_Evangeline_ is undoubtedly the most popular and widely read poem in English hexameters, and may be said to have revived the vogue of the measure in the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet its metrical qualities have not pleased most careful critics. Matthew Arnold said that the reception which the poem met with indicated that the dislike for the metre "is rather among professional critics than among the general public. Yet," he went on to say, "a version of Homer in hexameters of the _Evangeline_ type would not satisfy the judicious, nor is the definite establishment of this type to be desired." (_On Translating Homer_, Macmillan ed., p. 284.) Mr. Arnold had previously suggested that the "lumbering effect" of such hexameters as Longfellow's is "caused by their being much too dactylic"; more spondees should be introduced. The editor of the Riverside edition of _Evangeline_ remarks interestingly: "The measure lends itself easily to the lingering melancholy which marks the greater part of the poem. The fall of the verse at the end of the line and the sharp recovery at the beginning of the next will be snares to the reader, who must beware of a jerking style of delivery.... A little practice will enable one to acquire that habit of reading the hexameter which we may liken, roughly, to the climbing of a hill, resting a moment on the summit, and then descending the other side." Longfellow's hexameters were criticised most severely by his countryman, Edgar Poe. Poe denied the possibility of any adequate representation of the classical hexameter in English, largely because of the impossibility of using English spondees. The only genuine hexameters he knew, he declared, were some he had himself made, running: "Do tell! when may we hope to make men of sense out of the Pundits, Born and brought up with their snouts deep down in the mud of the Frog-pond?" (See Poe's Works, ed. Stedman and Woodberry, vol. vi. p. 104.) Another interesting American experiment in hexameters is found in the _Home Pastorals_ of Bayard Taylor (1869-1874). Taylor modeled his verses after those of the Germans, particularly Goethe's in _Hermann und Dorothea_. See, for example, the opening lines of _November_: