"When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we christened the "Lady Blanch;' when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's (as W calls it) and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you?

"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holyday-holydays, and all other fun, are gone, now we are rich-and the little hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad-and how you would pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we might go in, and produce our store-only paying for the ale that you must call for-and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth,-and wish for such another honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing-and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us--but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? Now, when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of the wayand go into a fine inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the expense-which, after all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a pre'carious welcome.

"You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit or boxes. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood-when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery-where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me and more strongly I felt obligation to you for

having brought me and the pleasure was the better for a little shame-and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria? You used to say, that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially-that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the stage-because a word lost would have been a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such reflections we consoled our pride then-and I appeal to you, whether, as a woman, I met generally with less attention and accommodation, than I have done since in more expensive situations in the house? The getting in indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough,--but there was still a law of civility to women recognised to quite as great an extent as we have ever found it in the other passages-and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat, and the play, afterwards! Now we can only pay our money, and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then

but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty.

"There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they became quite common-in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear-to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves now—that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat-when two people living together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like; while each apologises, and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how

to make much of others. But now what I mean by the word-we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above po

verty.

It

gle with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. strengthened, and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The "I know what you were going to resisting power-those natural dilasay, that it is mighty pleasant at the tions of the youthful spirit, which end of the year to make all meet circumstances cannot straiten-with and much ado we used to have every us are long since passed away. ComThirty-first Night of December to petence to age is supplemental account for our exceedings-many a youth; a sorry supplement indeed, long face did you make over your but I fear the best that is to be had. puzzled accounts, and in contriving We must ride, where we formerly to make it out how we had spent so walked; live better, and lie softermuch-or that we had not spent so and shall be wise to do so-than we much-or that it was impossible we had means to do in those good old should spend so much next year- days you speak of. Yet could those and still we found our slender capital days return-could you and I once decreasing-but then, betwixt ways, more walk our thirty miles a-dayand projects, and compromises of one could Bannister and Mrs. Bland asort or another, and talk of curtail- gain be young, and you and I be ing this charge, and doing without young to see them-could the good that for the future--and the hope old one shilling gallery days return that youth brings, and laughing spi--they are dreams, my cousin, now rits (in which you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with lusty brimmers' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we used to welcome in the coming guest.' Now, we have no reckoning at all at the end of an old year-no flattering promises about the new year doing better for us."

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of poor hundred pounds a year. "It is true we were happier when we poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend our selves. That we had much to strug

were

but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument by our well-carpeted fire-side, sitting on this luxurious sofa-be once more struggling up those inconvenient stair-cases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblerscould I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours-and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the top-most stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us-I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth than Croesus had, or the great Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half-Madona-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer house."

ELIA.

ON ENGLISH VERSIFICATION.

No. III.

OF THE KINDS OF ENGLISH VERSE.

OUR verses are of four kinds, which have their respective names from the feet of which they are composed, viz iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic. Each kind is divisible into subordinate species, according to the number of feet contained in it; the line of two feet, for instance, not being properly of the same species with that of three or four.

SECTION I.

Of the Iambic Verse.

An iambic verse may consist of one foot only, or of any greater number to six, and even to seven: of course it comprises as many species. The first is never employed alone; and is seldom, if ever, to be found at all in any modern poetry of note, except in the transactions of the Irish Society, vol i. for 1786, in these lines of an ode to the Moon:

Smote by thy sacred eyes,
He feels an icy dart
Transfix his coward heart,
And dies.

Donne, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, who admitted great variety of measures into his poems, has used this: for example,

As men do when the summer sun
Grows great,

to have had in view, when he wrote his Lycidas.

The iambic of seven feet is that which is now divided into two lines. Originally it was but one; as in this example from Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses: The princely palace of the Sun stood gorgeous to behold,

On stately pillars builded high of yellow burnish'd gold.

A line of so great length could not well be recited without a pause; which was found to be most agreeable to the ear, if made after the eighth syllable: the line, therefore, became two, of four and three feet; and each of them had frequently a rhyme, after this manner:

Trust not in worldly princes then,

Though they abound in wealth; Nor in the sons of mortal men, In whom there is no health. Our old translation of the Psalms It was runs chiefly in this measure. the commonest of the time; and was principally used by the translators of the classics; by Chapman for Homer, Phaer for Virgil, and Golding for Ovid. The largest original work is Albion's England, by W. Warner; a poem of an easy and unaffected style, and smooth versifica

Though I admire their greatness, shun tion, and, in its day (the latter part

Their heat.

Poems, vol. v. p. 141. Chalmers's Edit. Iambic lines of two, three, four, and five feet, are too well-known and common to need showing by examples.

The sixth species of iambic verse, or that of six feet, is usually called the alexandrine. Like that of one foot, it is unemployed now, except along with others of a shorter measure. Yet, in a former age, Drayton composed a long poem, his Polyolbion, entirely in lines of this length. Such also was that of Spenser, on the death of Sir Philip Sidney, entitled "The Mourning Muse of Thestylis;" which Milton appears

of Queen Elizabeth's reign) exceedingly popular.

