“And Thomson, though best in his indolent fits,
    Either slept himself weary, or blasted his wits.”—­Id.

Here, if we reckon the feet in question to be anapests, we have dissyllables with both parts short.  But some, accenting “ago” on the latter syllable, and “Either” on the former, will call “ago now” a bacchy, and “Either slept” an amphimac:  because they make them such by their manner of reading.—­G.  B.

[484] “Edgar A. Poe, the author, died at Baltimore on Sunday” [the 7th].—­Daily Evening Traveller, Boston Oct. 9, 1849.  This was eight or ten months after the writing of these observations.—­G.  B.

[485] “Versification is the art of arranging words into lines of correspondent length, so as to produce harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity”—­Brown’s Institutes of E. Gram., p. 235.

[486] This appears to be an error; for, according to Dilworth, and other arithmeticians, “a unit is a number;” and so is it expounded by Johnson, Walker, Webster, and Worcester.  See, in the Introduction, a note at the foot of p. 117.  Mulligan, however, contends still, that one is no number; and that, “to talk of the singular number is absurd—­a contradiction in terms;”—­because, “in common discourse,” a “number” is “always a plurality, except”—­when it is “number one!”—­See Grammatical Structure of the E. Language, Sec.33.  Some prosodists have taught the absurdity, that two feet are necessary to constitute a metre, and have accordingly applied the terms, monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter,—­or so many of them as they could so misapply,—­in a sense very different from the usual acceptation.  The proper principle is, that, “One foot constitutes a metre.”—­Dr. P. Wilson’s Greek Prosody, p. 53.  And verses are to be denominated Monometer, Dimeter, Trimeter, &c., according to “THE NUMBER OF FEET.”—­See ib. p. 6.  But Worcester’s Universal and Critical Dictionary has the following not very consistent explanations:  “MONOMETER, n. One metre. Beck.  DIMETER, n. A poetic measure of four feet; a series of two meters. Beck.  TRIMETER, a.  Consisting of three poetical measures, forming an iambic of six feet. Tyrwhitt.  TETRAMETER, n. A Latin or Greek verse consisting of four feet; a series of four metres.  TETRAMETER, a.  Having four metrical feet. Tyrwhitt.  PENTAMETER, n. A Greek or Latin verse of five feet; a series of five metres.  PENTAMETER, a.  Having five metrical feet. Warton.  HEXAMETER, n. A verse or line of poetry, having six feet, either dactyls or spondees; the heroic, and most important, verse among the Greeks and Romans;—­a rhythmical series of six metres.  HEXAMETER, a.  Having six metrical feet. Dr. Warton.”  According to these definitions, Dimeter has as many feet as Tetrameter; and Trimeter has as many as Hexameter!