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which, with untold mines of power, was meek and lowly and of childlike simplicity, as shewn, more or less, in every letter in the Life and Correspondence. That Southey was a great man and a great scholar, is comparatively, a little thing,-that he was a good man and a Christian every whit, and a righteous example and a pattern for ages yet to come, that is a great matter! His praise is this, that he was a humble minded man, a good son, a good father, a good Christian!

It is scarcely necessary to add, in the words of his prime favourite author, that " he had a rare felicity in speedy reading of books, and as it were but turning them over would give an exact account of all considerable therein." The words occur in the Holy State, in the Life of Mr. Perkins, who preached to the prisoners in the castle of Cambridge, "bound in their bodies, but too loose in their lives."

JOHN WOOD WARTER.

VICARAGE HOUSE, WEST TARRING, SUSSEX,
December 24, 1850.

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HE frequent occurrence of monosyllables is unfavourable to hexameters in our language. The omission of the e in the imperfect and participle, the contraction of the genitive, these also by shortening words increase the difficulty.

The Saxon genitive, then, must be restored; the pronoun genitive also, "his," and even "her." The latter innovation or renovation will remove one hissing sound.

The English hexameter will be much longer to the eye than either the Greek or Latin, but so many of our letters are useless, that I do not think it can be longer to the ear. We often express a single sound by two characters, as in all letters with the h compounded.

A trochee may be used for a spondee, perhaps an iambic, but the iambic must never follow a trochee.

Like blank verse, hexameters may run into each other, but the sentence must not, I think, close with a hemistich.

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Perhaps the Saxon plural in en may be advantageously restored.

The fewest possible syllables in a line are thirteen, the most seventeen. The first four feet vary from eight to twelve. I conceive that any arrangement between these will be sufficient if they satisfy the ear.

We have in our language twelve feet; the Greeks and Romans had twenty-eight. Spondee. Iambic Trochee

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Egypt

Děpārt

Languid

Lōvelily

Bělōvěd

undertake

Housebreaker
Lamentation

Extinguisher, according as it stands in the verse.

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Irregular Blank Verse.

Or metres that must be the best which being harmonious enough to the reader, fetters least the poet's thoughts.

blank verse of which none make the half of Those lines are admissible in irregular any other; for the Alexandrine is two tacked

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COULD trochaic lines be introduced into the rhymeless four-lined stanza? or would the change of cadence be too harsh ?,

5.

The Adonic line, the Dactylic, the Anacreontic, the Sapphic.

The sentence must not too often close on

a long syllable. The trochaic line of eight is the only double ending. This may be palliated by running the lines into the decimal one. And the anapæstic of nine will bear a redundant syllable at the end. There may also be occasionally introduced the trochaic of six, and the Adonic, perhaps the Sapphic or Phaleucian line.

Thus are there thirteen usable lines. The more complicate ones can, however, only be inserted in polishing; composition will not pause for them.

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NOAH.

Or all subjects this is the most magnificent.

This is the work with which I would attempt to introduce hexameters into our language. A scattered party of fifty or a hundred do nothing; but if I march a regular army of some thousands into the country, well disciplined, and on a good plan, they will effect their establishment.

My plan should be sketched before I have read Bodmer's poem; then, if his work be not above mediocrity, it may be melted at my convenience into mine.

For the philosophy, Burnett's Theory is the finest possible; for machinery the Rabbis must give it me, and the Talmuds are in requisition.

The feelings must be interested for some of those who perished in the waters. A maiden withheld from the ark by maternal love, and her betrothed self-sacrificed with her. Their deaths and consequent beatitude may be deeply affecting. In the despotism that has degraded the world, and made it fit only for destruction, there is room for strong painting. The Anakim have once already destroyed mankind!

March 26, 1800.

I HAVE read the Noachid of Bodmer; it

is a bad poem. In one point only does it

In these long lines there is danger lest the deserve to be followed, in adopting the sysepithets should be too frequent.

Of these duodecimo lines there is no fraction but the 9, for 8 and 9 are convertible, like 11 and 12, and 6 would be halving the long line only. The 7 makes a good line, the last half of a pentameter.

WITH rhyme a correspondent metre to that of the ebb tide would have a good effect, rhyming alternately thus, 9 12 12 9

tem of Whiston, and destroying the world by the approximation of a comet. This may be ingrafted upon Burnett's Theory.

June 29, 1801.

Iris unfortunate that Shem and Ham cannot be christened.

Japhet, the European inheritor, must be the prominent personage, and brimful of patriotism he should be. Some visit, perhaps, to Enoch in paradise. The death of

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