monosyllables, but (so scrupulous am I in the midst of my 'atrocities') I never dream of such a liberty myself, much less of avowed 'anapæsts'. So far do I go in the opposite direction, as to prefer to make such words as Danai, victory three syllables, which even Mr Gladstone and Pope accept as dissyllabic. Some reviewers have called my metre lege solutum; which is as ridiculous a mistake as Horace made concerning Pindar. That, in passing. But surely Mr Arnold's severe blow at Dr Maginn rebounds with double force upon himself.
To Péleus whý d[)i]d w[)e] gíve you?—
Héc[)u]b[)a]'s griéf nor Prí[)a]m m[)y] fáther's—
Thoús[)a]nds [)o]f sórrows—
cannot be a less detestable jig than that of Dr Maginn. And this objection holds against every accentual hexameter, even to those of Longfellow or Lockhart, if applied to grand poetry. For bombast, in a wild whimsical poem, Mr Clough has proved it to be highly appropriate; and I think, the more 'rollicking' is Mr Clough (if only I understand the word) the more successful his metre. Mr Arnold himself feels what I say against 'dactyls', for on this very ground he advises largely superseding them by spondees; and since what he calls a spondee is any pair of syllables of which the former is accentuable, his precept amounts to this, that the hexameter be converted into a line of six accentual trochees, with
