variable quantities, since the case admits no other rule, regard should be had to the analogy of the verse, and also to the common principles of accentuation.  It is doubtless possible to read the six short lines above, into the measure of so many anapests; but, since the two monosyllables “In” and “All” are as easily made long as short, whoever considers the common pronunciation of the longer words, “Resonance” and “Tinkled,” may well doubt whether the learned professors have, in this instance, hit upon the right mode of scansion.  The example may quite as well be regarded either as Trochaic Dimeter, cataletic, or as Amphimacric Monometer, acatalectic.  But the word resonance, being accented usually on the first syllable only, is naturally a dactyl; and, since the other five little verses end severally with a monosyllable, which can be varied in quantity, it is possible to read them all as being dactylics; and so the whole may be regarded as trebly doubtful with respect to the measure.

OBS. 4.—­L.  Murray says, “The shortest anapaestic verse must be a single anapaest; as,

    B~ut in v=ain
    They complain.”

And then he adds, “This measure is, however, ambiguous; for, by laying the stress of the voice on the first and third syllables, we might make a trochaic. And therefore the first and simplest form of our genuine Anapaestic verse, is made up of two anapaests.”—­Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 257; 12mo, p. 207.  This conclusion is utterly absurd, as well as completely contradictory to his first assertion.  The genuineness of this small metre depends not at all on what may be made of the same words by other pronunciation; nor can it be a very natural reading of this passage, that gives to “But” and “They” such emphasis as will make them long.

OBS. 5.—­Yet Chandler, in his improved grammar of 1847, has not failed to repeat the substance of all this absurdity and self-contradiction, carefully dressing it up in other language, thus:  “Verses composed of single Anapaests are frequently found in stanzas of songs; and the same is true of several of the other kinds of feet; but we may consider the first [i.e., shortest] form of anapaestic verse as consisting of two Anapaests.”—­Chandler’s Common School Gram., p. 196.

OBS. 6.—­Everett, speaking of anapestic lines, says, “The first and shortest of these is composed of a single Anapest following an Iambus.”—­English Versification, p. 99.  This not only denies the existence of Anapestic Monometer, but improperly takes for the Anapestic verse what is, by the statement itself, half Iambic, and therefore of the Composite Order.  But the false assertion is plainly refuted even by the author himself and on the same page.  For, at the bottom of the page, he has this contradictory note:  “It has been remarked (Sec.15) that though the Iambus with an additional short syllable is the shortest line that is known to Iambic verse, there are isolated instances of a single Iambus, and even of a single long syllable.  There are examples of lines made up of a single Anapest, as the following example will show:—­