My very dear Friend,--I hear with wonder from Arabel of your repudiation of my word 'octosyllabic' for the two lines in your controversial poem. Certainly, if you count the syllables on your fingers, there are ten syllables in each line: of _that_ I am perfectly aware; but the lines are none the less belonging to the species of versification called octosyllabic. Do you not observe, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that the final accent and rhyme fall on the eighth syllable instead of the tenth, and that _that_ single circumstance determines the class of verse--that they are in fact octosyllabic verses with triple rhymes? Hatching succession apostolical, With other falsehoods diabolical. Pope has double rhymes in his heroic verses, but how does he manage them? Why, he admits eleven syllables, throwing the final accent and rhyme on the tenth, thus: Worth makes the man, and want of it the f_e_llow, The rest is nought but leather and prun_e_lla. Again, if there is a double rhyme to an octosyllabic verse, there are always _nine_ syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable, thus: Compound for sins that we're incl_i_ned to, By damning those we have no m_i_nd to. ('Hudibras.') Again, if there is a triple rhyme to an octosyllabic verse (precisely the present case) there must always be ten syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable; thus from 'Hudibras' again: Then in their robes the penit_e_ntials Are straight presented with cred_e_ntials. Remember how in arms and p_o_litics, We still have worsted all your h_o_ly tricks. You will admit that these last couplets are precisely of the same structure as yours, and certainly they are octosyllabics, and made use of by Butler in an octosyllabic poem, whereas yours, to be rendered of the heroic structure, should run thus: Hatching at ease succession apostolical, With many other falsehoods diabolical. I have written a good deal about an oversight on your part of little consequence; but as you charged me with a mistake made in cold blood and under corrupt influences from Lake-mists, why I was determined to make the matter clear to you. And as to the _influences_, if I were guilty of this mistake, or of a thousand mistakes, Wordsworth would not be guilty _in_ me. I think of him now, exactly as I thought of him during the first years of my friendship for you, only with _an equal_ admiration. He was a great poet to me always, and always, while I have a soul for poetry, will be so; yet I said, and say in an under-voice, but steadfastly, that Coleridge was the grander genius. There is scarcely anything newer in my estimation of Wordsworth than in the colour of my eyes! Perhaps I was wrong in saying '_a pun._' But I thought I apprehended a double sense in your application of the term 'Apostolical succession' to Oxford's 'breeding' and 'hatching,' words which imply succession in a way unecclesiastical.