The Poems and Fragments of Catullus / Translated in the Metres of the Original

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD, PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
LONDON: BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
there are no less than five violations of position, to say nothing of the shortening of a syllable so distinctly long as the i in primeval . Mr. Swinburne, in his Sapphics and Hendecasyllables, while writing on a manifestly artistic conception of those metres, and, in my judgment, proving their possibility for modern purposes by the superior rhythmical effect which a classically trained ear enabled him to make in handling them, neglects position as a rule, though his nice sense of metre leads him at times to observe it, and uniformly rejects any approach to the harsh combinations indulged in by other writers. The nearest approach to quantitative hexameters with which I am acquainted in modern English writers is the Andromeda of Mr. Kingsley, a poem which has produced little effect, but is interesting as a step to what may fairly be called a new development of the metre. For the experiments of the Elizabethan writers, Sir Philip Sidney and others, by that strange perversity which so often dominates literature, were as decidedly unsuccessful from an accentual, as the modern experiments from a quantitative point of view. Sir Philip Sidney has given in his Arcadia specimens of hexameters, elegiacs, sapphics, asclepiads, anacreontics, hendecasyllables. The following elegiacs will serve as a sample.
Unto a caitif wretch, whom long affliction holdeth, And now fully believ's help to bee quite perished; Grant yet, grant yet a look, to the last moment of his anguish, O you (alas so I finde) caus of his onely ruine: Dread not awhit (O goodly cruel) that pitie may enter Into thy heart by the sight of this Epistle I send: And so refuse to behold of these strange wounds the recitall, Lest it might m' allure home to thyself to return.
In these the classical laws of position are most carefully observed; every dactyl ending in a consonant is followed by a word beginning with a vowel or h — afflīctĭŏn holdeth , momēnt ŏf hĭs anguish , caūse ŏf hĭs onely ; affliction wasteth , moment of his dolour , cause of his dreary , would have been as impossible to Sir Philip Sidney as moērŏr tĕnebat , momēntă pĕr curae , caūsă vĕl sola in a Latin writer of hexameters. Similarly where the dactyl is incided after the second syllable, the third syllable beginning a new word, the utmost care is taken that that word shall begin not only with a syllable essentially short, but, when the second syllable ends in a consonant, with a vowel: ōf thĭs ĕpistle , but not ōf thĭs dĭsaster , still less ōf thĭs dĭrection . The other element of quantity is less rigidly defined; for (1) syllables strictly long, as I , thy , so , are allowed to be short; (2) syllables made long by the accent falling upon them are in some cases shortened, as rŭīne , pĕrĭshēd , crŭēl ; (3) syllables which the absence of the accent only allows to be long in thesi , are, in virtue of the classical laws of position, permitted to rank as long elsewhere— momēnt of his , ōf this epistle . It needs little reflection to see that it is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres must be ascribed. Pentameters like