- with this passage, the author should have given the first syllable of "melon" as an example of short quantity?
- If the principle is true, which every body now takes for granted, that the foundation of versifying is some distinction pertaining to syllables; it is plain, that nothing can be done towards teaching the Art of Measuring Verses, till it be known upon what distinction in syllables our scheme of versification is based, and by what rule or rules the discrimination is, or ought to be, made. Errors here are central, radical, fundamental. Hence the necessity of these present disquisitions. Without some effectual criticism on their many false positions, prosodists may continue to theorize, dogmatize, plagiarize, and blunder on, as they have done, indefinitely, and knowledge of the rhythmic art be in no degree advanced by their productions, new or old. For the supposition is, that in general the consulters of these various oracles are persons more fallible still, and therefore likely to be misled by any errors that are not expressly pointed out to them. In this work, it is assumed, that quantity, not laboriously ascertained by "a great variety of rules applied from the Greek and Latin Prosody," but discriminated on principles of our own—quantity, dependent in some degree on the nature and number of the letters in a syllable, but still more on the presence or absence of stress—is the true foundation of our metre. It has already been stated, and perhaps proved, that this theory is as well supported by authority as any; but, since Lindley Murray, persuaded wrong by the positiveness of Sheridan, exchanged his scheme of feet formed by quantities, for a new one of "feet formed by accents"—or, rather, for an impracticable mixture of both, a scheme of supposed "duplicates of each foot"—it has been becoming more and more common for grammarians to represent the basis of English versification to be, not the distinction of long and short quantities, but the recurrence of accent at certain intervals. Such is the doctrine of Butler, Felton, Fowler, S. S. Greene, Hart, Hiley, R. C. Smith, Weld, Wells, and perhaps others. But, in this, all these writers contradict themselves; disregard their own definitions of accent; count monosyllables to be accented or unaccented; displace emphasis from the rank which Murray and others give it, as "the great regulator of quantity;" and suppose the length or shortness of syllables not to depend on the presence or absence of either accent or emphasis; and not to be of much account in the construction of English verse. As these strictures are running to a great length, it may be well now to introduce the poetic feet, and to reserve, for notes under that head, any further examination of opinions as to what constitutes the foundation of verse.
SECTION III.—OF POETIC FEET.
A verse, or line of poetry., consists of successive combinations of syllables, called feet. A poetic foot, in English, consists either of two or of three syllables, as in the following examples:
- "Cān tȳ\-rănts būt \ bў tȳ\-rănts cōn\-quĕred bē?"—Byron.
- "Hōlў, \ hōlў, \ hōlў! \ āll thĕ \ sāints ă\-dōre thĕe."—Heber.
- "And thĕ brēath \ ŏf thĕ Dē\-ĭtў cīr\-clĕd thĕ roōm."—Hunt.
- "Hāil tŏ thĕ \ chiēf whŏ ĭn \ trīŭmph ăd\-vāncĕs!"—Scott.
EXPLANATIONS AND DEFINITIONS.
Poetic feet being arbitrary combinations, contrived merely for the measuring of verses, and the ready ascertainment of the syllables that suit each rhythm, there is among prosodists a perplexing diversity of opinion, as to the number which we ought to recognize in our language. Some will have only two or three; others, four; others, eight; others, twelve. The dozen are all that can be made of two syllables and of three. Latinists sometimes make feet of four syllables, and admit sixteen more of these, acknowledging and naming twenty-eight in all. The principal English feet are the Iambus, the Trochee, the Anapest, and the Dactyl.
- The Iambus, or Iamb, is a poetic foot consisting of a short syllable and a long one; as, bĕtrāy, cŏnfēss, dĕmānd, ĭntent, dĕgrēe.
- The Trochee, or Choree, is a poetic foot consisting of a long syllable and a short one; as, hātefŭl, pēttĭsh, lēgăl, mēasŭre, hōlў.
- The Anapest is a poetic foot consisting of two short syllables and one long one; as, cŏntrăvēne, ăcquĭēsce, ĭmpŏrtūne.
- The Dactyl is a poetic foot consisting of one long syllable and two short ones; as, lābŏurĕr, pōssĭblĕ, wōndĕrfŭl.
These are our principal feet, not only because they are oftenest used, but because each kind, with little or no mixture, forms a distinct order of numbers, having a peculiar rhythm. Of verse, or poetic measure, we have, accordingly, four principal kinds, or orders; namely, Iambic, Trochaic, Anapestic, and Dactylic; as in the four lines cited above.
