public speaking, would either be pronounced with greater force, or lengthened in the pronunciation, that the meaning of the speaker might be the more clearly apprebeded, or understood at a greater distance. This naturaby suggests the words in a sentence on which the emphasis would be placed, and the obvious reason for employing such emphasis What was thus true of a sentence would in process of time become true of a single word; for the noun would have modifying syllables united to it, in order to shew its gender, number, and elation to other words; and the verb would have mocifications made on it to indicate the persons acting and the time of the action; but it would naturally occur, that the primary word on which these modifications gad been made, especially if a monosyllable, would be indicated by pronouncing it with greater force or length than the modifying syllables, and hence the natural origin and place of the accent of a word. In such a collocation of words as forms a sentence, it would rarely happen that the emphatical words or accented syllables would unintentionally succeed one another in such a regular order as would arrest the attention, and gratify the ear by the perception of uniformity in their recurrence. But, as already observed, it had been early discovered that there were some, who, through a peculiarly keen perception of such measured sentences and the possession of a cobions Vocabulary from which to draw their materials, could produce those measured sentences more readily and peasantly than others; and such persons, partly from the pleasure they afforded their hearers, and partly from to belief that they had received this peculiar gitt directly fom a supernatural source, would be highly esteemed and distinguished among their fellow-men.

Syllables thus resolve themselves into emphatical or 61ng, and unemphatical or weak; or long and short, as they have otherwise been named. Referring once more to marching, or beating time with the foot, we riay suppose an important word to be uttered at the patting down of each foot; hence two accented or long syllables for a measure; or the first syllable may be strong and the next weak, and so on alternately; or the first syllable may be weak and the second strong, and

this order may be preserved throngboat: but other ruolifications may yet be made, by pronour, az two feeble syllables at one step and one emphatical syllable at the next step; or we may pronounce an emphatical syllable at the first step and this may be followed by two feeble ones; and hence the pleasure the car derives from such a regularly-returning combination of syllables.

VERSIFICATION.

41

That a large portion of the Holy Scriptures is poetical cannot be doubted, although the principles of Hebrew versification have not been fully ascertained. Many parts are expressly called songs, while the nature of the composition and the elevation of style clearly indicate the poetical construction of others. Josephus, who ought to be a competent judge, a firms that the "songs of Moses" were in heroie verse, while the psalias of Dav'd exhibited various kinds of verse, some of which were composed in timeters and others in pentameters. The nature and genins of Hebrew poetry, how ever, have been warmly contested, and have been most successinlly illustrated by B shops Lowth and Jebb. The poetry of the Hebrews originated religion, al, together with mu. : vated by their prophets, and excellence in the time of David. only a poet, but an inventor er Lowth has endeavoured to pro poetry exhibits a characteristic d.. in highly figurative and truly sub' that it possesses a peculiarity to wh term parallelism. Striking instan may be found in any of the psá, na meinhers of a sentence are so adjust. 3. 3. to words and thoughts to thoughts, teristic that, even in a prose tra! poetic structure of the originals, &z 1 praise at once for chanting.

Thus, for example, in the ninety » Fa

In His hand are the deep plac vor beat,
The strength of the hills is i2.

The sea is His, and He made it,

And His hands formed the dry land."

Here we cannot fail to see how "the depths of the earth" are contrasted with "the height of the hills ;" and both are represented as His possessions; while "the sea" is contrasted with "the land," and both assigned to His creative power. The following example from the fortyfourth chapter of Isaiah will also forcibly illustrate this peculiarity:

"For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty
And floods upon the dry ground;

I will pour my spirit upon thy seed,

And my blessing upon thine offspring."

Here the parallelism between water and floods, thirsty and dry, in the first distich, and spirit and blessing, seed and offspring in the second, is at once apparent; and the knowledge of this principle is not without its use in ascertaining the meaning of certain expressions, as it is evident that the parallel words in the above quotation are also synonymous, and thus, when the Saviour is said to have poured His blessing upon the infants that were brought to Him for that purpose, His action was tantamount to pouring His spirit upon their souls.

