Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/269

 *ding, between 'th' o'er-wearied eyelid', and 'the wearied eyelid', as being, the one a correct ending for a hexameter, the other an ending with a false quantity in it; instead of finding, with Mr Munro, that this distinction 'conveys to his mind no intelligible idea'. He must temper his belief in Mr Munro's dictum, quantity must be utterly discarded, by mixing with it a belief in this other dictum of the same author, two or more consonants take longer time in enunciating than one.

Criticism is so apt in general to be vague and impalpable, that when it gives us a solid and definite possession, such as is Mr Spedding's parallel of the Virgilian and the*