every body pronounces the first syllable of volunt long, and the last short; and yet every body knows, that the first is short, and the last long. All regular hexameters begin with a long syllable; yet how often do the best readers introduce them with a short one!

When we read this line, by which Virgil meant both to describe and to imitate slow motion,

Et sola in sicca seccum spatiatur arena,*

we make only five or six of the syllables long; and yet in this line there are no fewer than ten long syllables. Must it not then to a Roman ear have appeared more imitative, than it does to ours?

In each of those admirable hexameters, so descriptive of great size,

Et magnos membrorum artus, magna ossa, lacertosque. Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum,

there are eleven long syllables, according to the ancient pronunciation, and only six or seven according to the modern. If, then, there be any natural suitableness in the slow rhythm of these lines, (and Virgil certainly thought there was) must not that have been more observable anciently than it is now?

In the English tongue, the foot spondeus, consisting of two long syllables, is not frequent, there being generally one short syllable, or more, for each long syllable. And as our accented or emphatick syllables are all long, and as we give emphasis to the Greek and Latin syllables in the same way almost as to our own, we seldom preserve in our pronunciation the rhythm of the ancient poetry, and are (I think) most apt to lose it in those verses that abound in the spondeus. The dactyl, of one long and two short syllables, is very common in English; and it sometimes happens, though not often, that in pronouncing an hexameter of dactyls we preserve the true rhythm tolerably well. Of such an hexameter I take the rhythm to be the same with the following:

Multitudes rush'd all at once on the plain with a thundering uproar.

And according to this rhythm, nearly, we do in fact pronounce the last line of Homer's celebrated description of Sisyphus.* But this line of Virgil, whose measure and motion are exactly the same, the moderns pronounce differently, at least in the first three feet:

*For the example see next page.

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.

Of this other line of Virgil, describing loud sound,

Suspiciunt; iterum atque iterum fragor intonat ingens:

the rhythm is still the same, after making the necessary elisions; and if the reader pronounce it so, his ear will perhaps inform him, that it is more imitative than he at first imagined.

In the beginning of the Eneid, Eolus, at Juno's desire, sends out his winds to destroy the Trojan fleet. Neptune rebukes them for invading his dominions without his leave; and is just going to denounce a threatening, or inflict a punishment, when he recollects that it was proper to calm his waters before he did any thing else:

Quos ego-sed motos præstat componere fluctus. The interrupted threat is a dactyl; the remainder of the line goes off in spondees. By this transition from a quick to a slow rhythm, is it not probable, that the poet intended to imitate the change of Neptune's purpose? But this is lost in our pronunciation, though in the ancient I believe it must have been observable. One instance more and I quit the subject.

When Dido, that fatal morning on which she VOL. VI.

L

put a period to her life, saw that Eneas and his Trojans were actually gone, she at first broke forth into frantick denunciations of revenge and ruin; but soon checks herself, as if exhausted by her passion, when she reflects that her ravings were all in vain. "Unhappy Dido! (says "she) thy evil destiny is now come upon thee."* This change of her mind from tempest to a momentary calm (for she immediately relapses into vengeance and distraction) is finely imitated in the poet's numbers. The words I have translated from a line of spondees, whose slow and soft motion is a striking contrast to the abrupt and sonorous rapidity of the preceding and following verses. This beauty, too, is in a great measure lost in our pronunciation; for we give only five or six long syllables to a line which really contains eleven. Are these remarks too refined? Those readers will hardly think so, who have studied Virgil's versification, which is artful and apposite to a degree that was never equalled or attempted by any other poet.

* Infelix Dido! nunc te fata impia tangunt. Æneid. iv. 596. If we read facta impia, with the Medicean Manuscript, the rhythm is still the same, and the sense not materially different: "Unhappy Dido! now are the consequences of thy broken vows come upon thee."