The Grammar of English Grammars - Goold Brown

Example II.—From a Description of a Stag-Hunt.

Example III.—An Extract from Shakespeare.

Example IV.—The Ten Commandments Versified.

This verse, consisting, when entirely regular, of twelve syllables in six iambs, is the Alexandrine; said to have been so named because it was "first used in a poem called Alexander."—Worcester's Dict. Such metre has sometimes been written, with little diversity, through an entire English poem, as in Drayton's Polyolbion; but, couplets of this length being generally esteemed too clumsy for our language, the Alexandrine has been little used by English versifiers, except to complete certain stanzas beginning with shorter iambics, or, occasionally, to close a period in heroic rhyme. French heroics are similar to this; and if, as some assert, we have obtained it thence, the original poem was doubtless a French one, detailing the exploits of the hero "Alexandre." The phrase, "an Alexandrine verse," is, in French, "un vers Alexandrin." Dr. Gregory, in his Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, copies Johnson's Quarto Dictionary, which says, "ALEXANDRINE, a kind of verse borrowed from the French, first used in a poem called Alexander. They [Alexandrines] consist, among the French, of twelve and thirteen syllables, in alternate couplets; and, among us, of twelve." Dr. Webster, in his American Dictionary, improperly (as I think) gives to the name two forms, and seems also to acknowledge two sorts of the English verse: "ALEXAN'DRINE, or ALEXAN'DRIAN, n. A kind of verse, consisting of twelve syllables, or of twelve and thirteen alternately." "The Pet-Lamb," a modern pastoral, by Wordsworth, has sixty-eight lines, all probably meant for Alexandrines; most of which have twelve syllables, though some have thirteen, and others, fourteen. But it were a great pity, that versification so faulty and unsuitable should ever be imitated. About half of the said lines, as they appear in the poet's royal octave, or "the First Complete American, from the Last London Edition," are as sheer prose as can be written, it being quite impossible to read them into any proper rhythm. The poem being designed for children, the measure should have been reduced to iambic trimeter, and made exact at that. The story commences thus:—

All this is regular, with the exception of one foot; but who can make any thing but prose of the following?

"Thy limbs will shortly be twice as stout as they are now,
Then I'll yoke thee to my cart like a pony in the plough."
"Here thou needest not dread the raven in the sky;
Night and day thou art safe,—our cottage is hard by."
WORDSWORTH'S Poems, New-Haven Ed., 1836, p. 4.