ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.
ITh THE EDITOR Of TUE " SFEOTATOR."1 SiEr-dt is only lately that I have been able to identify a criticism on English hexameters by an Elizabethan poet. The following passage occurs in the First Book of Bishop Joseph Hull's " Satires " (published circa .1597):—
" Another scorns the home-spun thread of rhymes, Matched with the lofty feet of older times :
Give me the numbred verse that Virgil sung,
And Virgil's self shall speak the English tongue : Manhood and garboiles shall be chaunt with chaunged feet And headstrong dactyls making music meet. The nimble dactyl striving to outgo The drawling spondees pacing it below; The lingering spondees, labouring to delay The breathless dactyls with a sudden stay.
Whoever saw a colt wanton and wild Yok'd with a slow-foot ox on fallow field, Can right arced how handsomely besets Dull spondees with the English dactylets. If Jove speak English in a thunciring cloud, Thwick, thwack, and riff raft, roars he out aloud.
Fie on the forged mint that did create New coin of words never articulate."
In, line 11 the poet (who olaims to he the first English satirist) with a striking metaphor pours scorn on those who attempt English hexameters. The last lines of all may have pinched Edmund Spenser.—I am; Sir, &c., Hon Vicarage, Ashbourne. (Rev.) GLENN DALRYMPLE.
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