or,
Ep' omóisi feróusi ta kleína prosóp'.[[70]]
Now it is clear that when, over and above the fact of certain Greek metres having a different movement from their supposed English equivalents, there is the additional circumstance of such an incompatibility being less an accident than a necessary effect of difference of character in the two languages, the use of terms suggestive of a closer likeness than either does or ever can exist is to be condemned; and this is the case with the words, dactylic, trochaic, iambic, anapæstic, as applied to English versification.
[§ 657]. Certain classical feet have no English equivalents.—Whoever has considered the principles of English prosody, must have realized the important fact that, ex vi termini, no English measure can have either more or less than one accented syllable.
On the other hand, the classical metrists have several measures in both predicaments. Thus to go no farther than the trisyllabic feet, we have the pyrrhic ([˘ ˘]) and tribrach ([˘ ˘ ˘]) without a long syllable at all, and the spondee ([ˉ ˉ]), amphimacer ([ˉ ˘ ˉ]), and molossus ([ˉ ˉ ˉ]) with more than one long syllable. It follows, then that (even mutatis mutandis, i.e., with the accent considered as the equivalent to the long syllable) English pyrrhics, English tribrachs, English amphimacers, English spondees, and English molossi are, each and all, prosodial impossibilities.
It is submitted to the reader that the latter reason (based wholly upon the limitations that arise out of the structure of language) strengthens the objections of the previous section.
[§ 658]. The classical metres metrical even to English readers. The attention of the reader is directed to the difficulty involved in the following (apparently or partially) contradictory facts.
1. Accent and quantity differ; and the metrical systems founded upon them differ also.