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As the paeon, therefore, is of all other feet the most improper for poetry, it may, for that reason be more readily admitted into prose.
Armstrong, the poet of the "Art of preserving Health," under the inspiration of Hygeia, the goddess of health, thus celebrates the Naiads. Paeon is a name both of Apollo and Aesculapius. "Come, ye Naiads! to the fountains lead! O comfortable streams! with eager lips And trembling hands the languid thirsty quaff New life in you; fresh vigor fills their veins.
But both parties seem to be equally mistaken: for those who exclude the paeon, are not aware that they reject the sweetest and fullest number we have.
But those accents are all in the wrong, and Ephorus is wholly in fault. For those who pass over the paeon, do not perceive that a most delicate, and at the same time most dignified rhythm is passed over by them. But Aristotle's opinion is very different, for he considers that the heroic rhythm is a grander one than is admissible in prose, and that an iambic is too like ordinary conversation.
For some people think that it is the iambic rhythm, because that is the most like a speech, on which account it happens that it is most frequently employed in fables, because of its resemblance to reality because the dactylic hexameter rhythm is better suited to a lofty and magniloquent subject But Ephorus himself, an inconsiderable orator, though coming from an excellent school, inclines to the paeon, or dactyl, but avoids the spondee and trochee.
He, therefore, who recommended the paeon, as having the long syllable last, was certainly guilty of an oversight; because the quantity of the last syllable is never regarded. The paeon, however, as consisting of four syllables, is reckoned by some to be only a number, and not a foot.
He was praying raising his voice in thanksgiving at our deliverance and had just completed a sort of paeon of gratitude that the thing couldn't climb a tree when without warning it reared up beneath him on its enormous tail and hind feet, and reached those fearfully armed paws quite to the branch upon which he crouched.
And all this, which is also contained in Aristotle, is said by Theophrastus and Theodectes about the paeon.
The long service swept on to its close. Suddenly organ and choir burst into a paeon. Little Doctor Thalmann raised his arms. The congregation swept to its feet with a mighty surge. Fanny rose with them, her face very white in its frame of black curls, her eyes luminous.
LVIII. But what feet ought to be mingled with others, like purple, must be now explained; and we must also show to what kind of speech each sort of foot and rhythm is the best adapted. For the iambic is most frequent in those orations which are composed in a humble and lowly style; but the paeon is suited to a more dignified style; and the dactyl to both.
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