these are always marked and traceable, more or less. As graceful and flowing octosyllables, the following lines from the Tam O'Shanter of Burns have not many equals in our poetry:

"But pleasures are like poppies spread;

You seize the flower-its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow-falls in the river,
A moment white, then gone for ever;
Or like the Borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form,

Evanishing amid the storm."

Long and short syllables alternately form the regular rhythm of this kind of verse; but occasional changes of rhythm and accentuation are used by all good writers. In the following lines, Andrew Marvel introduces finely such a change:

"He hangs in shades the orange bright,

Like golden lamps in a green night."

The emphasis is sometimes placed on the first syllable, as in the subjoined:

66

Fling but a stone-the giant dies."

Smoothing the rugged brow of night."

The deca-syllabic verse, however, will allow more fully of the illustration of the subjects of accent and pause.

In the meantime, a word, and only a word, requires to be said regarding verses of nine syllables. Such verses, in their normal and most natural shape, start with two short syllables, followed by a long one; and the same arrangement, repeated twice afterwards successively, completes the line. It has thus but three accented to six unaccented vowel-sounds.. Few poets of any repute have used this measure extensively, if we except Shenstone, to whose style it gives an almost unique caste. For example

"Not a pine in my grove is there seen,

But with tendrils of woodbine is bound;

Not a beech's more beautiful green,

But a sweet-briar entwines it around.
One would think she might like to retire
To the bower I have laboured to rear;
Not a shrub that I heard her admire,

But I hasted and planted it there."

Shenstone often introduces eight syllables only, as in the following stanza:

"Ye shepherds, so cheerful and gay,
Whose flocks never carelessly roam,
Should Corydon's happen to stray,

O call the poor wanderers home."

But he here retains the proper rhythm of the measure of nine syllables, and the lines just quoted may rightly be looked on as still in that verse, though defective in a syllable. There are several modes of writing the same measure, different from that of Shenstone, but it may suffice to notice one instance.

"When in death I shall calmly recline,

O bear my heart to my mistress dear,
Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine

Of the brightest hue, while it lingered here."

These lines are far from being very musical in themselves, and were only so written to suit precomposed music. They are indeed positively harsh, if read without a recollection of that music, and confirm the remark made, that each numerical assemblage or series of syllables appears to have one only kind of rhythm proper and natural to it, and apart from which it is usually immelodious.

The ten-syllabled line is the heroic one of the English language, and a noble one it is, rivalling the lofty hexameter of Greece and Rome, and casting utterly into the shade the dancing, frivolous epic measure of French poetry. The latter runs in this rhythmical fashion:

"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps." And in this measure is composed the Henriade of Voltaire, with all the famed tragedies of Corneille and Racine, as well as the pungent satires of Boileau. How characteristic of the Gaul the adoption and use of such a sing-song form of heroic verse! The deca-syllabic line of England is of a more dignified caste, while, at the same time, capable of serving far more numerous and varied purposes. "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, whatever stirs this mortal frame," it has been found fitted to give expression to in a manner worthy of the themes. A glorious vehicle it proved for the inspirations of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspere, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Milton, Dryden, Pope,

Thomson, Akenside, Young, Goldsmith, Cowper, and other bards of past generations; while scarcely less magnificent has been the handling of the same measure by the poets of the last age, the third great one in our literary annals. Crabbe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, Campbell, Southey, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, with other recent poets of deserved renown, have all wielded the deca-syllabic line, with or without rhyme, with success, as well as with singularly varied ability. A long list of dramatists, of the Elizabethan, Annean, and Georgean eras, has of course to be added to the roll now given.

The heroic or epic measure of English verse consists of ten-syllabled lines, each of which, in its ordinary rhythmical form, presents a short and long syllable alternately. The length of the line enables us distinctly to trace in it both accent and pause; and it is upon frequent changes in the seats of these that the varied harmony of the heroic measure depends. The general accentuation falls on the long syllables, the sense, however, always directing the reader to accent some single syllable specially in each line. The pause uniformly follows the syllable or word so accented specially, unless that syllable be the first part of a long word, or be followed by short monosyllables. Thus, in the following lines the accent is severed from the Both are marked.

"As búsy-as intentive emmets are."

"So fresh the wound is-and the grief so vast."
"Those seats of lúxury-debate and pride."

pause.

