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But we must now consider what number like so many dashes of purple, should tincture and enrich the rest, and to what species of style they are each of them best adapted. The iambic, then, should be the leading number in those subjects which require a plain and simple style; the paeon in such as require more compass and elevation; and the dactyl is equally applicable to both.
Accordingly, the dactyl is of the first class, the paeon of the last, the iambic of the second. And how is it possible to avoid such feet in an oration? And then when they are arranged with due consideration rhythm is unavoidably produced. But the question arises, what rhythm is to be employed; either absolutely, or in preference to others.
Amongst other difficulties it may be observed that such words as "and," "is," "are," "the," "who," "his," "its," "have," "been" words without which few English sentences can be constructed do not form the short syllables of a true dactyl.
Washington is a stately dactyl; Irving is a sweet and mellow spondee, and thus we have a combination which poets in ancient and modern days have sought with sedulous care, and which should close every line of hexameter verse.
It is called hexameter because each line has six feet: one of these is of two long syllables, called spondee; the other, of three syllables, one long and two short, which is called dactyl. Both are isochronic. These in interchangeable order fill out the hexameter verse. It is called heroic because in it the deeds of the heroes are recounted.
And so with "trochee," "dactyl," "anapest" and the rest; if we knew that accent and not quantity was what we really had in mind, it was proper enough to speak of Paradise Lost as written in "iambic pentameter," and Evangeline in "dactylic hexameter," etc.
For because the paeon has three short syllables and the dactyl two, he thinks that the words come more trippingly off on account of the shortness and rapidity of utterance of the syllables; and that a contrary effect is produced by the spondee and trochee, because the one consists of long syllables and the other of short ones; so that a speech made up of the one is too much hurried, it made up of the other is too slow; and neither is well, regulated.
Here Freshmen might smoke their pipes in safety a privilege denied them on the street and debate upon their affairs. Who were hold-off men! My dear Professor Blank, could you hear yourself described by these young cubs through their tobacco smoke, your learned ears, so alert for dactyl and spondee, would grow red. Do Scott's boys, I wonder, still gather clothes for pressing around the Campus?
They were for the most part the beginning of some word which reminded him of a thing he cared to remember. First he had, in sport, named some of them after the metrical feet of Latin verse, which had been but ill friends of his in his school days, and in his kennel there was a Troch, Iamb, Spond and Dact, whose full names were Trochee, Iambus, Spondee and Dactyl.
Near by stood a coloured groom with a horse. The observers concluded that Miss Gish was to do a little galloping shortly. Dactyl and Spondee moved away. Spondee quoted a poem he had once written about Miss Dorothy. He recollected only two lines: She makes all the rest seem a shoal of poor fish So we cast our ballot for Dorothy Gish.
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