For they confine not themselves always to Iambics; but extend their liberty to all Lyric Numbers; and sometimes, even, to Hexameter.

We think one great danger of the hexameter is, that it gradually accustoms the poet to be content with a certain regular recurrence of accented sounds, to the neglect of the poetic value of language and intensity of phrase.

With this trait other features are quite accordanthis political opposition tinged with radicalism, that here and there appears;(46) his singing the praises of the Greek pleasures of the table;(47) above all his setting aside the last national element in Latin poetry, the Saturnian measure, and substituting for it the Greek hexameter.

The hexameter took the place of the Saturnian verse; the ornate style of the Homeridae, striving after plastic vividness of delineation, took the place of the homely historic narrative.

If "conquered Greece vanquished her rude conqueror by art," the victory was primarily accomplished by elaborating from the unpliant Latin idiom a cultivated and elevated poetical language, so that instead of the monotonous and hackneyed Saturnian the senarius flowed and the hexameter rushed, and the mighty tetrameters, the jubilant anapaests, and the artfully intermingled lyrical rhythms fell on the Latin ear in the mother-tongue.

[Footnote 16: The Sibylline books, supposed to have been sold to Tarquinius Superbus by the Sibyl of Cumæ: they were written in Greek hexameter verses.

EVANGELINE, the heroine and title of a tale in hexameter verse by Longfellow, in two parts.

"He then proceeded to describe an hexameter and pentameter verse.

MEASURE III.DACTYLIC OF SIX FEET, OR HEXAMETER.

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.

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.

Some prosodists have taught the absurdity, that two feet are necessary to constitute a metre, and have accordingly applied the terms, monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter,or so many of them as they could so misapply,in a sense very different from the usual acceptation.

HEXAMETER, n. A verse or line of poetry, having six feet, either dactyls or spondees; the heroic, and most important, verse among the Greeks and Romans;a rhythmical series of six metres.

HEXAMETER, a. Having six metrical feet.

According to these definitions, Dimeter has as many feet as Tetrameter; and Trimeter has as many as Hexameter!

And is there any published edition of the hexameter poem by Lactantius, which is said by Stephens to have suggested the first idea of this beautiful Anglo-Saxon poem? SELEUCUS.

What a Joy must it be to the unlearned Operator to find that these Words, being carefully collected and writ down in Order according to the Problem, start of themselves into Hexameter and Pentameter Verses?

When a verse consists of one foot, it is called a monometer; of two feet, a dimeter; of three feet, a trimeter; of four feet, a tetrameter; of five feet, a pentameter; and of six feet, a hexameter.

U U | U Hexameter.

So we have dactylic hexameter, trochaic pentameter, iambic trimeter, anapestic dimeter, etc.

The Spenserian stanza consists of nine lines: the first eight are iambic pentameters, and the last line is an iambic hexameter or Alexandrine.

Ah, wanton, will ye? The year 1595 also saw the publication of Francis Sabie's Pan's Pipe, which contains, according to the not wholly accurate title-page, 'Three Pastorall Eglogues, in English Hexameter.'

[Silentiarius] has composed in hexameter verse.

One form of hexameter which he invented was called Alcmanic after him.