Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/97

INSUFFICIENCY OF THE HEXAMETER VERSK. 79 ft second, and iambic for a third, if true at all, can only be admitted with great latitude of exception, when we find so many of them employed by the poets for very different subjects, gay or melancholy, bitter or complaining, earnest or sprightly, seemingly with little discrimination. But the adoption of some new metre, different from the per- petual series of hexameters, was required when the poet desired to do something more than recount a long story or fragment of heroic legend, when he sought to bring himself, his friends, his enemies, his city, his hopes and fears with regard to matters recent or impending, all before the notice of the hearer, and that, too, at once with brevity and animation. The Greek hexameter, like our blank verse, has all its limiting conditions bearing upon each separate line, and presents to the hearer no predetermined resting-place or natural pause beyond. 1 In reference to any long composition, either epic or dramatic, such unrestrained license is found convenient, and the case was similar for Greek- epos and drama, the single-lined iambic trimeter being gen- erally used for the dialogue of tragedy and comedy, just as the daktylic hexameter had been used for the epic. The metrical changes introduced by Archilochus and his contemporaries may be compared to a change from our blank verse to the rhymed couplet and quatrain : the verse was thrown into little systems of two, three, or four lines, with a pause at the end of each ; and the halt thus assured to, as well as expected and relished by, the ear, was generally coincident with a close, entire or partial, totally different vein of feeling. See the Dissertation of Franck, Callinns, pp. 37-48 (Leips. 1816). Of the remarks made by 0. Miiller respecting the metres of these early poets (Histoiy of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. xi, s. 8-12, etc.; ch. xii, s. 1-2, etc.), many appear to be uncertified and disputable. For some good remarks on the fallibility of men's impressions respecting the natural and inherent ^$of of particular metres, see Adam Smith (The- ory of Moral Sentiment, part v, ch. i, p. 329), in the edition of his works by Dugald Stewart. 1 See the observations in Aristotie (Rhetor, iii, 9) on the ?&? clpofiivi) as compa.-ed with At'^if KaTEarpa/^ievrf Ae&f eipojisvri, ?/ ovdev fyei re?oj GVTT) na&' aiiTT/v, uv fj.Tj TV) npuy/ia rb l.eyti/tevov (te, {] iv Trepiudoif 7,eyu <5e irepiofiov, "ki^iv e^oraav up%r/v ical tirr/v Ka-& J avrr/v not //t'yetJof evav