the words; the second, by the lightness. Any difference between the acts of Ajax and Camilla rests on the use of weightier words in general for the former, but of such in the unaccented places, that is, on the words 'vast,' 'too,'' moves;' while the protraction of the last line of the piece, under opposite conditions, expresses ease like undrooping flight.

It may, however, be observed of the line that supposably 'labours,' that the quasi-hover that the word 'and' in accentual position allows imparts a metrical tendency quite opposite to tardy, unless overborne in utterance by a reflected weight from the known sense.

XIX.

CESURAL VERSE.

It was observed that every single metrical element was at times dropped, at others brought into prominent notice. We have had verses without cesura; we shall now have them of cesura only, dropping out of sight the foot altogether for a time, or making it quite secondary.

The cadence accompanying fixed cesura has already been commented on; we shall now see that this has the power of constituting verses to itself alone, with a certain kind of parallel bearing.

The peculiar style in which Macpherson edited his 'Poems of Ossian' is well known to every one, short disjointed sentences, varying between three and four feet about, but of no certain measure. Macpherson, with great propriety, scorned to reduce his poems to the crabbed forms of ordinary verse, and appears to have hesitated whether his work was not a kind of verse already. What, it may safely be asserted, he did not perceive was, how near an approximation to verse he

K

actually had attained, though yet beyond the barrier. Little more was needed than that two of his short sentences should have been written in one, and verse would have been constituted forthwith. The present writer is preparing an edition of Ossian thus ordered, of course with extensive modifications in general.

But why art thou sad, son of Fingal, why grows the cloud of thy soul? The chiefs of other days have departed, they have gone without their fame.

The sons of future years shall pass away; another race shall arise.

The people are like the waves of ocean, like the leaves of woody

Morven ;

They pass away in the rustling blast, and other leaves lift their green heads on high.

Did thy beauty last, O Ryno; stood the strength of carborne Oscar?
Fingal himself departed, the halls of his fathers forgot his steps.
Shalt thou then remain, thou aged bard, when the mighty have failed?
No, but my fame shall remain, and grow as the oak of Morven,
Which lifts its broad head to the storm, and rejoices in the course of the
wind.

The approach to feet is seen to be very close here, but so it is in the famous Poems' throughout; indeed, almost any English sentence of this length, of not too hard words, will naturally divide up in this way into feet approximate.

Even in so irregular a measure as this it is as well to keep tolerably close to one length of line; in the verse before us, not having fewer syllables than enough to make three feet in each member, not more on the average than to make four, or at most five. The second member will always bear pro

traction better than the first.

The darkness whistles there; the distant mariner sees the waving trees

Her soul trembles at the blast, she turns her ear towards the tread of her feet.

A triplet arrangement, or at least a sufficient displacement of the central cesura to wear that appearance, may perhaps

not be wholly inadmissible, but still should be very seldom allowed.

He took the bow; the tears flow down from both his sparkling eyes.

Too equal and decided a division into three is objectionable:

Silent he stands, for who had not heard of the battles of Gaul.

The same constitution can be applied to verses of much greater length, in which case the approach to foot-ordering is much less perceptible.

THE FLOWER GIRL OF SICYON.

O fair, very fair and glorious is the broad world; and all full of sunlight is the blinding and infinite blue.

Earth and heaven are beautiful in their perfect peace; but my soul within me is all a turbulent sea of love.

O my love! I behold you everywhere by night and by day;

In

my dreams you are with me through the darkness, and when I awake you abide still in my heart.

Never a thing I do but I do it for you who cannot see me, never a word I speak but I do it for you who hear me not.

O me! love is very sweet and sorrowful, but the pulses of the great earth beat continually to the music of love !

Is there anything stronger and mightier than love, that overcometh alike gods and men !

Answer me, ye beautiful flowers of the forest, ye amorous trees that overhead tenderly embrace one another!

Alas, I behold you happy in perfect possession; but my soul, my soul, is all a turbulent sea of love.-MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE (XV.).

6

The line here beginning O my love' is seen to stand apart, without a parallel. Shall it be regarded as forming a triplet with the next pair, or independent? Best the latter, perhaps, considering its length and self-completeness.

If there may be both single line and triplet, and yet the strong cesura that constitutes the parallel couplet the only atom of rule about the matter, it may well be inquired, is it worth while to chart such floating islands? But it is seen the exceptions are but like spondaic endings in the hexameter,

like an occasional quick-foot in blank verse, or any other small anomaly most metres present, and that the islands are really anchored after all.

The name proposed for verse of this cesural construction is the midabout, as the most descriptive of its character.

In arranging measures of this kind, when too long to get into one line, it seems advisable not to divide them in writing just at the cesura, such a practice tending to disintegrate the structure, and destroy the parallelism.

XX.

FREE VERSE.

THAT will be called free verse which is freed from control in the length of its lines, for division into lines appears to be the prime principle of metre. First, with feet and rhyme still preserved :

For all the many years

I might have seen peace upon Israel
Beside my father, in the citadel

Of Gilead, where in loneliness,

With neither son nor daughter, comfortless,
When I am gone he will be judging still.

One little week of tears,

And we have wept our fill.

Yes, I shall go away and have not seen

My children, or that child who might have been.

And yet I cannot weep

Cannot weep any more. I only wish to sleep

Here, in this flowery dell,

Where the soft waters well

To soothe me with a murmur low and sweet.-G. SIMCOX.

Or the same in quick metre:

Now shall we say

Our Italy lives indeed!

And if it were not for the beat and bray

Of drum and trump of martial men,

Should we feel the underground heave and strain,
Where heroes left their dust as a seed

Sure to emerge one day?

And if it were not for the rhythmic march

Of France and Piedmont's double hosts,
Should we hear the ghosts

Shrill through ruined aisle and arch,
Throb along the frescoed wall,

Whisper an oath by that divine,
They left in picture and stone,
That Italy is not dead at all?

And if it were not for the tears in our eyes,
These tears of a sudden and passionate joy,

Should we see her arise ?-MRS. BROWNING.

Short staves of settled form in their recurrence, but as irregular as pieces of this free verse, are in occasional use, as this of the end of the sixteenth century :

Send home my long strayed eyes to me,
Which oh! too long have dwelt on thee.
But if they there have learned such ill,
Such forced fashions

And false passions,
That they be

Made by thee

Fit for no good sight, keep them still.-J. DONNE.

Or again, in our own day:

Into the Silent Land,

Ah, who shall lead us thither ?

Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather,

And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand.

Who leads us with a gentle hand

Thither, O thither,

Into the Silent Land ?-LONGFELLOW.

The following, from Walter Scott's Betrothed,' but for lack

of foot formation, is a longer form of that class of recurrent stave instanced at the end of the section on Unrhymed Stanza :