characteristic in the verse immediately disappears. There is but one conclusion possible, that we are entirely unable to realize to our ears even the simplest classical rhythm.

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If then-being incapable of imitating the classical hexameter-we set about framing an accentual hexameter of our own, we find ourselves at once puzzled by the fact that we have no spondees in English. They are all trochees or iambs. Even when two monosyllables of equal accentuation come together, one abstracts force of accent from the other. And then the duplicate time, the equal to the --, characteristic of the hexameter, is at once lost, and we get a rhythm, lawful enough, if poets write it, and public approve, but in no way resembling the classical dactylic hexameter. It is marked to the ear by the close |, which resembles nothing so much as the common fall of a trochaic verse. As for the rest, it is an awkward, scrambling, three-legged metre -as like the sonorous rapidity of Homer's verse, or the stately majesty of Virgil's line, as a ploughboy striding over the furrows is like the graceful motion of the Tragic Muse. We not long since put to the test the most successful English hexameters which have lately been written, those, namely, in Longfellow's Evangeline. If read with regard to sense, the ear could catch no metre. If read with express view to metre, it was difficult to apprehend the sense. And these remarks apply with still greater force to those worse abominations-English Sapphics. To pronounce sentence of condemnation on these as applied to any serious purpose, the reader has only to make the acquaintance of Canning's immortal knifegrinder.

If then we are unable to realize to ourselves an hexameter, as it was to the Romans; and if our best imitation produces only a rhythm, which even our imperfect knowledge pronounces altogether different; we are obliged to infer, that the attempt to naturalize more complicated metres will result in a still more marked failure. And the next question is-how are we to represent these metres in English? To keep to the same example: we want a metre of like character with the hexameter, and at the same time one which will admit of being paralleled with it, line for line. As to the first requisite, the variation of form allowed in the classical line; from the slow, heavy, spondaic beat

to the dancing flow of successive dactyls, renders the selection of one of our less variable rhythms exceedingly difficult. The Homeric line is perhaps best rendered-as by Chapman, the translator most Homeric in spirit-by the long iambic line of seven feet, familiarly known as the oldballad metre. Association of subject may have something to do with this preference; and the rhyme in which the folk-lore of England is preserved seems therefore fittest for the legends of Greece. But the slow march of the Eneid, still more the didactic precision of the Georgics, or the sententious brevity of Horace's Epistles, would be ill represented by so rough and simple a metre as this. And we still incline to think that the terse couplet of Dryden and Pope would be the fittest vehicle for them, were it not for the second consideration above mentioned. Every metre has its natural halting places. In the heroic couplet the rhyme usually creates a pause at every second line; and this couplet and the hexameter verse are, so to speak, incommensurable magnitudes. The Latin line contains more than the English: and in spite of the supe- . rior conciseness of the language, hardly expresses as much as the couplet. And the result, as may be seen by comparing Pope with Homer, Dryden with Virgil, Gifford with Juvenal, is an invariable diffuseness, an interpolation of words and ideas, and frequently enough a point in the translation, where none was in the original.

Mr. Newman professes to "have adopted the principle that each Latin metre should have one and only one English representative." We have selected a deviation from this principle in the instance under notice, the hexameter. In his translation of Ode i. 7,

"Laudabunt alii claram Rhodon, aut Mitylenen,

Aut Epheson, bimarisve Corinthi," &c.,

Mr. Newman renders the hexameter by an iambic line of 7 feet; Chapman's line in short, with an additional syllable, and very consistently: the dactylic tetrameter, which is the latter part of an hexameter, by the second half of his own substitute for it. As the ode is well known and often quoted, and as the translation offers a favourable specimen of Mr. Newman's manner, we subjoin the whole :

"Some choose for praises Ephesus,
Bright Rhodes or Mitylénè,
Or walls of two-sea'd Corinth ;
Some, Thebes, for Dionysus fam'd,
Or Delphi for Apollo,

Or deep Thessalian Tempè.
Some as their only theme adopt,
The fort of Virgin Pallas

In constant song to honour; Pluck olive-leaves from every side,

And round her forehead braid them,
A throng of bards, to Juno,
Of rich Mycénæ shout aloud,
And Argos, land of horses.
-Me not the enduring Sparta
Nor fertile-soil'd Larissa's plain
So to the heart has smitten,
As Anio headlong tumbling,
Loud-brawling Albuneia's grot,

Tiburnus' groves and orchards
With restless rivulets streaming.

