I recall having sometimes read French writers who, not having investigated the character of their tongue, have reproached it for its feminine syllables and have believed that their concurrence was harmful to its force and its harmony. These writers have scarcely considered what this language would be, deprived of its feminine sounds. For with the little force that it would gain on one side, it would acquire such a harshness on the other, that it would be impossible to draw from it four consecutive lines that would be endurable. If all its finals were masculine, and if nothing could change it otherwise, it would be necessary to renounce poetry, or like the Arabs, be resolved to compose whole poems in the same rhyme.
We have just seen that the lack of masculine finals takes away all energy from the Italian tongue; a contrary defect would deprive the French of this mélange of sweetness and force which makes it the première langue of Europe. The English language is lacking in precisely what the writers of whom I have spoken desired eliminated from the French, without foreseeing the grave disadvantages of their desire: it has no feminine finals[1];
- [Footnote: mandò, which could not be without altering the sense entirely. Marchetti
has translated into blank verse the Latin poem of Lucretius. I will quote the opening lines. Here is evident the softness to which I take exception and which prevents them from being really eumolpique, according to the sense that I have attached to this word.
Alma figlia di Giove, inclita madre
Del gran germe d'Enea, Venere bella,
Degli uomini piacere e degli Dei:
Tu, che sotto il volubili e lucenti
Segni del cielo, il mar profundo, e tutta
D'animai d'ogni specie orni la terra:
. . . etc.
]*
- ↑ One must not believe that the mute e with which many English words terminate represents the French feminine final, expressed by the same vowel. This mute e is in reality mute in English; ordinarily it is only used to give a more open sound to the vowel which precedes it, as in tale, scene, bone, pure,
