Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/891



It is observed by Churchill, (New Gram., p. 387,) that, "Shakspeare has used the dactyl, as appropriate to mournful occasions." The chief example which he cites, is the following:

These six lines of Dactylic (or Composite) Dimeter are subjoined by the poet to four of Trochaic Tetrameter. There does not appear to me to be any particular adaptation of either measure to mournful subjects, more than to others; but later instances of this metre may be cited, in which such is the character of the topic treated. The following long example consists of lines of two feet, most of them dactylic only; but, of the seventy-six, there are twelve which may be otherwise divided, and as many more which must be, because they commence with a short syllable.

As each of our principal feet,&mdash;the Iambus, the Trochee, the Anapest, and the Dactyl,&mdash;has always one, and only one long syllable; it should follow, that, in each of our principal orders of verse,&mdash;the Iambic, the Trochaic, the Anapestic, and the Dactylic,&mdash;any line, not diversified by a secondary foot, must be reckoned to contain just as many feet as long syllables. So, too, of the Amphibrach, and any line reckoned Amphibrachic. But it happens, that the common error by which single-rhymed Trochaics have so often been counted a foot shorter than they are, is also extended by some writers to single-rhymed Dactylics&mdash;the rhyming syllable, if long, being esteemed supernumerary! For example, three dactylic stanzas, in each of which a pentameter couplet is followed by a hexameter line, and this again by a heptameter, are introduced by Prof. Hart thus: "The Dactylic Tetrameter, Pentameter, and Hexameter, with the additional or hypermeter syllable, are all found combined in the following extraordinary specimen of versification. * * * This is the only specimen of Dactylic hexameter or even pentameter verse that the author recollects to have seen."