"Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?"
The fact is, that though the English hexameter, well constructed, is acknowledged by an English ear, as completely as any other dactylic or anapæstic measure, it always recalls, in the mind of a classical scholar, the recollection of Greek and Latin hexameters; and this association makes him willing to accept some rhythmical peculiarities which the classical forms and rules seem to justify. The peculiarities are felt as an allusion to Homer and Virgil, and give to the verse a kind of learned grace, which may or may not be pedantic, according to the judgment with which it is introduced. Undoubtedly, if the hexameter ever come to be as familiar in English as it is in German poetry, our best hexametrists will, like theirs, learn to convey, along with the pleasure which belongs to a flowing and familiar native measure, that which arises from agreeable recollections of the rhythms of the great epics of antiquity.
And, I add further, that the recollection of classical hexameters which will thus, in the minds of scholars, always accompany the flow of English hexameters, makes any addition to, or subtraction from, the six standard feet of the verse altogether intolerable. And hence I earnestly protest—and I hope you, Mr Editor, agree with me—against the license claimed by Southey, of using any foot of two or three syllables at the beginning of a line, to avoid the exotic and forced character, which, he says, the verse would assume if every line were to begin with a long syllable. No, no, my dear sir; this will never do. If we are to have hexameters at all, every line must begin with a long syllable. It is true, that this is sometimes difficult to attain. It is a condition which forbids us to begin a line with The, or It, or many other familiar beginnings of sentences. But it is a condition which must be adhered to; and if any one finds it too difficult, he must write something else, and leave hexameters alone. Southey, though he has claimed the license of violating this rule, has not written many of such licentious lines. I suppose the following are intended to be of this description:—
"That nōt for lawless devices, nor goaded by desperate fortunes."
"Upōn all seas and shores, wheresoever her rights were offended."
"His rēverend form repose; heavenward his face was directed."
The two former lines might easily be corrected by leaving out the first syllable. The other is a very bad line, even if the licence be allowed.
For the same reason it must be considered a very bad fault to have supernumerary syllables, or syllables which would be supernumerary if not cut down by a harsh elision. A final dactyl, requiring an elision to make it fit its place, appears to me very odious. Southey has such:—
"wins in the chamber
What he lost in the field, in fancy conquers the conqueror."
"Still it deceiveth the weak, inflameth the rash and the desperate."