severity against me[1], p. 87: 'It is a real fault when Mr Newman has:
Infátuáte! óh that thou wért | lord to some other army—
for here the reader is required, not for any special advantage to himself, but simply to save Mr Newman trouble, to place the accent on the insignificant word wert, where it has no business whatever'. Thus to the flaw which Mr Arnold admits nine times in thirteen pattern lines, he shows no mercy in me, who have toiled through fifteen thousand. Besides, on wert we are free at pleasure to place or not to place the accent; but in Mr Arnold's Bétween, Tó a, etc., it is impossible or offensive.
To avoid a needlessly personal argument, I enlarge on the general question of hexameters. Others, scholars of repute, have given example and authority to English hexameters. As matter of curiosity, as erudite sport, such experiments may have their value. I do not mean to express indiscriminate disapproval, much less contempt. I have myself privately tried the same in Alcaics; and find the chief objection to be, not that the task is impossible, but that to execute it well is too difficult for a language like ours, overladen with consonants, and abounding with syllables
- ↑ He attacks the same line also in p. 44; but I do not claim this as a mark, how free I am from the fault.
