Page:The Comic English Grammar.djvu/126

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122
THE COMIC ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

Went slowly; nought was done whereof to speak.
The largest operations, it was found,
Were twenty-five and fifty thousand pound."

We might proceed in the same strain, but we have already done half a dozen lines without a particle of poetry in them; and we do not wish to overwhelm people with proofs of what a great many will take upon trust.

Every fool knows what Rhyme is; so we need not say anything about that.


OF POETICAL FEET.

Poetical feet! Why, Fanny Elsler's feet and Taglioni's feet are poetical feet—are they not? or else what is meant by calling dancing the poetry of Motion? And cannot each of those artistes boast of a toe which is the very essence of all poetry—a TO' KAAO'N?

No. You may make verses on Taglioni's feet, (though if she be a poetess, she can do that better than you, standing, too, on one leg, like the man that Horace speaks of;) but you cannot make them of her feet. Feet of which verses are composed are made of syllables, not of bones, muscles, and ligaments. Feet and pauses are the constituent parts of a verse.

We have heard one boy ask of another, who was singing, "How much is that a yard?" still the yard is not a poetical measure.

The feet which are used in poetry consist either of two or three syllables. There are four kinds of feet of two, and an equal number of three syllables. Four and four are eight: therefore Pegasus is an octoped; and if our readers do not understand this logic, we are sorry for it. But as touching the feet—we have