the limits of our language. What could we make of a series of such stanzas as this?— O, ye woods, spread your branches apace to my flight, I would share with the beasts of the chase in your night; 75. Such is the great importance of the pause in verse. It does for it that which breaks and projections do for the face of a building: and as a short façade requires but short and shallow breaks, but a long one longer and deeper, until after a certain length these assume the nature of separate though dependent buildings,—so is it with the various lengths of verse and their pauses. So far, however, we have before us only the main outlines of the harmony of the structure, the portico, the wings, and the like; we have yet to examine the minuter portions, the pilasters, panels, and other arrangements of the stones. These are not, indeed, necessary to the harmony of the structure, and therefore may be, and often are, absent; but they contribute much to the filling up of that harmony, and satisfying the eye when it comes up to examine that which recommended itself at a distance. When the eye is confined within one of those divisions, it will not be content with blank space, but must still have some lines, dimensions, and proportions to contemplate, be it but the junctures of the stones, or even of the bricks, as we must say in application to the words in our tongue, so short and plain as they are : therefore, as in verse each distinct word lies between pauses, we come now to examine the character of the word itself, as it is concerned with recitation, and so we proceed to discuss such properties of syllables as contribute to the effect of verse. 97 CHAPTER XI. ON THE EXPRESSION DUE TO THE ARTICULATION OF SYLLABLES. 76. CONSIDERED under this head, syllables are of two classes: (1) When nothing follows the vowel, as in O, to, mu-sic. It is then called pure, or vocal. (2) When a consonant follows attached to the vowel, as in at, that, rude-ness, mus-ter. It is then called mixed, or consonantal. In the first of these cases, the accent, raising but the key, does not affect the quantity, as in á-tomus1: but the stress, by dwelling on the syllable, necessarily lengthens it, as in mē-teor. In the second, the accent is equally ineffective: but the stress, including now the consonant also, dwells less on the vowel, and therefore its sound is not so full and long as before; and the syllable is less sweet, though prolonged. Thus there is an 1 We pronounce our word as at-om, not as a-tom. F |