may sign with the final stamp, and employ in rendering Homer; a hexameter which may be as superior to Vosse's as Shakspeare's blank verse is superior to Schiller's. I am inclined to believe that all this travail will actually take place, because I believe that modern poetry is actually in want of such an instrument as the hexameter.
In the meantime, whether this rhythm be destined to success or not, let us steadily keep in mind what originally made us turn to it. We turned to it because we required certain Homeric characteristics in a translation of Homer, and because all other rhythms seemed to find, from different causes, great difficulties in satisfying this our requirement. If the hexameter is impossible, if one of these other rhythms must be used, let us keep this rhythm always in mind of our requirements and of its own faults, let us compel it to get rid of these latter as much as possible. It may be necessary to have recourse to blank verse; but then blank verse must de-Cowperize itself, must get rid of the habits of stiff self-retardation which make it say 'Not fewer shone', for 'So many shone'. Homer moves swiftly: blank verse can move swiftly if it likes, but it must remember that the movement of such lines as
A thousand fires were burning, and by each . . .
is just the slow movement which makes us
