propensities of man's nature. The love of present ease is powerfu enough to drive off the calls of present duty, and unless self-denial be brought into play and assiduously persevered in, this pernicious habit will obtain the mastery. Prevention is better than cure. Prevent the enemy from obtaining a lodgement in the citadel, and you are safe; allow him to obtain an entrance, though only for his little finger, and he will make way for his entire body. In the sense, if not in the exact words of the Latin poet, which we thus freely render, we would call on procrastinators to "Oppose beginnings. It is then too late To call in med'cine's aid, when, through delay, Finally, in all our pursuits, let promptitude, energy, decision, lead the van; let patience and perseverance follow; and who shall set limits to our success? HOSPITALITY. INSCRIBED TO MRS. A. C, BEITH. BY MISS AIRD, AUTHORESS OF "THE HOME OF THE HEART," &C. NO. VII. SHE opes her door, with welcome bland With smile serene-and open hand; A kind and careful friend is she- Like sunshine, 'mid these low brown hills, O! many a bright green spot I see, Where Love her cup of kindness fills There Comfort, in her russet brown, Of Fashion's frizzell'd train. The cup which in our hand they place, 2 L The grapes of heart-communion prest, Away with falsehood's phrase, away! But stinging you with serpent-guile! I've sat in tassellated halls, Whose ornature and pictured walls, Pour'd sparkling comfort all around, Framed in the shade of purple hills, Where float Traditions old and grey Round Druid shrines-where tinkling rills Amid the heath-flow'rs stray, A quiet lake in beauty sleeps, Like moonlight on the shades of night, Or cloudlet blue, when sunshine creeps Around its brim of snowy light. Fringed in a flowery selvage deep O'er eve on night's dark edge they lie, Which oft has lull'd my cares asleep, On yon old arch, where flowers entwine, Like wreaths of festal drapery, Write, 'mid these dates of elder time, "The Hall of Hospitality." From his palm-shade the Patriarch went, Three strangers; brought them to his tent, To welcome thus the stranger, rise; LETTER ON ENGLISH HEXAMETERS. DEAR MR. EDITOR.-As doubtless you, like the rest of the literary world, have taken some interest in a subject of old dispute, but recently revived and ably discussed in Blackwood, viz., the possibility of acclimating the classical metres in the fertile fields of English Poetry,-I venture to hope that a few remarks on so pleasant a theme, may not be unacceptable to yourself or your readers. I think the main reason for these measures never taking their place in English verse, has been the failure of the early writers of hexameters—. Sidney, Staniforth, &c., who bound themselves down too much to the Greek and Latin rules of quantity, endeavouring to govern our language by these, instead of attending solely to accent; by which they made their lines invariably harsh and stiff, and indeed generally unreadable. When, in a later day, Southey renewed the attempt, he saw the error of his predecessors, and in a great measure set aside these restrictions; but perhaps he went even too far, substituting extreme license for extreme constraint. Nevertheless, on the whole, he executed the task well; and it was no fault of the hexameter measure that "The Vision of Judgment" found little favour with the public. Coleridge, in my opinion, surpasses Southey. I like his "Hymn to the Earth" better than any English hexameters I know; and his fragment on Mahomet (which Blackwood in error calls Southey's) is also very good. I only find two faulty lines in the whole, "Naked and prostrate the priesthood were laid; the people with mad shouts." The fault in this line will be pointed out afterwards. The other "Thundering now, and now with saddest ululation," is a very bad line, lame all through, and throws the accent on the last syllable of "saddest." Mr. Merivale, in his translation (published two years ago) of Schiller's Lyrical Poems, has been frequently very successful in his hexameters, and also in the combined hexameter and pentameter; and I have little doubt some of them may become as popular as they are in the original German, in which language a modification of the classical metres has been very successful. I think that all verses of dactylic structure are eminently adapted to the spirit of the English language; and it is sufficient proof of this, to point to the involuntary dactylic lines that are constantly occurring. There is a well-known and frequently-quoted hexameter line in the second psalm "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?" But besides this, the Book of Psalms is everywhere full of them-not often complete lines, but showing the chief essentials, that is, the two last feet of the line correct, a dactyl followed by a trochee. The following detached sentences are tolerably perfect hexameter lines, selected at random : "Shew forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion." "For he hath Strengthened the bars of thy gates, he hath blessed the children within thee." "Bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron." Every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever." "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee." 66 Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon Israel." "Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy." "My soul Waiteth for the Lord, more than they that watch for the morning." Psalm cxxxvi. has a peculiarly dactylic character, from the beautiful repetition of the words "For his mercy endureth for ever." But there is no occasion for heaping up instances of involuntary hexameters. What remains is, to decide within what limitations the English poet must restrain those licenses which to a certain extent the language requires. I think the hexameter alone never will be a favourite with the English public; but by combining it with the pentameter in alternate lines, after the manner of Ovid, Tibullus, Propertius, and many others of the Ancients, I do think that it may become popular. The objection to the continuous hexameter is the length of line, and the dissyllabic termination, which is not agreeable to the English ear. As rules for the hexameter, I think every line should begin with an accented syllable; and I would totally condemn the license Southey claims of commencing at pleasure with a short one. The cæsura (a pause after the first syllable of the third foot) is certainly a beauty, but may be dispensed with, and yet without injury to the metre. Of course, the fifth foot must be a dactyl (a long and two short syllables); and the last ought to be a trochee (a long and short), as the classical spondee (two long) sounds harsh in reading, and in fact, when it occurs, is invariably pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, thus making a forced trochee, as in the line of Coleridge previously quoted, which ends with "mad shouts," two syllables of equal force, but which, in reading the line, become a long and a short. He has no other in stance of this, and Southey not many, as fortunately his ear was more correct than his theory. On this point, I have some doubt whether the last foot of the hexameter, even in the classical languages, was invariably pronounced as a strict spondee, but imagine it took more frequently a trochaic sound; at least, I have heard good readers of Greek and Latin verse accent the penultimate. False pronunciations must be eschewed, and harsh elisions of syllables are bad; for unless the verse be smooth and flowing, it will utterly fail. The pentameter I would keep as dactylic as possible, although that is not essential; but also in hexameters, I like those lines best that abound in dactyls, particularly where the cæsura is marked. In the pentameter, the cæsura is absolutely necessary, and, from the nature of our language, nearly unavoidable. If by these few remarks I shall have done anything towards engrafting these classical metres on our language, I shall esteem my labour not in vain. In concluding, I give you a specimen of verses constructed as nearly as I could on the principles laid down, with this addition, that I have, although not without some hesitation, given the pentameters rhymes. I do not like rhymed hexameters; but I fancy that, however unclassical, the rhymed pentameters bring the verse still nearer to the forms of our English poetry, and may therefore sound less exotic. In the hope that my defects may urge some higher hand to make a more successful attempt, I submit myself to the risk of being snubbed by any modern Apollo, as Propertius by the ancient, with "Quid tibi cum tali demens est flumine? Quis te Carminis heroi tangere jussit opus?" Believe me, dear Mr. Editor, yours very faithfully, Glasgow, 13th February, 1847. HYMN TO THE CREATOR. A FRAGMENT IN HEXAMETER-PENTAMETER VERSE. THOU who hast been from eternity God and Lord of creation; First and alone in the limitless regions of space, we behold Thee, But by the power of thy will, call to existence the germ G. A. Which, in the fulness of time, thou shouldst fashion and mould at thy pleasure Thou didst form the stars in their infinite, intricate courses; Peopling the blue depths of space, countless, and beaming, and bright. Systems and suns, with their planets, circling in swift revolution, |