Since we have been discussing metrical details at some length, we may be permitted to add a few comments on the iambic trimeter which in English is really nothing else but what is commonly known as blank verse. This verse is very generally misunderstood and we have nowhere seen it properly explained in English books on prosody. The blank verse is the most common and best adapted form for dignified speech in both the dialogue and the monologue of the drama. We quote as a typical verse the first line of Hamlet’s soliloquy: “To be or not to be, that is the question.” The meter is a catalectic iambic trimeter and there is only one rule of importance, viz., that at the beginning and after caesuras an iambus ◡– can be replaced by a trochee metric: –◡. A scheme of the meter runs thus: ◡–◡–|◡–◡–|◡–◡|| Or in musical script thus: [Music] The last long syllable, sometimes even the whole last foot, is omitted or, more correctly, is replaced by a pause. We may write it thus: [Music] This latter case, originally merely allowable, has become very frequent in English, because the English language is rich in monosyllables so as to make it sometimes difficult to end the verse with an unaccented (i. e., a short) syllable, but this custom has produced the impression that the verse consists of five iambi, and among people but little versed in the rules of classical poetry who forget that an iambic meter consists of two feet, has given rise to the error that blank verse is an iambic pentameter. Strange to say this mistake is now perpetuated in almost all our text-books. * * * * * After this digression on the iambic trimeter we shall make, in conclusion, a few comments on the dactylic pentameter. The pentameter, i. e., “a five-measure,” is so called because it consists of twice two and a half dactylic meters thus: –◡◡–◡◡– In reality the pentameter is a repetition of a penthemimeres. Two short syllables may always be replaced in elegiac distichs by one long syllable, with the exception of the fifth meter of the hexameter and the latter half of the pentameter. The schedule of a distich, accordingly, is thus: — — — — — — –◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡◡–◡ — — –◡◡–◡◡–||–◡◡–◡◡– Considering the fact that the measures of Greek prosody are comparable to musical bars in which time and not accent is the decisive element, we readily understand that the name “pentameter” is a misnomer, for the pentameter consists as much as the hexameter of six full dactylic bars, only that there is a pause of one-half meter after each two and a half meters. Expressed in musical characters, the distich reads as follows: [Music] INTRODUCTORY. Our Purpose. These gay verses, revering the good, will annoy the philistine, Ridicule bigots, and smite hypocrites, as they deserve. Vorsatz Den Philister verdriesse, den Schwärmer necke, den Heuchler