Coleridge, it is true, and Scott had employed a broken rhythm, substituting the temporal for the syllabic ictus, to vary the monotony of the eight-syllabled narrative verse. But, to judge of the best that could be done before Moore's time with a purely anapæstic measure, one may refer to Wordsworth's "At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears." These verses are sufficiently destitute of the lyrical quality which is so constantly present in any work of Shelley's. But Moore had done all but all his best work, before Shelley had written six poems worthy of remembrance. Going back, as we have seen, to the seventeenth century for his inspiration in style, Moore began by using only the trochaic and iambic measures. In the _Epistles and Odes_, we find one epistle (that to Atkinson) written in well-managed anapæests, but more notable is the very delicate rhythm of the Canadian Boat Song--inspired by a tune. It is Moore's great distinction that he brought into English verse something of the variety and multiplicity of musical rhythms. When the _Irish Melodies_ began to appear, it is no wonder that readers should have been dazzled by the skill with which a profusion of metres were handled; and the poet showed himself even more inventive in rhythms than in stanzas. The most curious part of the matter is that Moore was really importing into English poetry some of the characteristics of a literature which he did not know. He had not a word of Gaelic, and (like O'Connell) desired to see it die out. He observes that Spanish alone of European metrical systems employs "assonantic" instead of consonantic rhyme, though he was bred in a country where rhyme of this order had been brought to an extraordinary pitch of perfection. But he based his work upon Irish times, composed in the primitive manner, before music was divorced from poetry. One may say, virtually, that in fitting words to these tunes, he reproduced in English the rhythms of Irish folk song. The thing was not done completely: for instance, in the first number of the _Melodies_, the song "Erin, the smile and the tear in thine eye," is to the tune of "Eileen Aroon," and the Irish words (which survive in this instance and, I am told by my friend Mr. O'Neil Russell, in only one other), do not correspond in metre with Moore's. He has varied the tune, and is consequently using a different stanza, which corresponds with the Irish only in the last three lines of the refrain. In the other instance, that of "O blame not the bard," there is a general correspondence in metre, but here the Irish metre is one not very different from an ordinary English stanza--though, as usual in Irish folk-poetry, the line is measured by time and not by syllables.