"And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain."
By giving lines of ten, twelve, and fourteen syllables in succession, as he occasionally does in his translation of Virgil, Dryden brings passages with artistic skill to a very noble climax. But the Alexandrine is now nearly obsolete in our poetry.
The most common features and peculiarities of English Versification have now received a share of attention. Measure and Rhythm,—Accent and Pause, have all been duly noticed. There are yet other points, however, connected with the subject, which merit equal attention from the student of poetical composition. Every rule that has been mentioned may be preserved, and still most inharmonious verse may be the result. The greatest poets, either from experience or innate musical taste, adopted additional means to arrive at perfect versification. Pope points to some of these in his well-known lines:—
"The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar."
The poet, as all will of course see, here exemplifies the meaning of his lines practically in their structure. The Greek and Roman writers were quite aware of the effect of congruous sound and sense. Virgil has several famous lines constructed on this principle, as—
"Monstrum, horrendum, informe, ingens cui lumen ademptum."