The metre most opposed in character to the Hexameter is the Iambic Trimeter. The one bounds and rushes along; the other steps a stately pace. Eraxw, one of its favorite words, most aptly expresses its movement.

There are some curious points about this Trimeter, as contrasted with our ideas of versification and euphony. It must end, as every one knows, (every one in New York, that is; in New England they have a special dispensation for all matters connected with quantity,) with an Iambus. Now, such words as dxμy and orasμòs seem to us very queer Iambs. Yet these are perfectly legitimate, the combinations xu, u, and many similar ones being, in Greek dramatic versification, " permissive," as it is technically termed; i. e. they permit the vowel preceding them to be shortened. But ev could not end a line. This seems odd to us who can hardly fancy a syllable beginning with thm or cm, while we have many words beginning with sm; and what increases the singularity is, that the Greeks themselves have words beginning with σμός but none with θμ or κμ. †

Again, we have an Iambic Trimeter in English-just the same number of feet and syllables, but altogether a different metre from the Greek, owing to the difference on cæsura. In the Greek Trimetre the main cæsura must occur in the third or fourth foot:

σε Χθονὸς μὲν ἐις τηλουρὸν | ἥκομεν πέδον Σκύθην ἐς οἶκον | ἄβατον εἰς ἐρημίαν Ηφαιστε σοί δε | χρὴ μελεῖν ἐπιστολὰς Ας σοι πατηρ ἐφεῖτο,” |

In the English after the third foot:

"Up with the jocund lark: | too long we take our rest,

While yet the cheerful morn | out from the blushing east

Is

ushering in the day | to light the muse along."-Drayton.

of this metre is the concluding line Guest says that the most familiar one of the Spenserian stanza. This is not strictly correct. There is a difference, slight but sensible, between the measure of the Poly-olbion and the final Spenserian line. In the former, the accent is thrown on the long syllables of the first, third, fourth and sixth feet:

"Of Albion's famous ísle the wonders whilst I write."

And it makes no difference whether there is a cæsura between the second and third feet, or even whether the second syllable of the second foot is weak or strong. In the latter the tendency is to accent the fourth syllable of the line more than the second, and to make a cæsura after the second foot:

"If ancient tales be true, nor wrong these holy men.

and

There are indeed many exceptions, but 1 think this general difference of character will be found to prevail. English Iambic Trimeters may be written on the Greek principle: it has been done once or twice in Punch." They read very like ordinary blank verse with two superfluous syllables—such lines as you would expect to find in Beaumont and Fletcher:

"And looking back upon our long exist

ences,

We only see a vista of dull tragedies."

The long line of the Aristophanic Parabasis, with a very little coaxing, makes two good lines of a not very uncommon English stanza. All that is requisite is, to expand the spondees into anapæsts, and even this is not invariably necessary.

σε Οὐκ ὑπ ̓ ἀνοιας τοῦτο πεπονθὼς διατρίβειν, ἀλλὰ νομίζων

Κωμῳ διδασκαλίαν εἶναι χαλεπώτατον ἔργον ἁπάντων.”

CARL BENSON.

Ir any person desires to know, upon taking up this memoir, what there may be in the name and fame of Philip Yorick, Esq., a person of whom the reading public are as yet ignorant, to justify, or even excuse, the publication of his autobiography, he will find the best answer in the work itself. If he meets with any the least entertainment there, he is answered; but if he be too busy, or too indolent, or too wise; or if the rapidity and variety of his lettered occupation restricts him to glancing over titlepages and heads of chapters, like any

Editor or Reviewer; this is to inform him in brief, that Mr. Yorick's motives to the composition of his own "Life and Opinions," were of so complicated and subtle a mixture, made up of so many little fag impulses and additional reasons; collected out of such a sink and tailor's hell of experiences; brought to a consistence by so many philanthropical leadings and transcendental conceits; that what with all the analytical power he is master of, added to a ten years' inquiry into the nature and operation of complex motives, he can no more easily

"Your first chapter, which is also your last, was a ridiculously short one." Say you so? What mean you by short or long? All things, my dear sir, are comparative; if a thing is ridiculously short, yet complete in itself, and able in its function, as I affirm my preface to be, who shall gainsay it? Did not my preface do what every respectable preface ought to do? Did it not make all the apology that can be made for what follows, namely, for the production of the work? Be the preface as short as it will, the work itself is like to be long enough if this fit holds. But to busi

ness.

The judicious reader pondering the name of this autobiographer, may suspect it for an assumed one, behind which some person of consequence "chooses to veil himself. Mr. Yorick is perfectly willing he should think so, or the contrary, as it befalls. He feels himself to be, indeed, a person of very considerable consequence, like others of his friends; though he refrains from mentioning to whom. Of how much consequence he may become to the reader, is quite a different affair, to be judged in the event.

