language at once the savour and the substance, the matter and the manner of works of the highest individuality, conceived and executed in a foreign language."
In my version of hexameters and pentameters I have not shirked the metre although it is strangely out of favour in English literature while we read it and enjoy it in German. There is little valid reason for our aversion; the rhythm has been made familiar to our ears by long courses of Greek and Latin and the rarity of spondaic feet is assuredly to be supplied by art and artifice.
And now it is time for farewelling my friends:—we may no longer (alas!) address them, with the ingenuous Ancient in the imperative
Vos Plaudite.
Richard F. Burton.
July, 1890.