"The Hexameter consists of six feet, or twelve times. These feet, in the Latin and Greek languages, were always either dactyls, or spondees; the time of a dactyl, being only that of a spondee. In modern languages, however, metre being regulated by the emphasis, or intonation of the syllables, and not by the position of the letters, spondees can scarcely exist, except in compound words, as dark-red. Our dissyllables are for the most part, either iambics, as desire; or trochees, as languid. These therefore, but chiefly the latter, we must admit, instead of spondees. The four first feet of each line may be dissyllable feet, or dactyls, or both commingled, as best suits the melody, and requisite variety; but the two last feet must, with rare exceptions, be uniformly, the former a dactyl, the latter a dissyllable. The amphimacer may, in English, be substituted for the dactyl, occasionally. EXAMPLES. Oh, what a life is the eye! What a fine and inscrutable essence! He that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warms him; He that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother, He that smiled at the bosom, the babe that smiles in its slumber, Even to him it exists. It moves, and stirs in its prison; Lives with a separate life, and "Is it a spirit?" he murmurs, Sure it has thoughts of its own, and to see is only a language. ANOTHER SPECIMEN, DESCRIBING HEXAMETERS IN HEXAMETERS. Strongly it tilts us along, o'er leaping and limitless billows, Nothing before, and nothing behind, but the sky and the ocean. ANOTHER SPECIMEN. In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column In the Pentameter still, falling melodious down. * * * * * THE ENGLISH DUODECASYLLABLE. This consists of two dactyls, and three trochees; the two dactyls first; and the trochees following. Hear, my beloved! an old Milesian story; High and embosomed in congregated laurels, Glimmered a temple, upon a breezy headland In the dim distance, amid the skyey billows, Rose a fair island; the God of flocks had blest it: From the dim shores of this bleak resounding island, Oft in the moon-light a little boat came floating, Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland, Where between myrtles a path-way stole in mazes, Up to the groves of the high embosomed temple. There in a thicket of consecrated roses, Oft did a Priestess, as lovely as a vision, Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea, Pray him to hover around the light canoe boat, And with invisible pilotage to guide it Over the dusky waves, till the nightly sailor Shiv'ring with ecstacy sank upon her bosom. Now, by the immortals! he was a beauteous stripling, Worthy to dream the sweet dream of young Endymion."