The Grammar of English Grammars - Goold Brown

Example XIII.—"Grongar Hill."—First Twenty-six Lines.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—This is the most common of our trochaic measures; and it seems to be equally popular, whether written with single rhyme, or with double; in stanzas, or in couplets; alone, or with some intentional intermixture. By a careful choice of words and style, it may be adapted to all sorts of subjects, grave, or gay; quaint, or pathetic; as may the corresponding iambic metre, with which it is often more or less mingled, as we see in some of the examples above. Milton's L'Allegro, or Gay Mood, has one hundred and fifty-two lines; ninety-eight of which are iambics; fifty-four trochaic tetrameters; a very few of each order having double rhymes. These orders the poet has not—"very ingeniously alternated" as Everett avers; but has simply interspersed, or commingled, with little or no regard to alternation. His Il Penseroso, or Grave Mood, has twenty-seven trochaic tetrameters, mixed irregularly with one hundred and forty-nine iambics.

OBS. 2.—Everett, who divides our trochaic tetrameters into two species of metre, imagines that the catalectic form, or that which is single-rhymed, "has a solemn effect,"—"imparts to all pieces more dignity than any of the other short measures,"—"that no trivial or humorous subject should be treated in this measure,"—and that, "besides dignity, it imparts an air of sadness to the subject."—English Verses., p. 87. Our "line of four trochees" he supposes to be "difficult of construction,"—"not of very frequent occurrence,"—"the most agreeable of all the trochaic measures,"—"remarkably well adapted to lively subjects,"—and "peculiarly expressive of the eagerness and fickleness of the passion of love."—Ib., p. 90. These pretended metrical characteristics seem scarcely more worthy of reliance, than astrological predictions, or the oracular guessings of our modern craniologists.

OBS. 3.—Dr. Campbell repeats a suggestion of the older critics, that gayety belongs naturally to all trochaics, as such, and gravity or grandeur, as naturally, to iambics; and he attempts to find a reason for the fact; while, perhaps, even here—more plausible though the supposition is—the fact may be at least half imaginary. "The iambus," says he, "is expressive of dignity and grandeur; the trochee, on the contrary, according to Aristotle, (Rhet. Lib. Ill,) is frolicsome and gay. It were difficult to assign a reason of this difference that would be satisfactory; but of the thing itself, I imagine, most people will be sensible on comparing the two kinds together. I know not whether it will be admitted as a sufficient reason, that the distinction into metrical feet hath a much greater influence in poetry on the rise and fall of the voice, than the distinction into words; and if so, when the cadences happen mostly after the long syllables, the verse will naturally have an air of greater gravity than when they happen mostly after the short."—Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 354.

MEASURE VI.—TROCHAIC OF THREE FEET, OR TRIMETER.

Example I.—Youth and Age Contrasted.