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Every man almost spoke pure iambics the next day, and talked of nothing but Perseus his pathetic address, "O Cupid! prince of gods and men!" in every street of Abdera, in every house, "O Cupid! Cupid!" in every mouth, like the natural notes of some sweet melody which drop from it, whether it will or no, nothing but "Cupid! Cupid! prince of gods and men!"

In the first place, they are written entirely in prose. It has been well remarked by an English critic, that the banishment of verse from Comedy had even a prejudicial influence on versification in Tragedy. The older dramatists could elevate or lower the tone of their Iambics at pleasure; from the exclusion of this verse from familiar dialogue, it has become more pompous and inflexible.

I first showed to Italy the Parian iambics: following the numbers and spirit of Archilochus, but not his subject and style, which afflicted Lycambes. Him too, never celebrated by any other tongue, I the Roman lyrist first made known. It delights me, as I bring out new productions, to be perused by the eyes, and held in the hands of the ingenuous.

Then there was a younger daughter, Jane, still at home, who passed her life between her mother's work-table and her father's Greek, mending linen, and learning to scan iambics, for Mr Crawley in his early days had been a ripe scholar. And now there had come upon them all this terribly-crushing disaster.

A long syllable put after a short one is termed an iambus, a lively measure, whence also it commanded the name of trimeters to be added to iambics, though it yielded six beats of time, being similar to itself from first to last.

Their superiority in this respect may be appreciated by comparing them with the extant fragments of Lucilius. In his metres he follows the Greek systems, but somewhat loosely. His iambics admit spondees, &c. into all places but the last; but some of his plays show much more care than others: the Persa and Stichus being the least accurate, the Menaechmi peculiarly smooth and harmonious.

First, because the Latin verses are excellent, and of the same measure with the Greek; so that if the text be Elegiac verses, or pure Hexameters, or Iambics of six feet, or Anacreontics, the version is always of the same species of poetry.

Shakspeare's Iambics are sometimes highly harmonious and full sounding; always varied and suitable to the subject, at one time distinguished by ease and rapidity, at another they move along with ponderous energy. They never fall out of the dialogical character, which may always be traced even in the continued discourses of individuals, excepting when the latter run into the lyrical.

And if adventurous spirits, like Spenser and Sidney, were for a time misled into the vain attempt to graft exotic forms upon the homely growths of native poetry, they soon saw their mistake and revolted in silence against the ridiculous pedant who preferred the limping hexameters of the Arcadia to Sidney's sonnets, and the spavined iambics of Spenser to the Faerie Queene.

He could make Greek iambics, and doubted whether the bishop knew the difference between an iambus and a trochee. He could disport himself with trigonometry, feeling confident that Dr Tempest had forgotten his way over the asses' bridge. He knew "Lycidas" by heart; and as for Thumble, he felt quite sure that Thumble was incompetent of understanding a single allusion in that divine poem.