Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/188

182 found in Phaer's Virgil, written in the reign of Mary; and in Hall's Satires, published five years before the death of Elizabeth.

The Alexandrine was, I believe, first used by Spenser, for the sake of closing his stanza with a fuller sound. We had a longer measure of fourteen syllables, into which the [Aeneid[Eneid]] was translated by Phaer, and other works of the ancients by other writers; of which Chapman's Iliad was, I believe, the last.

The two first lines of Phaer's third Eneid will exemplify this measure: When Afia's state was overthrown, and Priam's kingdom stout, All guiltless, by the power of gods above was rooted out. As these lines had their break, or cæsura, always at the eighth syllable, it was thought, in time, commodious to divide them: and quatrains of lines, alternately, consisting of eight and six syllables, make the most soft and pleasing of our lyrick measures; as, Rh