English verse may be divided into common time and triple time: the first being the pace of a man's walk; the second of a horse's canter. The accentuation is, as in music, always on the bar; that is, the accented note, or heavy syllable, must com mence the bar, or its place must be supplied by a rest, which counts for it; for rests are as essential to rhythm as the notes themselves.

verse.

Thus we can divide or bar for accentuation, all English Take the following three examples, as timed, barred, and accented: the two first are in common time, the third is in triple time :

| |~ ~~A | present | deity | they | shout a | round~ |

A present | deíty |the | vaulted | roofs re- |

bound |

Softly sweet in | Lydian | measures |

Soon he soothed his soul to | pleasures. |

~ The | prínces ap | plaud with a | furious | joy" |

|~ And the king seized a | flambeau with | zeal to de- |

stroy. |

The pulsation of voice, and the classification and division of the syllables, as accented and arranged in the preceding couplets, distinctly mark their different rhythm.-To illustrate this further, read the second line of the third couplet as if it were thus divided and accented :

| And the king | seized a flambeau | with zeal | to de

stroy.

Thus read, the verse becomes prose; for, by false accentuation, its musical movement is lost, and the rhythm is destroyed.

At the same time be careful not to fall into that sing-song style of reading verse, which is produced by the accentuation of little and insignificant words.

This sing-song style, so common among readers, is the result of the absurd attempt of prosodians to measure English versification by feet, instead of by time and accentuation. The music of a verse is not to be ascertained by counting on the fingers, or scanning (as it is called); but by the ear.*

English verse consists of a certain number of bars, in the same time; of which the rests or pauses are constituent parts: and it is therefore as much on the due observance of these rests, as on the accentuation of the notes or syllables, that the rhythm depends.

Take the following examples of verses scanned first according to the feet of the prosodians, counted on their fingers, and then according to the rational prosody which really governs the rhythm of English verse,—that is, time and accentuation. According to the former plan, it will be observed that the sense is utterly sacrificed to the scanning, for want of rest or pause, however necessary it may be to the meaning or feeling of the verse; while, by the latter plan, the rhythm, sense, and feeling go hand in hand, and are aided by rests.

See this subject diffusely and learnedly treated in Steele's Prosodia Rationalis.

Prosodial scanning by feet

IAMBICS.

On the bare earth | exposed | he lies, |

With not a friend to close | his eyes.

A mode of scanning, if adhered to in the reading, which would utterly destroy the sense and power of the lines. They should be thus barred, timed, and accented:

On the bare earth ex- | posed he | lies,

ཡ

With not a friend to close his eyes. | |

By which we find, that these are verses of six bars, in common time, the rests filling up the bars, exactly where the sense requires a pause. And so in the following examples; in which it will be seen that verses which would be said by the prosodians to consist of four feet, are, in general, verses of six bars; and that what would, in scanning, be called by prosodians pentameters, or five-feet verses, are really lines of six, and sometimes even of eight bars. The time, either triple or common, is denoted in the following examples by the figure 2. (common), or 3. (triple.)

THREE BARS.

Óh the sight en | trancing |

| ~ When the | morning's | beam is | glancing, |

|~ O'er | files ar | rayed~ |

↑~ With | heĺm and | blade~ |

And plumes in the | gay wind | dancing. |

3. | Place me in | regions of eternal | winter | | Where not a blossom to the | breeze can | open but | | Darkening | tempests | closing all around me~ | Chill the creation!

3.

2. | Sage be | neath a | spreading | oák ~ |

~

| Sate the | Druid | hoary | chief |

| Évery | burning | word he | spoke ~ | | Full of | rage and | full of | grief.~ |

SIX AND FOUR BARS.

"When | he who adores thee has left but

the name |

N

|~Of a life that for | theo was resigned
Į

SIX BARS.

2. | A | chilles' | wrath to Greece the direful |

spring |

|Of | woes un | number'd | heavenly | Goddess |

sing.

It will be found by reading verse according to this system, of marking the rhythm by time and accentuation,-that it will flow much more easily than when read by prosodial scanning: nor shall we be obliged to make elisions of vowels for the purpose of preserving the apparent regularity of the line,that is, according to the plan of counting the syllables on the fingers. No poet has suffered more from this pedantic method of measuring English verse, than Shakspere, whose commentators have not scrupled to add syllables to, or deduct syllables from his lines, in order to give them "the right butter-woman's pace to market;" and this because these learned gentlemen, instead of receiving the music of his verse through their ears, measured his lines, like tape, upon their fingers: and if they did not happen exactly to fit the prescribed length, they laid him upon the Procrustes' bed of their prosodial pedantry, and stretched him out, if too short, or cut him down, if too long! Thus they have succeeded, in some instances, in "curtailing" his verse of its beauty and "fair proportions," by the elision or blending of vowels whose utterance really forms the music of the lines. For example, of the line

O~ | Romeo! | Romeo! | wherefore | art thou | Romeo? |