6 JANUARY 1912, Page 25

ENGLISH HEXAMETERS:

WILLIAM WATSON.*

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]

English hexameter-writers, some six, have been nam'd in your columns : Longfellow, Kingsley, and Clough, Neale, Dr. Hawtrey, and Stone. • Seventh, but nowise the least of the seven, one yet may be mention'd, Singer of 'Lakeland Once More,' chanter of Hymn to the Sea,' Wielder in After Defeat' of Virgil's stateliest measure '; But elegiacs As well, graceful as Ovid's, are his.

Serious of purpose, and noble in diction, and easy of scansion,— This correspondence should not close without mention of him."

[We agree. We have always thought the following line in the " Hymn to the Sea " unsurpassed in English elegiacs :- " When upon orchard and lane breaks the white foam of the Spring."

—En. Spectator.]

• The poems referred to will be found in the 1905 edition, vol. 1., pp. 38, 195 and vol. IL, p. 84,