there are no less than five violations of position, to say nothing of the shortening of a syllable so distinctly long as the _i_ in _primeval_. Mr. Swinburne, in his Sapphics and Hendecasyllables, while writing on a manifestly artistic conception of those metres, and, in my judgment, proving their possibility for modern purposes by the superior rhythmical effect which a classically trained ear enabled him to make in handling them, neglects position as a rule, though his nice sense of metre leads him at times to observe it, and uniformly rejects any approach to the harsh combinations indulged in by other writers. The nearest approach to quantitative hexameters with which I am acquainted in modern English writers is the _Andromeda_ of Mr. Kingsley, a poem which has produced little effect, but is interesting as a step to what may fairly be called a new development of the metre. For the experiments of the Elizabethan writers, Sir Philip Sidney and others, by that strange perversity which so often dominates literature, were as decidedly unsuccessful from an accentual, as the modern experiments from a quantitative point of view. Sir Philip Sidney has given in his _Arcadia_ specimens of hexameters, elegiacs, sapphics, asclepiads, anacreontics, hendecasyllables. The following elegiacs will serve as a sample. _Unto a caitif wretch, whom long affliction holdeth, And now fully believ's help to bee quite perished; Grant yet, grant yet a look, to the last moment of his anguish, O you (alas so I finde) caus of his onely ruine: Dread not awhit (O goodly cruel) that pitie may enter Into thy heart by the sight of this Epistle I send: And so refuse to behold of these strange wounds the recitall, Lest it might m' allure home to thyself to return._