All you that bards of note would be,
Must study well your Prosody.
As Comparative Anatomy teaches what the sound of a cod-fish is; so Prosody teaches what is the sound of syllables.
Sound and quantity mean the same thing; though how that fact is to be reconciled with the proverb, “great cry and little wool,” we do not know.
Prosody is divided into three parts. Tone, Breathing, and Time. As to tone—boys are usually required to repeat it in a loud one, without stammering or drawling; and with as little breathing and time, or breathing-time, as possible.
We shall leave tone to the consideration of pianoforte and fiddle-makers; and breathing to doctors and chemists, who can analyze it a great deal better than we can. In this place we think proper to treat only of Time.
Now of Time a very great deal may be said, taking the word in all the senses in which it is capable of being used.
In the first place, Time flies—but this we have had occasion to observe before; as also that Time is a very great eater.
In the second, Time is a very ill-used personage; he is spent, wasted, lost, kicked down, and killed—the last as often as an Irishman is—but for all that he never complains.
It is a question whether keeping Time, or losing Time, is the essential characteristic of dancing.