The metre is a line of six stresses, written according to rules of english rhythm; and its correspondence with the latin comic trimeter iambic is an accident. Whatever a stress may carry, it should never be made to carry more than one long syllable with it,—the comic vein allowing some license as to what is reckoned as long;—but as there are no conventional, or merely metric stresses (except sometimes in the sixth place; and in the third, when the midverse break usual in english six-stressed verse is observed, or that place is occupied by a proper name), the accompanying long and short syllables may have very varied relation of position with regard to their carrying stress. Where more than four short unstressed syllables come together, a stress is distributed or lost; and in some conditions of rhythm this may occur when only four short syllables come together; and this distributed stress occurs very readily in the second, fourth, and fifth places. Such at least seem some of the rhythmic laws, any infringement of which must be regarded as a fault or liberty of writing: and the best has not been made of the metre. A natural emphasizing of the sense gives all the rhythm that is intended. The author thinks that so much explanation is due to the reader, because the verse is new. He has been told that it will be said by the critics to be prose; but that if it were printed as prose, they might pronounce it to be verse: and this is the effect aimed at; since a comic metre which will admit colloquial speech without torturing it must have such a loose varying rhythm. NOTE II. (From Montaigne’s essays, II. 8.)