Truly," continued the Captain, not heeding or hearing the other, "Truly a wonderful man was Caius Julius Cæsar!

Better, be first, he said, in a little Iberian village,

Than be second in Rome, and I think he was right when he said it.
Twice was he married before he was twenty, and many times after
Battles five hundred he fought, and a thousand cities he conquered;
He, too, fought in Flanders, as he himself has recorded;
Finally he was stabbed by his friend, the orator Brutus.

Now, do you know what he did on a certain occasion in Flanders,
When the rear-guard of his army retreated, the front giving way too,
And the immortal Twelfth Legion was crowded so closely together
There was no room for their swords? Why, he seized a shield from a
soldier,

Put himself straight at the head of his troops, and commanded the captains,

Calling on each by his name, to order forward the ensigns;

Then, to widen their ranks, and give more room for their weapons;

So he won the day, the battle of something-or-other.

That's what I always say; if you wish a thing to be well done,

You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to others!"'

Take a few detached passages, as displaying the far superior power, in the translation of hexameters, that the same metre has over blank verse:

'Just as a stubborn ass, amid corn, encounters the prowess

Of some troop of boys, whose sticks are broken upon him;

Yet does he stand and browse on the ears of the corn, while the urchins
Urge him with frequent blows, and their vigour is all unavailing:
Nor does he beat a retreat till his hunger is filled to the fullest."

'As near a field of corn, a stubborn ass
Upon whose sides had many a club been broke,
O'erpowers his boyish guides, and entering in,
On the rich forage grazes; while the boys
Their cudgels ply, but vain their puny strength,
Yet drive him out, when fully fed, with ease.'

Dart, xi. 517.

Lord Derby, xi. 639–644.

Hector, and all ye chiefs, both of Troy and the aids of the Trojan !
It were a senseless risk to encounter the trench with our warsteeds.
Difficult is it to pass: for the sharp stakes planted within it
Stand in the way; and behind is the wall of the sons of Achaia ;
There is no room to deploy, no place there to marshal the battle
If we retain our cars; it is narrow and threatens destruction.'
Dart, xii. 61-66.

Hector, and all ye other chiefs of Troy,
And brave Allies, in vain we seek to drive
Our horses o'er the ditch; 'tis hard to cross;

'Tis crowned with pointed stakes, and them behind
Is built the Grecian wall; there to descend

And from our narrow cars to fight

Were certain ruin.'-Lord Derby, xii. 66.

Thus did the warrior speak: and he led the assault; and his soldiers Followed with terrible shout; and Zeus, great lord of the lightning,

6

Sent from the ranges of Ida, the blast of a tempest, it drove on
Whirling the dust on the galleys, unnerving the son of Achaia.'
Dart, xii. 251-254.

'This said, he led the way; with joyous shouts
They followed all; then Jove, the lightning's Lord,
From Ida's heights a storm of wind sent down,
Driving the dust against the Grecian ships;
Which quelled their courage, and to Hector gave,

And to the Trojans, fresh incitement.'-Lord Derby, xii. 272–277.
'Shouting aloud, they incited the fight on the side of Achaia,,
From both hostile ranks, thick, fast, as the flakes of a snow-storm
Fall on a wintry day; when the provident Zeus in his wisdom
Wills to release his snows, and resort to the arrows of heaven;
And-for the winds are tranquil-the snow falls steady and ceaseless
Until it covers at once the high ridges and peaks of the mountains;
Covers the lotus-beds; and the deep fat tilth of the farmers;
E'en on the salt sea-coast does it lie; in the bays and the shallows;
Save where the wash of the waves cuts the coating away, and beyond

them

All is alike conceal'd, as the snow falls steadily downwards.

So, and from either side, did the stones fly in pitiless showers.'

Thus they, with cheering words, sustained the war:
Thick as the snow-flakes on a wintry day;
When Jove, the Lord of counsel, down on men
His snow-storm sends, and manifests his power:
Hushed are the winds; the flakes continuous fall
That the high mountain-tops, and jutting crags,
And lotus-covered meads are buried deep,
And man's productive labours of the field;
On hoary Ocean's beach and bays they lie,

The approaching waves their bound; o'er all beside

Dart, xii. 275-277.

Is spread by Jove the heavy fall of snow '-Lord Derby, xii. 303.

Thus did he speak his men-for the felt that he justly reproach'd

them

Bore, in support of the king, with a sterner might on the foeman.
While on the other side did the Argives serry their phalanx

Closer within their wall; for a crisis plainly approach'd them.'

'He said; and by the king's rebuke abashed,
With fiercer zeal the Lycians pressed around
Their King and councillor: on the other side
Within the wall the Greeks their squadrons massed.'

Dart, xii. 412-416.

Lord Derby, xii. 454-457.

What is to be the result of the present conjuncture, Machaon?
Louder, about our ships, rise the shouts of encountering foemen !
Sit thou here in peace; and drink the red vintage before thee;
Until the bath is warm'd by the fair-haired slave Hecamedé;
She with a tepid stream shall the gore wash away from thy shoulder.
I will away with speed, to look out from some post of advantage.'

Say, good Machaon, what these sounds may mean;
For louder swells the tumult round the ships:
But sit thou here, and drink the ruddy wine,
NO. CXXXI.-N.S.

P

Dart, xiv. 3-9,

Till fair-haired Hecamede shall prepare

The gentle bath, and wash thy gory wounds;

While I go forth, and all around survey.'-Lord Derby, xiv. 4—9.

'Up to the front of the ships come the roar and rout of the combat, In unceasing whirl. You may look on the scene and discern not, Whether Achaia's hosts now give or gain ground in the thick fray : So intermingled is the slaughter; so deep is the roar of the battle. Let us consult and think, with a view to the present conjuncture, What is the wisest course. To the field I would never persuade you Back for a wounded man is at best an indifferent soldier.'