"As oft the south-wind, blowing bright
Across the dusky heaven,

Sweeps clouds away, nor genders
Perpetual show'rs; so Plancus ! thou
The mellow wine enjoying,
Wisely forget the sorrows
And toils of life; if now the camp
Flashing with standards hold thee,
Or if thou soon revisit

Thy favourite Tibur's shades opake.
-TEUCER (they say), when fleeing
From Sálamis and his father,
With poplar-wreath his temples bound
All reeking with the wine-god,
And thus his friends encouraged :
Companions! comrades! follow me,
Wherever Fortune leads us,

Far kinder than my parent.
All's well, with Teucer for your guide,
And Teucer for your omen.
Despair of nought! Apollo

Foretells a second Salamis,

On a new country founded.

Brave souls, who worse things often

With mé have borne! today in wine
Dispel your cares; tomorrow

Again we tempt the Ocean.'"-Pp. 27-9.

On the contrary, the hexameter in Epode xvi.

"Altera jam teritur bellis civilibus ætas,

Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit,”

is rendered by an iambic line of 6 feet: the iambic trimeter being at the same time well replaced by our common blank verse

And Rome herself by strength of Roman falls," &c.

This preservation of the proportion between the various lines which make up a stanza, appears to have occupied a large share of Mr. Newman's attention. The advantages are obvious. The stanza, for instance, which he substitutes for the Sapphic, has nothing of the peculiar rhythm observable in the Latin; but, from the fact that it consists of the same number of lines, about the same length, and bearing a like proportion to each other, produces in many respects a similar effect. On comparing the verses with the original, we find that line answers to line, and verse to verse. We add the translation of the well-known Ode ii. 10. "Rectius vives, Licini, neque altum," &c.

"Licinius! wisely wouldst thou voyage,
Not always on the wide sea venture,
Nor, dreading tempests, hug too closely
The shore deceitful.

"Whoso the Golden Mean embraces,
He safe and sober shuns the garret
With dirt dishonor'd, shuns the palace
That kindles envy.

"Tempestuous blasts more rudely buffet
The mighty pine: with heavier ruin
Fall lofty tow'rs: and lightnings shatter
The topmost mountains.
"A heart well-train'd will hope in adverse
And fear in happy time-reverses.
Jove brings again the ugly winters,
But soon removes them.

"A present ill lasts nót for ever;
For sometimes with the lyre Apollo
Awakes the silent Muse; nor alway
The bow is straining.

"In times of strait show manly spirit
And active zeal; but when the breezes
Too gusty waft thee, then be prudent
Thy sail to shorten."

Another good example of this may be found in the metre, adapted to Ode i. 1,-called by Mr. Newman the Dedication. He calls it "one of five trochees mutilated at the end." For once we are disposed to quarrel with his nomenclature. In himself admitting that it "bears much analogy to our Epic blank verse," he has given a hint which leads to a truer method of scansion. true that reckoning from the beginning,

It is

"O my bulwark and sweet ornament," the accent falls on the odd syllables, and the verse ought therefore to be called trochaic. But if there be But if there be any real distinction of rhythm between iambic and trochaic verse, if the difference between them be anything more real than the result of a grammarian's classification-this is certainly iambic. If read consecutively, it is hardly possible to distinguish it from our ordinary blank verse. The pauses, the cæsuras, the recurrence of the accent, are all iambic. We should prefer to call it a line of five iambs mutilated at the beginning-especially as the voice naturally makes a pause on the initial accented syllable, and endeavours to make it do duty for the full iamb, which, after a line or two, it learns to expect. And, indeed, from our experience, in this volume and elsewhere, of trochaic lines of various lengths, we very much doubt whether the English ear will recognise as such any line which does not terminate in a full trochee. There seems to be a disposition in the voice of the reader to begin its intuitive scansion from the end of the line, and to reckon backwards; in which case what Mr. Newman calls a trochaic verse mutilated at the end is transformed into one composed of the same number of iambs mutilated at the beginning. Let the experiment be performed on the following example:O my bulwark and sweet ornament, Sprung from royalty of Lydian eld!