As for Klopstock’s Odes, written mostly in classical metres, Zelter, the Berlin musician, said significantly that, when reading them, he felt as if he were eating stones!—See Briefwechsel mit Goethe.
Τὸ μὲν γὰρ πρῶτον τετραμετρῳ εχρῶντο διὰ τὸ σατυρικὴν καὶ ὀρχηστκωτέραν (ἐ)ιναι τὴν ποίησιν.
Poet. 4.
As in the conclusion of the Agamemnon, when the passion of the interested parties has wrought itself up to a climax. So in the passionate dialogue between Eteocles and Polynices, in Eurip. Phœnis. 591. The use of the Trochees in these passages is thus precisely the same as that of the Anapæsts in the finale of the Prometheus. In the Persians, they serve to give an increased dignity to the person of Atossa, and the Shade of the royal Darius.
“Take our blank verse for all in all, in all its gradations from the elaborate rhythm of Milton, down to its lowest structure in the early dramatists, and I believe that there is no measure comparable to it, either in our own or in any other language, for might and majesty, flexibility and compass.”—Southey, Preface to the Vision of Judgment. What Bulwer says to the contrary (Athens and the Athenians, vol. II. p. 43), was crudely thought, or idly spoken, and unworthy of so great a genius.