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Just after the Restoration, there was an attempt to introduce the rhymed couplet as the medium for heroic plays; but that, on the other hand, was too difficult to establish itself in general use. Tragedy soon fell back upon the fatally facile unrhymed iambic, and a reign of stilted, stodgy mediocrity set in.
Hence, lyrical poetry re-appeared, not in the shape of religious songs, as in the old time, but in a form to touch all the chords of sentiment. Two new types of verse appeared, the Elegiac and the Iambic. At first the elegy was probably a lament for the dead. It was accompanied by the soft music of the Lydian flute. The instruments which the Greeks had used were string-instruments.
Moreover, it was not till late that the short plot was discarded for one of greater compass, and the grotesque diction of the earlier satyric form for the stately manner of Tragedy. The iambic measure then replaced the trochaic tetrameter, which was originally employed when the poetry was of the Satyric order, and had greater affinities with dancing.
Many are the noble words in which poets speak of actions like your own Words about Homer; but they do not speak of them by any rules of art: only when they make that to which the Muse impels them are their inventions inspired; and then one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses and he who is good at one is not good at any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine.
The Saturnian measure is, like every other occurring in Roman and Greek antiquity, based on quantity; but of all the antique metres perhaps it is the least thoroughly elaborated, for besides many other liberties it allows itself the greatest license in omitting the short syllables, and it is at the same time the most imperfect in construction, for these iambic and trochaic half-lines opposed to each other were but little fitted to develop a rhythmical structure adequate for the purposes of the higher poetry.
as five-stress iambic, rhyming aa. The familiar measure of English ballad poetry, "The King has written a braid letter, And signed it wi' his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence, Was walking on the sand" is alternating four-stress and three-stress iambic, rhyming ab cb. The In Memoriam stanza,
You, O Fundanius, of all men breathing are the most capable of prattling tales in a comic vein, how an artful courtesan and a Davus impose upon an old Chremes. Pollio sings the actions of kings in iambic measure; the sublime Varias composes the manly epic, in a manner that no one can equal: to Virgil the Muses, delighting in rural scenes, have granted the delicate and the elegant.
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.
Still some have thought that the poems of Archilochus or the Silli may have suggested the Roman form of composition. But the former, though full of invective, were iambic or personal, not properly satirical.
Moreover his boast that he was the first to introduce the Archilochian iambic and the lyric metres, though perhaps justifiable; is the reverse of generous, seeing that Catullus had treated before him three at least of the metres to which he alludes. Mr.
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