The second line begins with an anapest; and by the word to, the measure is broken; omit it, and the whole will run smoothly and agreeably.

Another licence claimed by some writers is that of dropping a syllable in the middle of the verse; Swift takes it very often, as here:

And now my dream's out; for I was a dream'd

That I saw a huge rat--O dear how I scream'd!

But this licence is questionable at least; it may be called unwarrantable, because it occasions such halting metre.

Diæresis is a licence more suitable to this kind of verse than to the dissyllabic metres, i.e. to make a dissyllable into a trisyllable, a monosyllable into a dissyllable wherever possible, e.g. :

Whose humour, as gay as the fire-fly's light.

Moore.

Would feel herself happier here,

By the nightingale warbling nigh.

Cowper.

Drayton makes April three syllables.

Such a division of syllables helps the line to move lightly, and is a reasonable indulgence to a measure which, more than others, is apt to suffer by the clogging of accented words and consonants.

Any long or accented syllable, standing first or second in the foot, is a deviation from this measure; but it is less offensive to the ear in the second place than in the first:

While a parcel of verses the hawkers were hollowing.

Wine the sovereign cordial of God and of man

Far above áll the flowers of the field,

When its leaves | are áll dead and its colours áll lost.

And while a fálse nymph | was his theme,

A willow supported his head.

The licences taken in Dactylic verse are sometimes such that they disguise the measure and render it equivocal, as in this uncommon specimen :

Oh! what a pain is love !
How shall I bear it?
She will unconstant prove,
I greatly fear it.

Please her the best I may,
She looks another way;
Alack and well-a-day,

Phillida flouts me !

Ellis's "Specimens.” v. iii. p. 338.

Every line of this stanza but the last is divisible into iambic feet, and they all make verses in that measure; they are nevertheless designed for the dactylic, as appears by these next, which cannot be so divided without violence:

Thou shalt eat curds and cream

All the year! lasting;
And drink the crystal stream,

Pleasant in tasting.

But this great confusion of measure is not often made. The allowed licences are to curtail the last foot, sometimes by one syllable, as in the lines quoted above, but more usually by two, which, as compositions of this kind are chiefly for music, makes a better close; such is:

Under the blossom that hangs on the | bough.

It is allowed in the beginning of a line to substitute for the proper foot a trochee, as:

Songs of shepherds and rustical roundelays.

Old Ballad.

Or a single accented syllable may stand for it, even for two feet together, as:

Come, see rural felicity.

The question of metrical licences as it affects the Heroic measure will be further considered when we come to deal with Blank verse (see p. 185).

POETIC PAUSES.

It is perhaps necessary to insist again here that verse is rhythmic articulate speech, just as music in its broadest definition is rhythmic sound. A printed sheet of notes on a stave is no more music than is a page of poetry verse. We have to deal throughout with poems as read or recited; with the body, not with the soul of poetic creation.

The rhythm or musical flow of verse depends not only upon the metrical arrangement of accented and unaccented syllables, but in no little degree upon breaks or pauses, which divide it into phrases of different lengths. These pauses are identical in many instances with the grammatical stops, but they are also independent of them, and occur where there are no stops at all. Metrical pauses must, therefore, be clearly distinguished from sentential stops at the outset of this enquiry. The one is as essential to the melody as the other is to the sense. With the latter we have no further

concern.

Metrical pauses are of two kinds, the one final at the end of a verse, the other cesural, which cuts it into equal or unequal parts.

1.-THE FINAL PAUSE.

When the verse is rhymed the final pause is unmistakable, and is absolutely necessary to bring out the jingle of the rhymes; but in blank verse, and especially in the dramatic form, it is not so clearly marked, and is often omitted entirely. A good reader, however, will hardly ever fail to mark the end of the lines, however slightly, in reciting two consecutive verses, and if one line is run into another here and there, the occurrence is never continuous. Sheridar, in his "Art of Reading," says that if the first thirteen lines of the Paradise Lost were printed as prose and read by some one who had never seen the pcem, they would be read as prose. We are certain that the judgment of

most educated men would condemn this assertion. As well might we take the opinion of a Chinaman upon one of Beethoven's sonatas as of an illiterate person upon a question of verse and prose. We may safely conclude that verse which will not stand such a test as this is well deserving of being considered prose.

2. THE CÆSURAL PAUSE.

Casural pause is the rest or halt of the voice in reading verses aloud at other points than the end of the line. It is independent of the same, and may occur at almost any part of the line, and even in the middle of a foot. No precise rules can be laid down as to its position, although it is