Page:Goethe and Schiller's Xenions (IA goetheschillersx00goetiala).pdf/37

 *accented portions of the word, and wherever they can be disposed of drop them entirely or fuse them into the main syllable.

Another reason why the hexameter is not liked in English is on account of the length of the verse. If the reader has first to search for the caesura, for the place where he can take breath, he feels discouraged at the long line that stretches before him like a road through the desert, and for this reason we deem it an improvement to print dactylic verses so as to begin a new line with the caesura. It renders the reading of the line easier in the measure, as the break in the verse is thus most easily taken in by the eye.

Since we have been discussing metrical details at some length, we may be permitted to add a few comments on the iambic trimeter which in English is really nothing else but what is commonly known as blank verse. This verse is very generally misunderstood and we have nowhere seen it properly explained in English books on prosody.