It was Clough's hexameters, together with some "English Hexameter Translations" by Dr. Hawtrey and Mr. Lockhart (1847), that chiefly encouraged Matthew Arnold to believe that the measure might be well adapted to a translation of Homer. "The hexameter, whether alone or with the pentameter, possesses a movement, an expression, which no metre hitherto in common use amongst us possesses, and which I am convinced English poetry, as our mental wants multiply, will not always be content to forego." (_Ib._, p. 210.) Mr. James Spedding replied to Mr. Arnold's suggestion, from the point of view of the classical scholar, urging that only hexameters purely quantitative could properly represent those of Vergil. He illustrated his views by an amusing "hexametrical dialogue," conducted alternately in Vergilian measure and "in that of Longfellow." Of the former are the lines: "Verses so modulate, so tuned, so varied in accent, Rich with unexpected changes, smooth, stately, sonorous, Rolling ever forward, tidelike, with thunder, in endless Procession, complex melodies--pause, quantity, accent, After Virgilian precedent and practice, in order Distributed--could these gratify th' Etonian ear-drum?" (JAMES SPEDDING: _Reviews and Discussions_, 1879. p. 327.) Arnold, however, wisely declined to be led into a discussion of the relations of accent and quantity in English. "All we are here concerned with," he said, "is the imitation, by the English hexameter, of the ancient hexameter _in its effect upon us moderns_.... The received English type, in its general outlines, is, for England, the necessary given type of this metre; it is by rendering the metrical beat of its pattern, not by rendering the accentual beat of it, that the English language has adapted the Greek hexameter.... I look with hope towards continued attempts at perfecting and employing this rhythm; but my belief in the immediate success of such attempts is far less confident than has been supposed." (See the whole passage, _On Translating Homer_, pp. 275-284.) The hexameters of Dr. Hawtrey, quoted by Arnold, are these: Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia; Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember; Two, two only remain, whom I see not among the commanders, Kastor fleet in the car,--Polydeukes brave with the cestus,-- Own dear brethren of mine,--one parent loved us as infants. Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lakedaimon, Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through the waters, Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of heroes, All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened? --So said she. They long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing, There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lakedaimon. (From _English Hexameter Translations_, p. 242.)