ENGLISH HEXAMETERS. [To Tax Eorrok or Tax "Sracrarori."] SIR,—May a
reader who is interested in such verses say a word about the lines by R. H. Law in the Spectator of May
22nd ? They are evidently written by ear, not by pseudo-
classical rule. For example, a half-foot is dropped in the line,— "Canopied earth with delight, curtained her chambers with sweetness."
This confirms a view I have long held, that the third foot of an English pentameter may either contain a pause as in the classic model, or an equivalent number of syllables. But it is a
novelty to find the third foot of the hexameter treated with similar freedom.
So long as the lines—whether hexameters or elegiacs—
read themselves," there can be no objection to such freedom. But in lines like-
" Musical were the heavens above," or—
"Never the summer found them where the winter had left them," can we say that this condition is fulfilled ? Would the reader ignorant of classic rules know how to read these as
verse ? or would they not seem mere sections of "prose cut into lengths " ? Again, in the lines— "But with the plough there came," "For with the plough there came," what is the justification of the metrical stress on the words "but" and " for " ?
One who has still hopes for the English hexameter, and believes with Matthew Arnold that our poets" will not always be content to do without the.music " of this metre, asks leave to suggest these points for consideration. Others might be noticed, such as the use or non-use of caesura. But I must not take up your space with merely technical discussion.—I
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