The pause is usually marked by a comma or period, but this, as before said, is not necessarily the case. In reading the deca-syllabic line, a pause must somewhere be made, whether or not the sense be divided by points of any kind. The writings of Pope exemplify strikingly the formal or normal rhythm, accent, and pause of the heroic line, and a quotation may be made, to exhibit these fully. The pause is marked in each line, and the same mark shows the seat of the accent.

"See in her cell' sad Eloisa spread,

Propped on some tomb,' a neighbour of the dead.
In each low wind' methinks a spirit calls,
And more than echoes' talk along the walls.
Here as I watched' the dying lamps around,
From yonder shrine' I heard a hollow sound.

Come, sister, come!' (it said or seemed to say)
Thy place is here; sad sister, come away;
Once like thyself,' I trembled, wept, and prayed,
Love's victim then,' though now a sainted maid:
But all is calm' in this eternal sleep;

Here grief forgets to groan,' and love to weep;
Even superstition' loses every fear,

For God, not man,' absolves our frailties here." This passage contains the secret of that smoothness which so peculiarly characterises the versification of Pope. In the preceding fourteen lines, the accent and the pause are seated, in all save three instances, at the same or fourth syllable; or rather the seat of the accent is only once altered (at the twelfth line), while the pause, changed there, is also changed in the fourth and thirteenth lines, where it occurs on the fifth and short syllables in the words "echoes" and "superstition," the accent remaining on the fourth in both cases. Now, the versification of Pope is by no means so monotonous at all times, but it is sufficiently marked by the peculiar features exhibited here that is, the reiterated location of the accent and pause near the middle of each line, with the pause most frequently at long syllables-to render his verses smooth even to a wearisome excess. It is this characteristic of structure, often felt but seldom understood, which distinguishes the poetry of Pope from that of almost every other writer of note in the language. Darwin resembles him most closely, though the later poet had marked peculiarities of his own. He emphasised more particularly nearly one-half the first syllables of his lines. Verse after verse runs thus:

"Sighs in the gale, and whispers in the grot."

"Spans the pale nations with colossal stride."

The sweetness here is great, but, most undoubtedly, verse possessed of a much more perfect and uncloying species of melody has been produced by those poets who have admitted greater variety into the composition of their lines. The license used by Shakspere, for example, in respect of rhythm, accent, and pause, is unlimited; and beautiful, indeed, are the results.

"The quality of mercy' is not strained.

It droppeth' as the gentle dew from heaven
Upon the place beneath.' It is twice blessed;

It blesseth him that gives,' and him that takes;
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest ;' it becomes
The throned monarch' better than his crown;
It is an attribute' to God himself."

"Sweet' are the uses of adversity,

Which, like a toad,' ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel' in his head."

I know a bank' whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips' and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied' with lush woodbine,

With sweet musk-róses, and with eglantine."

It is unnecessary to multiply examples of this sort. The deca-syllablic line of Shakspere is varied in structure, as said, almost unlimitedly, the seat of the accent and pause being shifted from the first word to the last, as if at random, but often, in reality, with a fine regard to the sense. Ben Jonson, and indeed all our older writers, indulge in the like free variations of the heroic measure; and the poets of the present day, in imitating their higher qualities, have also followed their example in respect of mere versification. Wordsworth and Keats, perhaps, may be held as having excelled all the moderns, their contemporaries, in the art of "building the lofty rhyme." Both attended specially to the subject, deeming it by no means beneath them to meditate well the melody of single lines, and the aptitude even of individual words. Hence may Coleridge justly praise Wordsworth for "his austere purity of language," and "the perfect appropriateness of his words to the meaning"-for his "sinewy strength" in isolated verses, and "the frequent curiosa felicitas of his diction." But Wordsworth himself owns his artistic care and toil in composition even more strongly.

"When happiest Fancy has inspired the strains,
How oft the malice of one luckless word
Pursues the Enthusiast to the social board,

Or haunts him lated on the silent plains!"

The beauties of the bard of Rydal are, at the same time, too widely spread to render him the best example for our present purpose. Keats attended more closely to the minutiæ of pure versification in single passages, and may furnish better illustrations here. The subjoined Arcadian picture displays exquisite ease and freedom of composition: "Leading the way,' young damsels danced along, Bearing the burden' of a shepherd's song;