Not to be tedious, for a bad presage at the first, a word only of the plan and matter of work.

First as to the plan.

It is a matter of some moment to an author, that his reader be not too cunning for him, and penetrate his design. A dinner of unexpected courses, rising in degrees of luxury to the very acme of gustatory pleasure, is a dinner to be praised; for of all thieves of enjoyment, anticipation is the shrewdest. Now, the surest way not to be robbed, is, perhaps, to carry no money about you; and the surest way of hiding your plan is to have no plan. Whether that is not an artless kind of art which begins with rousing expectation, is a question for the critics. Nevertheless, I solemnly

declare, that all the secret scandals, and private histories of remarkable persons, mentioned in this memoir, are of a character not in the least injurious to public morals: nobody shall be abused, excepting such as truly deserve it!-did I say? If the cap fits, put it on, and do what the lion tamer did with the lion.

Exercising that keenness and admirable sense, which is natural to him, the judicious reader, to whom I take this opportunity of making my best bowobserve; my cane, a little crook, emblematical of the clergy, is in my left hand, somewhat raised and trailed; my hat, emblematical of dignity, is in the right; with a gentle curve of the back, and an inclination of the head, signifying reverence, a half subtle, half courteous smile, uniting benignity with deference. My cloth, a gray surtout, (Napoleon wore one of the same piece,) emblemating frugality and modesty; my shoesI never wear boots- • *** hiatus; Mr. Yorick's reason against boots appeareth not— * my shoes, I say, signifying honesty and industry. My hairs few and gray, the hairs of experience; my complexion brown and sallow (an adust and fanciful complexion); my eyes, gray and uncertain (a subtle eye); my stature under the middle height; a spare and fragile body, but not without elasticity.

Where did I leave-O! at "that admirable good sense, which is natural to you, judicious reader."

"As that wise bird, the country cousin of the swan, doth enter a door, so doth a servile and timid writer pass over the threshhold of his work"-with a bow, I suppose. It is the fashion now, and always will be, to act according to one's nature;-who can help it? You may know a knave by his cringing, a fool by his precipitation, and a narcissus by a thread of his self contemplations running through the tissue of his talk.

Exercising his natural shrewdness, the same judicious reader who doubted the name, may suspect the events of this autobiography; that they have been twisted, distorted, diminished, exaggerated; whole members suppressed, nay parts even, invented or appropriated for the sake of disguise; as is usual in memoirs of great men. Mr. Yorick cannot but admire the penetration of the reader, who suspects all this; he only warns him against putting his finger on particular parts, as if to say, this is fact, or, that is fiction: here was matter suppressed, there something added: he wishes him, for the love he bears his own wisdom, not to go so deep.

"When I consider the pleasure I have received," saith an ingenious writer, "from the perusal of the lives of celebrated persons related by themselves, an agreeable emulation tingles in my veins, and warms me to the hope, that even I might achieve something as singular and authentic. Though I dared not venture against the veracious Sinbad, or the ingenuous Goethe, in the variety and elegance of my narration, I might at least approach them in the integrity and simplicity of my story. Not that I am able to adorn it with dreadful adventures, or subtle experiences; nor that I am equal to a history of my spiritual progresses. For that species of narration I am forced to entertain a distant respect. They awaken in me nothing of that itch of imitation which is the spur of the author's mind. I am contented to wonder at the spiritual conjuror, who can roll his eyes backward upon himself, and fix them there. I am delighted with the courage and skill of that man, who can exhibit his own viscera without detriment to his body, or affront to our nostrils. It is a pleasure to see all this, and study the physiology of it, as we inspect corpses, or pry into natural resultants, for science' sake; but for the practice on one's self, I lack courage. I am, besides, a poor feather-brain, and cannot fix my attention long enough on any particular folly or vanity of my own, to extract wisdom out of it. The offence

overcomes me.

Nevertheless, I mean not to affront posterity with a deliberate chronicle of my life: how I was born; in such a

place; at such a planetary conjunction; of such parents; with a mole on my cheek; a crook in my foot; a wart in my hand; a strawberry on my shoulder; with or without this or that organ, member, limb; how I gradually grew fatter; suckled, eat, drank; did what younglings do, cried, kicked, scrambled, crawled, driveled, bemauled my clothes, curried the cat, scorched the dog, teased the cook, plagued the maids-in fine, how I gradually assumed the parts and functions of a man; and what with the dame-school, grammar-school, academy, college, acquiring, by example and inclinations, by impulse of nature and coinage of wit, those severalties which in the total we name education-a total, of which the half is vice and the half virtue.

