‘laws are admirable things; but he who keeps his eye too closely fixed upon them, runs the risk of becoming’—let us say, a purist. Mr. Spedding is probably mistaken in supposing that Virgil pronounced his hexameters as Mr. Spedding pronounces them. He is almost certainly mistaken in supposing that Homer pronounced his hexameters as Mr. Spedding pronounces Virgil’s. But this, as I have said, is not a question for us to treat; all we are here concerned with is the imitation, by the English hexameter, of the ancient hexameter in its effect upon us moderns. Suppose we concede to Mr. Spedding that his parallel proves our accentuation of the English and of the Virgilian hexameter to be different: what are we to conclude from that; how will a criticism,—not a formal, but a substantial criticism,—deal with such a fact as that? Will it infer, as Mr. Spedding infers, that the English hexameter, therefore, must not pretend to reproduce better than other rhythms the movement of Homer’s hexameter for us; that there can be no correspondence at all between the movement of these two hexameters; that, if we want to have such a correspondence, we must abandon the current English hexameter altogether, and adopt in its place a new hexameter of Mr. Spedding’s Anglo-Latin type; substitute for lines like the
Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia . . .
of Dr. Hawtrey, lines like the
