“Damon, you in shades of beech-trees idly reclining.”
But if the fifth foot also be a dissyllable, the measure becomes trochaic.
“Damon, you in shades of beech at ease reclining,
Play your oaten pipe, your rural strains combining.”
Supposing the dactylic character to be retained, we may have dissyllables not in one place only, but in several, as we have seen is the case in the more common English dactylics. Now, the metre thus produced corresponds with the heroic verse hexameters of the Greek and Latin languages; except in this, that the English dissyllable feet are not exactly spondees. The Greek and Latin hexameters admit of dactyls and spondees indiscriminately, except that the fifth foot is regularly a dactyl, and the sixth a spondee or trochee. Also, the regular cæsura of the Greek and Latin hexameters occurs in the beginning of the third foot, as in the English hexameters above given.
I think I have now shown that, without at all deviating from the common forms of English metre, and their customary liberties, we arrive at a metre which represents the classical hexameters, with this difference only, that the spondees are replaced by trochees. And this substitution is a necessary change; it results from the alternation of strong and weak syllables, which is a condition of all English versification.
And thus I have, I conceive, established my second point; that hexameters, exactly representing those of Greek and Latin verse, may grow out of purely English habits of versification.
But at the same time, I allow that classical scholars do read and write English hexameters with a recollection of those which they are familiar with in Greek and Latin; and that they have a disposition to identify the rhythm of the ancient and the modern examples, which leads them to treat English hexameters differently from other forms of English verse. This gives rise to some particularities of English hexameters, of which I may have a few words to say hereafter. In the mean time, I subscribe myself, your obedient
M. L.