three beats in each,[1] and is undoubtedly founded on "ditty" or sing-song, like our own ballad. On the contrary, the verse with five accents, which Pope, Cowper, Sotheby use, is adapted only to the terse, polished, oratorical or philosophical poetry of a cultivated age. In such a metre (and peculiarly without rhyme) a high subject is necessary, and an artificial, if not an ornamental, style: even with tender sentiments, simplicity in it is not easily borne, unless there is something elevated or rare in the thoughts; while to be homely and prosaic, even for a few lines, is offensive. Shakespeare knew this so well, that he chooses rather to break into plain prose, than put common thought into five-foot metre. Indeed with this metre the instinct of every translator at once sacrifices as inadmissible all the repetitions of epithets, half lines and whole lines, which so characterize the Greek epic. So glaring a proof of the incongruity of their form might have suggested that the mischief must go far deeper, and that they sacrifice inner qualities of the original life, as well as external badges. The affinity of the five-foot metre for Latinized words, which the ballad rejects, is another criterion which of the two is suitable to the Epic; for the entire dialect of Homer being essentially archaic, that of a translation ought to be as much Saxo-Norman as possible, and owe as little as possible to the elements thrown into our language by classical learning.
These considerations convinced me à priori that the English metre fitted to translate Homer's hexameter must be a long line composed of two short ones, having each either three beats or four beats. The nature of our syntax, which habitually begins sentences with unaccented words, (such as And, Or, If, But, For, When, &c.), farther proved to me that
- ↑ Those who take interest in this subject, may find an elaborate analysis of it by my learned and acute colleague, Professor Maiden, in a paper read before the Philological Society of London, March 1852.
