But this made their task extremely difficult, without bringing any gain which the ear could recognise; and I believe that the earlier attempts to naturalize the hexameter in England failed mainly in consequence of their being executed under these severe conditions, which prevented all facility and flow in the expression, and gave the popular ear no pleasure.
The successful German hexametrists have rejected all regard to the classical rules of quantity of syllables; and have, I conceive, shown us plainly that this is the condition of success in such an undertaking. Take, for instance, the beginning of Hermann und Dorothea:—
“Und so sass das trauliche Paar, sich unter den Thorweg
Ueber das wander de Volk mit mancher Bemerkung ergötgend
Endlich aber began der wüedige Hansfrau, und sagte
Sept! dort kommt der Prediger her; es kommt auch der Nachbar.”
The penultimate dactyls in these lines, “unter dem Thorweg,” “Bemerkung ergötgend,” “Hansfrau und sagte,” “kommt auch der Nachbar,” have, in the place of short syllables, syllables which must be long, if any distinction of long and short, depending upon consonants and dipthongs, be recognised; but yet these are good and orderly dactyls, because in each we have a strong syllable followed by two weak ones. If we call such trissyllable feet dactyls, and in the same way describe other feet by their corresponding names in Greek and Latin verse, spondees, trochees, and the like, we shall be able to talk in an intelligible manner about English verse in general, and English hexameters in particular.
And I have now to show, in the second place, that English hexameters are readily accepted by the native ear, without any condition of discipline in Greek and Latin verse. I do not mean to say that hexameters have not a peculiar character among our forms of verse; and I should like to try to explain, on some future occasion, the mode in which the recollection of Homer and Virgil, in Greek and Latin, affects and modifies the pleasure which we receive from hexameter poems in German and English. But I say that, without any such reference, poems written in rigorous hexameters will be recognised by a common reader as easy current verse.
In order to bring out this point clearly, you must allow me, Mr Editor, to make my quotations with various readings of my own, which are requisite to exemplify the forms of verse of which I speak.
I begin by talking of “dactylics,” in spite of the Antijacobin. Dactylic measures are very familiar to our ears, and congenial to the genius of our versification. These lines are dactylics:—
“Oh | know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle
Are | emblems of | deeds that are | done in their | clime?”
But the lines may be also regarded as anapæstics:—
“Oh know | ye the land | &c.
Are em | blems of deeds | &c.
Where the rage | of the vul | ture, the love | of the turtle,|
Now melt | into sor | row, now mad | den to crime.|”