words, except that in the first he reads ὦ τελεταί, instead of cλéyerai: he calls them Priapeian, and attributes them to Euphorion the Chersonesiote. (De metris, c. 16.)

Comparing these two lines of Euphorion with those of Tzetzes and Manasses, we find them precisely the same in cadence: and then Dionysius calling them poowdikove seems to place it beyond a question that they are framed according to accent. The three accentual verses of Dionysius are less regular; but we must remember that he had restricted himself to the very same words which he found in Homer, and that his main object was not to compose accurate verses, but to show how completely different a rhythm and cadence might result from a transposition of the same words. These Priapeian songs were probably popular in the fullest sense of the word : they were sung at the vintage, at the jolly harvesthome of the grape, by boors and slaves, who forgot for the day their sorrow and degradation, and as they had shared in the labour, shared also in the joy. Such a company would scarcely appreciate metre, and certainly would not be able to recite it. Nothing seems more natural than that they should give vent to their mirth in a ruder and less technical system of verse. It is true, that Hephæstion, in giving these verses, treats them as metrical. It is possible, that if Hephaestion were a mere scholar, born and bred in cities, he might be so ignorant of the manners of the

country as not to know that these verses were accentual, and he might accordingly proceed to torture them into metre, as Quinctilian tells us that some grammarians in his own time did lyric poetry (in certam mensuram coëgerunt). And this supposition conveys not the least disrespect to the authority of Hephaestion as a scholar of taste, industry and learning, but only suggests that he may have been wanting, as better scholars than he have been, in that knowledge of the various ways of men which books cannot give. Neither is he able to reduce them to any fixed metre ; classing them among the πολυσχημάτιστα, which he defines to be such verses, as without any regularity admit of a variety of cadence, according to the arbitrary choice of the poet. But without further discussing whether they ought to be considered as accentual or not, it is enough for my purpose, that Dionysius so considered them: and admitting him to have been mistaken as to the rhythm of Euphorion's verses, we must surely allow him to know what he meant to be the rhythm of his own. So that instead of hastily concluding these accentual verses to be the mere creatures of barbarism, we are led by this passage of Dionysius into a new and interesting inquiry, how far Greece may be looked upon as the mother, not only of ancient, but of modern poetry; and whether the Troubadours, and particularly those of Marseilles, sung in a cadence derived by tradition from Hellenic ancestors.

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ENGLISH POETRY.

3. While on the subject of accentual poetry, it may be remarked that there is less wonder, if we are at a loss to settle the principles of Greek rhythm, when some of our ablest writers are by no means agreed upon our own. Many of them, in treating of the structure of English verse, seem to consider that it consists in quantity, and speak of iambics, anapæsts, spondees and dactyls, as if our verses were divided into metrical feet, and these feet were measured by long and short syllables. The very use of such expressions seems to imply, that the ear of the person using them is insensibly confusing accent and quantity, though perhaps in the same page he may show that his understanding is alive to their difference. Nothing can more forcibly show how liable an English ear is to this confusion, than our discovering it where we should least expect to find it, namely, in the work of that very critic, who has given us the clearest definitions of accent and quantity, and pointed out in the most perspicuous manner the distinction between them. Dr. Foster, in speaking of the quantity of the English language, after ably confuting the proposition, that the languages of the northern nations, including our own, have no quantity, thus proceeds :

"If the voice is retarded in some syllables and quickened in others, by what cause soever that delay or rapidity be occasioned or directed, there

.

is truly and formally long and short quantity. When in the words honestly, chārăcter, I dwell longer on the first syllable than on either of the two last, which I hurry over swiftly, the last two are the short ones, notwithstanding the consonants with which to the eye they appear to be clogged; and had there been six consonants instead of three in those last two syllables, if my voice should in practice hasten over each of them in less time than it does over the first, which is disencumbered with consonants, the latter syllables would certainly have a short quantity, and the first a long one. And thus it must appear to every one, who will not suffer his eyes to judge for his ears." (p. 16.) Now though it be certain, that those syllables are short, which in practice are hastened over in less time than the others, yet I doubt whether such a process can take place in the English, with respect to the words which Dr. Foster has selected. In the word "honestly," the consonants S and T must meet not only the eye, but the ear too; and that they may do so, it is necessary that there should be two distinct operations of the organs, or, as Henninius expresses it, the action of different muscles of the mouth, which take up about twice the time which is required for the first syllable. It is true, that the English might, if they pleased, protract the sound of the first syllable, so as to make it as long, or even longer than the second. But do they in fact do so? Unless I am to suffer the ears of

another to judge for mine, I should say that they do not and I suspect that Dr. Foster's assertion that they do, is caused by the confusion which his ear has made between accent and quantity in English, notwithstanding the ability which he has shown in distinguishing them in Greek. He afterwards says:

"The case is, we English cannot readily elevate a syllable without lengthening it, by which our acute accent and long quantity generally coincide, and fall together on the same syllable." And in the note he cites the authority of Dr. Johnson, who, in the rules of prosody prefixed to his Dictionary, considers the acute tone and long quantity in English verse as equivalent by acting together. On a point of recondite learning I should be unwilling indeed to oppose my opinion to that of Dr. Foster and Dr. Johnson; but here the question lies open to the decision of our own ears and I beg the reader to pronounce aloud the words "hónestly, responsibility, cávalry, súicide," and mark the length of time which each syllable takes in the delivery, and then say whether the acute accent and long quantity coincide in them, or whether some of the syllables which are depressed do not, in each of those words, take up more time than that which is elevated. And having given these words as instances, I will venture to say, that we shall end, not by confirming Dr. Foster's rule, but by doubting whether the English has not as many