Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/111

 'Ah, unhappy pair, to Peleus why did we give you, To a mortal? but ye are without old age and immortal. Was it that ye, with man, might have your thousands of sorrows? For than man, indeed, there breathes no wretcheder creature, Of all living things, that on earth are breathing and moving'.

Here I will observe that the use of 'own', in the second line for the last syllable of a dactyl, and the use of 'To a', in the fourth, for a complete spondee, though they do not, I think, actually spoil the run of the hexameter, are yet undoubtedly instances of that over-reliance on accent, and too free disregard of quantity, which Lord Redesdale visits with just reprehension .*