But it was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that the English hexameter came into somewhat more extensive use. It was at first chiefly employed in translations from the German. Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea has been translated five times at least (for the first time by Cochrane, Oxford, 1850). The metre has also been employed in translations of classical poetry, especially Homer and Virgil, and in original poems, none of which, however, have attained general popularity except those by Longfellow, especially his Evangeline and The Courtship of Miles Standish
§ 210. The hexameter is a six-foot catalectic verse theoretically consisting of five successive dactyls and a trochee. But the greatest rhythmical variety is given to this verse by the rule which allows a spondee to be used instead of any of the dactyls; in the fifth foot, however, this rarely occurs. In the sixth foot, moreover, the spondee is admissible instead of the trochee. The structure of the verse may thus be expressed by the following formula:
–́⏑͞⏑–́⏑͞⏑–́⏑͞⏑–́⏑͞⏑–́⏑⏑–́⏑̄.
The main difficulty in imitating this metre in English is caused by the large number of monosyllabic words in the English language, and especially by its lack of words with a spondaic measurement.
Some recent attempts to imitate the hexameter in English according to the principles of quantity have been altogether unsuccessful, as e.g. Cayley’s (Transactions of the Philological Society, 1862–3, Part i, pp. 67–85). Matthew Arnold’s method too proved impracticable (On Translating Homer, London, 1862); he attempted and recommended the regulation of the rhythm of the verse by the accent and at the same time sought not to neglect the quantity altogether. But the only successful method of adapting the hexameter to English use is that adopted by William Taylor, who followed the example of the Germans in observing only the accentual system and substituting the accentual trochee for the spondee. Sir John Herschel in his translation of Homer and Longfellow in his original poems have done the same.
Even with these modifications a certain harshness now and then is inevitable in hexameters both in German and particularly in English, where many lines occur consisting nearly throughout of monosyllables only, as e.g. the following lines from Longfellow’s Evangeline:
Whíte as the snów were his lócks, and his chéeks as brówn as the óak-leaves.
Ánd the great séal of the láw was sét like a sún on a márgin.
Other passages, however, prove the English hexameter to be as capable of harmony as the German if treated in this way; cf. e.g. the introductory verses of the same poem:[179]
Thís is the fórest priméval. The múrmuring pínes and the hémlocks,