absurdity comes of attempting to regulate the movement of verse by accent, and not by quantity, while it is admitted that quantity, and not accent, forms the measure, which “signifies the proportion of time.”  The idea that pauses belong to measure, is an other radical error of the foregoing note.  There are more pauses in poetry than in prose, but none of them are properly “parts” of either.  Humphrey says truly, “Feet are the constituent parts of verse.”—­English Prosody, p. 8.  But L. Murray says, “Feet and pauses are the constituent parts of verse.”—­Octavo Gram., p. 252.  Here Sheridan gave bias.  Intending to treat of verse, and “the pauses peculiarly belonging to it,” the “Caesural” pause and the “Final,” the rhetorician had improperly said, “The constituent parts of verse are, feet, and pauses.”—­Sheridan’s Rhetorical Gram., p. 64.

[502] “But as many Ways as Quantities may be varied by Composition and Transposition, so many different Feet have the Greek Poets contriv’d, and that under distinct Names, from two to six Syllables, to the Number of 124.  But it is the Opinion of some Learned Men in this Way, that Poetic Numbers may be sufficiently explain’d by those of two or three Syllables, into which the rest are to be resolv’d.”—­Brightland’s Grammar, 7th Ed., p. 161.

[503] “THE BELLS OF ST. PETERSBURGH.”

   “Those ev’ning bells, those ev’ning bells,
    How many a tale their music tells!”—­Moore’s Melodies, p. 263.

This couplet, like all the rest of the piece from which it is taken, is iambic verse, and to be divided into feet thus:—­

   “Those ev’ | -ning bells, | those ev’ | -ning bells,
    How man | -y a tale | their mu | -sic tells!”

[504] Lord Kames, too, speaking of “English Heroic verse,” says:  “Every line consists of ten syllables, five short and five long; from which [rule] there are but two exceptions, both of them rare.”—­Elements of Criticism, Vol. ii, p. 89.

[505] “The Latin is a far more stately tongue than our own.  It is essentially spondaic; the English is as essentially dactylic.  The long syllable is the spirit of the Roman (and Greek) verse; the short syllable is the essence of ours.”—­Poe’s Notes upon English Verse; Pioneer, Vol. i, p. 110.  “We must search for spondaic words, which, in English, are rare indeed.”—­Ib., p. 111.

[506] “There is a rule, in Latin prosody, that a vowel before two consonants is long.  We moderns have not only no such rule, but profess inability to comprehend its rationale.”—­Poe’s Notes:  Pioneer, p. 112.

[507] The opponents of capital punishment will hardly take this for a fair version of the sixth commandment.—­G.  B.

[508] These versicles, except the two which are Italicized, are not iambic.  The others are partly trochaic; and, according to many of our prosodists, wholly so; but it is questionable whether they are not as properly amphimacric, or Cretic.