iambus, for the third foot, will make the verse more musical, as the pause will be more strong after a short syllable. Thus, Fit to adorn the dead,-and deck the dreary tomb. For the same reason an iambic foot at the end of any English verse has a good effect; and it is to such a collocation that Dryden's versification owes great part of its harmony. An alexandrine entirely consisting of iambic feet, answers precisely to a pure tetrametrical iambic verse of the ancients. Thus, The gentle Eve awakes refreshfull airs around, Eques sonante vērbĕrābit ungula. In reading this kind of measure, the an cients did not, probably, huddle the syllables together, as we do: but it would be difficult to point out the places at which they made their pauses. Why should the following pure iambic of Sophocles *, Λνειμένη μεν ὡς ἔοικας αν τρέφη, be read like mere prose, without any certain pause, or division? And this verse of Anacreon †, Θελω λεγειν Ατρείδας, Be read with these rests, Θελω λεγειν-Αλειδας ? May we not suppose, that the iambic of Sophocles was read with some such divisions as these, Ανειμένη-μενώς εοικας αυσρέφη Elect. v. 518. † Od. i. v. 1. Which are not very unlike those which we make use of in reading the above English alexandrine (or iambic) verse, The gentle Eve-awakes-refresh-full airs-around. It may be observed, that a Latin hexameter is essentially distinguished from a prose sentence, only by being terminated with a dactyle preceding a spondee; upon which account our manner of reading the endings of such hexameters as these, Procumbit humi bos,-oceano nox,-amica luto sus, &c. is probably wrong*; for according to the modern fashion of pronouncing them, the whole verse doth not differ in sound from an oratio prosaica; in contradiction therefore This supposition will be more readily allowed, since Mr. Johnson has indisputably proved, that such monosyllabic terminations were not always intended by their authors as mechanical echoes to the sense, according to an opinion equally chimerical and inveterate. to the reigning practice, we should take care to express the dactyle and spondee thusocean—o nox; and so of the rest. And that this was the practice of the ancients, may be farther inferred from these words of Quintilian, on reading verses, Sit lectio virilis, et cum severitate quadam gravis; et non quidem Prosæ similis, quia Carmen est *. B. iii. c. i. s. lvi. And every knight, and every gentle squire With bascio mani, Ital. with kissing her hands: a phrase, perhaps, common in our author's age, when Italian manners were universally affected. B. iii. c. i. s. lxii. Out of her filed bed. * Instit. Orat. 1. i. c. 8. "Out of her defiled bed." SHAKESPEARE. For Bancho's issue have I fil'd my mind ". B. iii. c. ii. s. xxv. He bore a crowned little ermilin, That deckt the azure field with her faire pouldred skin, That is, with her skin spotted, or variegated; in its primary sense, besprinkled: this is the genuine spelling of powdered, according to the etymology to which Skinner conjectures it to belong, viz. a pulvere, conspergo pulvere. We find the substantive Powder generally spelled thus in old authors. Thus B. Jonson, And of the Poulder-plot they will talk yet f. Spenser again uses the verb in its sense, besprinkle, Macbeth, act. iii, sc. 2. + Epig. xcii. |