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Updated: June 19, 2025
Tell me, dost thou not write verses?" "No; I have never composed a single hexameter." "And dost thou not play on the lute and sing?" "No." "And dost thou drive a chariot?" "I tried once in Antioch, but unsuccessfully." "Then I am at rest concerning thee. And to what party in the hippodrome dost thou belong?" "To the Greens."
The very sound of the hexameter, that long, inimitable roll of the most various music, was enough to win the heart, even if the words were not understood. But the words proved unexpectedly easy to understand, full as they are of all nobility, all tenderness, all courage, courtesy, and romance.
The latter are written in hexameter, but by no means classic in form. It is a rough, irregular metre, in which the trochees preponderate over the dactyls: many of the lines, in fact, would not bear a critical scansion.
The breaking up of the matter into stanzas, each having a unity of its own, led to additions, omissions and perversions, there are 2104 lines in the translation to 1509 in the original, and substituted an interrupted romantic cadence for the stately continuous roll of the hexameter.
'The night was at her noon' is a capital ending for the first hexameter and the moon is booked for the next stage. Come in." "No, I shall stay out." "Don't be nonsensical." "By moonlight there is no nonsense like common sense."
Most of these literary monuments were written in Saturnian verse, the oldest measure used by the Latin poets. It was probably derived from the Etruscans, and until Ennius introduced the heroic hexameter, the strains of the Italian bards flowed in this metre. The structure of the Saturnian is very simple, and its rhythmical arrangement is found in the poetry of every age and country.
All the parts of an epic are included in Tragedy; but those of Tragedy are not all of them to be found in the Epic. Reserving hexameter poetry and Comedy for consideration hereafter, let us proceed now to the discussion of Tragedy; before doing so, however, we must gather up the definition resulting from what has been said.
Still more daring was the conversion into archaic hexameter verse of the stories of Genesis and Exodus, and of Messianic prophecies in the guise of Sibylline oracles.
Hall also, in his "Satires," condemned the heresy in some verses remarkable for their grave beauty and strength. The revival of the hexameter in modern poetry is due to Johann Heinrich Voss, a man of genius, an admirable metrist, and, Schlegel's sneer to the contrary notwithstanding, hitherto the best translator of Homer.
I, however, wished only to show that it had something of an Homeric character; and the facility with which you can read the hexameter of Homer as two lines, you will, perhaps, more than suspect, tends to confirm this opinion.
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