It was considered as a rule of this measure, that the end of the fourth foot (the eighth syllable) should also be the end of a word; as,

The restless clouds that mantling ride upon the racking sky,

The scouring winds that sightless in the sounding air do fly.

Albion's England. Warner carefully attended to the rule; but it was not always observed by others.

His countenance deep she draws, and fixed

fast she bears in breast, His words also, nor to her careful heart can come no rest.*

Phaer's Virgil.

* Webbe, in his Discourse of Poetry, p. 56, mentions a species of iambic verse or eight feet. "The longest verse which I have seen used in English, consisteth of sixteen syllables, each two verses rhyming together; thus,

SECTION II.

Of the Trochaic Verse. The shortest line which this mea sure will admit of, is that of three syllables; such is this in Pope's ode on St. Cecilia's day,

Hollow groans,
Sullen moans.

Trochaic lines of four, five, and six syllables were not uncommon among our earlier poets; now they are very seldom in use. Those of seven and eight syllables are frequent: of the first sort is this of Gray;

Ruin seize thee, ruthless king. Of the eight syllable, or four feet complete, this is an example:

Hence away, thou Siren, leave me.

This last is seldom, if ever, employed alone; sometimes, but not often, it is the concluding line of a stanza; thus,

Sweet, I do not pardon crave,
Till I have

By deserts this fault amended;
This, I only this desire,

That your ire

May with penance be suspended.

But most commonly it was followed by the line of seven syllables, and these two, taken so together, make precisely that verse which the Greeks called, trochaicum tetrametrum catalecticum, i. e. the trochaic verse of eight feet curtailed; and of which the following lines, inserted in more than one of their tragedies, are an example:

Ο πατρας Θηβης ενοικοι, λευσσετ' Οιδιο

πες όδε,

Ος τα κλειν' αινιγματ' ηδει, και κρατιτος ην ανηρ. +

If we translate these two lines, preserving the same measure, they will form the ordinary stanza of four English trochaics.

O, ye Thebans, here behold him;
This is Edipus you see:
He that solved the dire enigma,
Wise, and great, and good was he.

Of the line of seven syllables it has been said, that it is a truncated verse, and differs in nothing from the four foot iambic, but in wanting the first syllable. That it is a truncated verse is true; but what is cut off, or wanting, is not at the beginning, but the end. Besides this, it differs surely from the iambic, in estimation and character. It has always been estimated and called a trochaic line; and it is more sprightly in character and sound: in short, there is as much difference between the verses, as between the trochee and iambic, the feet of which they are composed. In certain poems, where the leading measure is the iambic of four feet, our poets have frequently intermixed the seven syllable trochaic, as Milton in his Ållegro and Penseroso, and others, more especially, since his time; but in lyric poems, where, by the settled laws of composition, the same measures are to be repeated in every corresponding stanza, there they respect the difference between these lines, and have not used them indiscriminately. Of this, Gray, in his Pindaric odes, is an instance; so are our earlier authors, as Donne; and of the same age, W. Browne, a delightful poet, and excellent versifier. We have likewise many entire poems in the trochaic verse of seven syllables, without any mixture of iambic lines, which is another proof to show that the authors considered them to be of distinct kinds. Boadicea of Cowper is an example, That poet, whose judgment on verposed various pieces in both the measification is unexceptionable, comsures just mentioned; but throughout the whole he studiously kept them separate.

SECTION III.

The

Of the Anapestic Verse. This is a kind more usually employed upon subjects of a light cast; yet it is not unfit for graver, in some

Where virtue wants and vice abounds, there wealth is but a baited hook,

To make men swallow down their bane, before on danger deep they look."

This species, therefore, did once exist, in form and show, as a single verse; but, in fact, it was two; "for," says he, "it is commonly divided each verse into two, whereof each shall contain eight syllables, and rhyme cross-wise, the first to the third, and the second to the fourth."

*Davison's Strephon's Palinode; Ellis's Specimens of English Poetry; vol. iii. p. 14. + Sophocl. Edip. Tyran. ad finem.

times.

In those odes there is a single exception to the rule; but it is observed above forty

the anapestic, to which it bears the same relation as the trochaic does to the iambic; each being the reverse of the other. Its character too is different, and lighter than any of the rest. It is, therefore, generally ap propriated to pieces to be set to music, and, for the most part, to gay and airy songs.

The species of dactylic verse are

At the close of the day, when the hamlet is three; for rhymes of one foot, such

as, lavishing, ravishing, are omitted,
as hardly worthy of the name.

Our national song of God save the
King, furnishes an example of the
dactylic verse of two feet: the mea-
-sure is most apparent in these lines,
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us.
God save the King.

The second species, or lines of three feet, is exhibited in the following stanza:

Come let us sit and be | merry, lads,
Here we securely can | hide;
Here we have claret and | sherry, lads,
Port and Madeira beside.

The third species, which is more common than either of the former, contains four dactyles; example:

Sound an alarm to the slaves of a | ty