Why should I pass on to relate what happened to me in the specialties of the fourth septenniad, when I hung midway betwixt evil and good, betwixt youth and manhood, joy and sorrow, ignorance and wisdom, through seven mad years?

Shall I declare to you the number of my dinners, breakfasts, suppers, lunches, snacks, drinks, glasses, cups-with a like enumeration of all that appertains to Man the Beast, and an utter forgetting of what is proper to Man the Angel? Wouldst have a list of my wardrobe; of the color, quality, make, condition, savor, fashion, durableness, place of origin, place of vendition, of my several shirts, hats, stockings, garters, coats, vests, cloaks, handkerchiefs, cravats, gloves, and galligaskins? How I rode a bay trotting-horse, with a silver gilt housing, at half-speed, to the D—— with a lady of fashion on my left hand, and a puppy of evil quality on my right? how the puppy of quality's beast did play the fool, bolted, broke the puppy of quality's neck; as many a brute has done since, and as many will continue to do, lest the earth be overstocked with fools?

Why should a man dwell on such things?

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Because, sir, these are the universals, and every man, woman, and child, will understand them." A word, sir, if you please: will your authorship answer one question-to wit, what do all men, women, and children, at all times

desire ? "To see a new thing." Wrong, by Apollo! Half the time, they would as lief see an old one. Are you answered? Curiosity is not the only

passion of the soul; there are some others in it, of at least an equal potency. What say you to sympathy, my gay romancer?

"To be a dealer in plausibilities, is no part of my plan; therefore, am not I a politician." I lack instinct. My statesmanship is a thing of closet growth, merely hypochondriacal. What with a turbulent crowd of passions, follies, and impulses, over which reason holds but a feeble and usurped control, I have governing enough, in conscience, to do at home. I am none of Plato's naturalborn sovereigns, with the regal Idea dominant in me; my desires will not be crushed by the refinedest theory of virtue. "What is your occupation?"

At present, sir, it is the writing of this history. What it may be to-morrow, Heaven shall decide-physic and a fee, perhaps; who knows what may befall? "What say you to a place in the customs, or the care of a hospital?"Good; let it come, I am ready for the

worst.

Should any man, hearing me disclaim this and the other occupation, disposition, trade, opinion-as of a statesman, a politician; a scholar, a pedant; a divine, a theologian; a wit, a joker; a genius, an enthusiast; a poet, a versifier; a merchant, a money-grub; a bookseller, a shark; a painter, a color-mux; a teacher, a pedagogue; a philosopher, a subtle speechifier; a thinker, a dreamer; a lover of men, a lover of misery on the grand scale"-by Heaven! I should go near to insult him for a meddler, or to pity him for an innocent. I will be driven into no such corners; the world is my heritage; and shall I set up my rest in any doghole thereof, to draw propertylines and snarl over them? No party shall lug me, by the ears, into their nest. I am neither of the old school, nor of the new. Mayhap, then, you are of the psychoplastic many-sided, or, as we say, Teutonic model; inclining to the bottomless abyssmal-sceptical, of the all-toofar-seeing pyroscintillant, gnosticism; and therefore subcachinnatory, and not earnest. In short, you are transcendental." Twenty years ago, sir, in Europe, the remark might have been of some moment; but as things are, you

66

show not the bright side of discretion with hinting it. Know you not the folly is dead?

By Heaven! if you persecute me in this fashion, I shall go near to tell you I am a man, and descended of honest parents. Come now, my questioner, tell me truly, are you a gentleman ?

་་

"I am; you do me wrong to doubt it." So do you me ;-but if I know the meaning of the phrase, a gentleman is a person to whom is conceded the right of doing and being what he will, so it be honorable. In that bound do I set up my claim.

Tormented with this idle question, by such simpletons as cannot shape to themselves the possibility of existing without an occupation or opinion visible to the many, I refer my questioner to a dusty roll of parchment, the end whereof sticketh out from between my bookshelves and the wall. This parchment is to certify, by courtesy, that I am a man accomplished in all that is proper to the art-curative, and may take fees from a dead man's relations without danger of the law. This same courteous certification has served me these twenty years, for a foil against fools' questions

a fact which throws a new light over the institution of diplomas in general. That they are of modern invention, 1 make no doubt, from an anecdote which we have of Socrates, (to be found in Xenophon, or in Ficinus' folio Plato, if you will be at the pains to look for it there.) When questioned as to his occupation, the sage professed himself a midwife. Had diplomas been in use, he would have carried one about with him, certifying to this profession, for a saving of his valuable breath.

A very celebrated modern,when pressed upon this point of an occupation, used to profess himself a philosopher; but that was in his youth, and there is reason to think he repented of it in his wiser days; considering more particularly the nature of the question and the effects of the answer. "A fool measures his respect for you, by your wealth, your