Dart, xiv. 58-61.

'And now around the ships their war they wage,
Unceasing, unabated; none might tell
By closest scrutiny, which way are driven
The routed Greeks, so intermixed they fall
Promiscuous; and the cry ascends to heaven.
But come, discuss we what may best be done,
If judgment aught may profit us; ourselves
To mingle in the fray I counsel not;

It were not well for wounded men to fight.'

Lord Derby, xiv. 63–71. By way of contrast to this their powers of familiarity, let us try one of the noblest passages in the Great Poem, as regards the comparative power of Hexameters: the speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus, while the storm of the Grecian wall is going on. And we will begin, as is fitting, from the worst translation: Pope's. And yet, we very much doubt whether his version here does not come nearer the original than anywhere else.*

'Why boast we, Glaucus! our extended reign,
Where Xanthus' streams enrich the Lycian plain,
Our numerous herds that range the fruitful field,
And hills where vines their purple harvest yield,
Our foaming bowls with purer nectar crowned,
Our feasts enhanced with music's sprightly sound:
Why on those shores are we with joy surveyed,
Admired as heroes, and as gods obeyed:
Unless great acts superior merit prove,
And vindicate the bounteous powers above?
"Tis ours, the dignity they give to grace;
The first in valour, as the first in place:

That when, with wondering eyes, our martial bands
Behold our deeds transcending our commands,
Such, they may cry, deserve the sovereign state,

Whom those that envy, dare not imitate!
Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,

Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war.
But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
Disease, and death's inexorable doom,

1 Some of our readers may remember how, in Miss Edgeworth's Early Lessons, this passage of Pope is made the favourite of her heroine Laura.

The life which others pay, let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe;
Brave tho' we fall, and honoured if we live,
Or let us glory gain, or glory give.'

They are magnificent verses; perhaps the best that Pope ever wrote. In fact he seems to have known that they were very good; and therefore puts in a modest little note: I ought not 'to neglect putting the reader in mind, that this speech of Sarpedon is excellently translated by Sir John Denham, and if I have done it with any spirit, it is partly owing to him.' But done well as it is, let us see two other translations.

This is Mr. Dart's:

'Why, in our Lycian land, do we stand as the first and the foremost,
Graced with the highest places, and full crowned cups, at the banquet,
And with the largest mess-and are honoured as gods by the people?
Why does a wide domain spread afar-and for us-by this Xanthus,
Dark with empurpled vines, and bright with the gold of its harvests?
Does it not all demand that we mingle in fight with the foremost,
Leading our Lycian bands far ahead in the heat of the battle?
So that the common speech of the mail-clad soldiers around us,
Thus may describe their chiefs: "Our kings are not barren of glory;
They who have sway in the land, and who feed on the fat of the sheep-folds,
Drinking the luscious wine, have sinew and nerves in abundance;
Strength for fight-and shine in the battle the foremost among us."
For if, in sooth, good friend! supposing us clear from the combat,
We could rely on a life never ending, and never afflicted
By old age and its ills-neither I would press on in the battle,
Nor would I urge it on thee thus to barter existence for glory.
But as it is-since fate presses on by a thousand approaches,
Comes in ten thousand forms, and we cannot escape or evade it-
Let us advance on the foe; let us either win glory, or yield it!'
Of course, Macaulay had these lines in his mind, when, in
perhaps his finest ballad, he wrote:-

Then outspake brave Horatius,

The captain of the gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh, soon or late:
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods,
And for the aged mother

That dandled him to rest,
And for the wife that nurses
His baby at her breast,

And for the holy maidens

That feed the eternal flame,

To shield them from false Sextus,

That wrought the deed of shame.

The question may fairly be asked: why should hexameters, after three hundred and fifty years of English poetry, (descending,

we mean in regular succession, and putting out of the question its morning star, Chaucer, and its lesser stars, Gower and Richard de Hampole, separated by so wide a gap as they are from the Earl of Surrey, and Sackville, and Tusser, and the rest of Henry's or Elizabeth's worthies,) now at last seem to be natural to English; more especially when the Elizabethan poets failed in them so entirely? Witness, as we saw just now, Stanihurst's Virgil: perhaps, more absurd than the hexameters in which the Edinburgh Review of the day ridiculed the 'Vision of Judgment:'

'Jack ascended the hill, and Gill ascended it after;

Down tumbled poor Jack, and Gill came tumbling down headlong;
Jack fractured his skull, but of Gill nothing more is recorded."

But this question may fairly be answered by a counter question. Why is it that one of the loveliest English measurestrochaic tetrameter catalectic, which, by interpretation in the hymn-books, is 8. 7s.-should have been virtually unknown to us till within the last century? Pope has one parody in this metre but, for its true and serious employment, the Wesleys must have the credit. Why, again, has it been only so lately that the longer trochaic lines, so popular among the Germans, have been adopted by ourselves?

Or why, once more, that a very pretty measure-and that almost peculiar to English-anapastic-dimeter brachycatalectic, though employed as long ago as by Tusser, should have heen never popularized till, secularly, by Shenstone; and religiously by Charles Wesley?

'I have found out a gift for my fair;

I have found where the wood-pigeons breed;

But let me the plunder forbear;

She will say 'twas a barbarous deed:

For he never was true, she averr'd,

Who would rob a poor bird of its young;
And I loved her the more, when I heard
Such tenderness flow from her tongue.'

But this is No doubt it

Another objection to the English Hexameter is the fact that it makes the same syllable both short and long. the fault, not of the tool, but of the workman. is very easy to begin a line with such words as and, to, for, by, in, &c. Southey, as we said, did so on principle. Both Dart and Longfellow give in to it: Kingsley hardly ever, The failure