Fell on the listening ear of the Roman princes and people.
Ut belli signum Laurenti Turnus ab arce.
There is one line, one example of the smooth Virgilian verses, which perhaps Mr. Longfellow would have allowed himself to use, and his readers consented to accept, as a real hexameter.
Spargens humida mella soporiferumque papaver,
might, perhaps have been no more objected to than
Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres et le carillon de Dunkerque.
Yet even this most exceptionable form, with its special aim at expressing, by an adaptation of sound to sense, the
Scattering of liquid honeys and soporiferous poppy,
is a model of condensation, brevity, smoothness, and netteté, compared with that sprawling bit of rhythmical prose into which I have turned it.
But we are going to be learned, my dear sir; so I release your kind ears, and beg you will no longer trouble either yourself or them—but, some one, I foresee, of the numerous well-instructed future readers of this private correspondence will interpose with his or her objection, and will tell me, You read your Latin verse wrongly, you don’t put the stress upon the ictus—you should pronounce Virgil like Evangeline, Evangeline is the true hexameter; in Virgil the colloquial accent which you follow was lost in the accent of verse. The Romans of old read it, not