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 utterly discarded; and longer or shorter unaccentuated syllables can have no meaning, except so far as they may be made to produce sweeter or harsher sounds in the hands of a master'.

It is not for me to interpose between two such combatants; and indeed my way lies, not up the highroad where they are contending, but along a bypath. With the absolute truth of their general propositions respecting accent and quantity, I have nothing to do; it is most interesting and instructive to me to hear such propositions discussed, when it is Mr Munro or Mr Spedding who discusses them; but I have strictly limited myself in these Lectures to the humble function of giving practical advice to the translator of Homer. He, I still think, must not follow so confidently, as makers of English hexameters have hitherto followed, Mr Munro's maxim, quantity may be utterly discarded. He must not, like Mr Longfellow, make seventeen a dactyl in spite of all the length of its last syllable, even though he can plead that in counting we lay the accent on the first syllable of this word. He may be far from attaining Mr Spedding's nicety of ear; may be unable to feel that 'while quantity is a dactyl, quiddity is a tribrach', and that 'rapidly is a word to which we find no parallel in Latin'; but I think he must bring himself to distinguish, with Mr Sped