Probably as the Saturnian, the only natural Italian measure which he found existing, was a triple time, the Roman ear could not at once adapt itself to the common time of the dactylic measures. The versification of our own country furnishes an analogous example. The usual metres of English poetry consist of an alternation of long and short syllables; dactyles and anapæsts are of less frequent occurrence and are of more modern introduction, and the English ear is even yet not quite accustomed to the hexametrical rhythm. The dignity of the epic is expressed in the grave march of the iambus; the ballad tells its story in the same metre, though in shorter lines; the joyous Anacreontic adopts the dancing step of the trochee. For this reason, perhaps, Nævius, as a matter of taste, limited himself to the introduction of iambic and trochaic metres, and the irregular features of Greek lyric poetry to the exclusion of the heroic hexameter. It was long before the Romans could arrive at perfection in this metre. Ennius was unsuccessful. His hexameters are rough and unmusical; he seems never to have perfectly understood the nature and beauty of the _cæsura_ or pause. The failure of Cicero, notwithstanding his natural musical ear, is proverbial. No one previous to Virgil seems to have overcome the difficulty. Versification seems always to have been somewhat of a labour to the Romans. In the structure of their poetry they worked by rule; their finish was artistic, but it was artificial. Hence the Latin poet allowed himself less metrical liberty than the Greek, whom he made his model. He seemed to feel that the Greek metres, which the education of his taste had compelled him to adopt, were not precisely the form into which Latin words naturally fell; that this deficiency must be supplied by the care with which he moulded his verse, according to the strictest possible standard. One can imagine the extemporaneous effusions of a Homeric bard; but to Roman taste which, in every literary work, especially in poetry, looked for elaborate finish, the power of the improvisator, who could pour forth a hundred verses standing on one foot, was a ridiculous pretension.[145] As a general rule, no Roman poet attained facility in versification; Ovid was perhaps the only exception. In the early period, when Roman poetry was extemporaneous, their national verse was only rhythmical, and now that modern Italy can boast of the faculty of improvisation, verse has become rhythmical again. But although Nævius introduced a variety of Greek metres to the Romans, the principal part of his poems, and especially his national epic, were written in the old Saturnian measure: its structure was indeed less rude, and its metre more regular and scientific, but still he did not permit the new rules of Greek poetry to banish entirely the favourite verses “in which in olden times Fauns and bards sung,” and which would most acceptably convey to the national ear the achievements of Roman arms.