Page:The Comic English Grammar.djvu/131

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PROSODY.
127


And now and then a long brown coat all button'd up before."

The present measure is as admirably adapted for the Platform as for the Conventicle.

"My name it is Bill Scroggins, and my fate it is to die,
For I was at the Sessions tried and cast for felony.
My friends, to these my dying words I pray attention lend,
The public-house has brought me unto this untimely end."

Verses of this kind are now usually broken into two lines, with four feet in the first line, and three in the second: as,

"Ĭ wīsh Ĭ wēre ă līttlĕ pig
To wallow in the mire,
To eat, and drink, and sleep at ease
Is all that I desire."

Trochaic verse is of several kinds.

1. The shortest Trochaic verse in the English language consists of one Trochee and a long syllable: as,

"Bĭlly Blāck
Got the sack."

Lindley Murray asserts that this measure is defective in dignity, and can seldom be used on serious occasions. Yet it is Pope who thus sings:

""Dreadful screams,
Dismal gleams.
Fires that glow,
Shrieks of woe," &c.

And for our own poor part, let us see what we can make out of a storm.