444 SIISCEualmoUS TROCOHTS. syllables ; or a trochee, where the first syllable is long, and the latter short : A happy intermixture of these will prevent that sameness of tone and cadence, which is tedious and painful to a judicious reader, and will please the ear with a greater variety of notes ; provided still that the iambic sound prevails. And here, according to the best observation I can make, a spondee may be placed in the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth place. But a trochee Usually finds no room, except in the first or third, where they are sometimes placed with much elegance of sound. That a spondee may be used in any part of the verse, ap- pears from this consideration, that ten single words, which are all of long accents, will make a verse, though not a very grace- ful one : " Blue skies took fair, while stars shoot beams like gold." So that ingenious mimic line of Mr. Pope, in his Art of Criticism : .r Where ten low words creep on in one dull line." In such verse every foot may be a spondee, or every sylla- ble in the verse long. Trochees are frequently used for the first foot. This sounds very agreeably, as in the first line of the famous poem called the Splendid Shilling, by Mr. Philips: °' Happy the man who void of care and strife." And sometimes, though not often, for the third foot as well as the first : Milton describes the devils : " Hovering on wing, under the cope of hell." The words happy in Philips, and under in Milton, are both trochees ; but scarce any other place in the verse, besides the first and the third, will well endure a trochee, without endanger- ing the harmony, spoiling the cadence of the verse, and offend- ing the ear. There are some lines in our old poets faulty in this particu- lar ; as, " None think rewards render'd worthy their worth." And " Both lovers, both thy disciples were. " Davenant Where worthy in the fourth place, and livers in the second, are very unharmonious, and turn the line into perfect prose. Perhaps there may be some places found in Milton's works, where he has not been so nice an observer of this matter* ; but k is granted, even by his admirers, that his numbers are not always so accurate and tuneful as they should be. He has in- deed: too much neglected this part of poesy, though he has in many places recompensed the pains of the reader's ear by the pleasure lie gives in the dignity and sublimity of the sense, as O Y.t it may be allowed, that upon a special occasion, a trochee is found in the fourth place not utterly disagreeable in Milton's poem.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=