Some have endeavoured to shew that such metrical construction as we find in the poetry of the Greeks and Romans, may be detected also in that of the Hebrews; but this has been strenuously controverted by others. In passing, therefore, from the sacred to the profane, we not only enter a new field of thought, but we also perceive a new mode of cultivation; and the Christian, whilst he has derived the seeds of truth from the Jew, has chosen to cultivate them after the manner of the Gentile. Hence the necessity of our making a few remarks on the principle of the construction of Greek and Latin verse. Those who have treated this subject have been led to point out the distinction between quantity and accent, affirming that the former regulated the versification of ancient, and the latter that of modern times. We humbly conceive that quantity and accent are found in the compositions of both periods; but that the former were more distinguished by the quantity of syllables, not

-, or anapest, and

neglecting the accent, and that the latter are more dependent on accent, not however, neglecting quantity. Syllables among the ancients were considered as either long or short, according to the length of time with which they were respectively pronounced; among the moderns, as accented or unaccented, according to the force with which they are respectively pronounced. Two syllables, accordingly, in sequence, may either be both long or both short; or the one may be long and the other short, or the one may be short and the other long; or to express the same ideas by signs; two syllables may be thus arranged, --, or spondee; or dibrach; - ~, or trochee; and ~—, or iamb; and all these arrangements occur in English poetry; but we shall only represent the two arrangements of three syllables that occur in our verse, or dactyl. Each of those arrangements is called a foot, metre, or measure, and the verse derives its peculiar name from the foot that most abounds in it. Among both the Greeks and the Romans the noblest combination of these metres is called the heroic, from its being generally employed to celebrate the deeds of their gods and heroes, as in the celebrated works of Homer and Virgil. We shall briefly direct attention to this species of verse, on account of the influence that it has so long exerted on the productions of subsequent bards. It consisted of six of these feet, and hence was called hexameter. Generally speaking, the last foot must be a spondee, and the preceding a dactyl; each of the other four might be indiscriminately either a dactyl or a spondee. Hence the number of syllables might vary from thirteen to seventeen; but much taste and ingenuity might be displayed in the choice of the optional or arbitrary feet in order to render the "sound an echo to the sense," as the sponde was suited to a slow and solemn movement, and the dactyl to a quick and lively one. In elegiac verse, an hexameter line alternated with a pentameter, and it is probably from this that we have derived an heroic verse which is pentameter, and, as the iamb is the prevailing foot, it is specifically termed iambic. As the verse is therefore pentameter and iambic, it necessarily consists of ten syllables. Like the hexameter, its last foot is

fixed, and must be a true iamb, but any of the other places may be occupied either with a spondee, dibrach, or trochee.

For heroic, narrative, and didactic subjects, this verse has long been employed. It is allowed to be of native origin, and Chaucer, the father of English poetry, has generally been accorded the honour of its invention. In its loftiest forms, it is written as blank verse, as in Milton's Paradise Lost and Regained and Young's Night Thoughts; or as rhyming couplets, as in the works of Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, Campbell, Crabbe, Montgomery, and many others. In Chaucer, it is comparatively harsh to our ear; but it acquired strength in Denham, sweetness in Waller, a combination of these in Dryden, and, perhaps, perfection in Pope.

Let us read the following example from the Canterbury Tales:

"A good man was ther of religioun,

And was a pore Persoun of a toun;

But riche he was of holy thought and werk
He was also a lerned man, a clerk

That Cristes gospel gladly wolde preche;
His parischens devoutly wolde he teche.---
Wyd was his parisch, and houses fer asondur,
But he ne lafte not for reyne ne tnondur,
In siknesse ne in meschief to visite
The ferrest in his parissche, moche and lite,
Uppon his feet, and in his hond a staf.

This noble ensample unto his scheep he gaf,

But ferst he wroughte, and after that he taughte," &c.

Here will immediately be felt, the want of the stately march and harmonious roll of the heroic verse of the present day. On examining the passage, this will be found to arise from an apparent defect or superfluity of syllables; thus two syllables are apparently wanting in the fifth line, but by making "Christes" and "wolde" dissyllables, we shall find the verse complete; on the other hand, the twelfth line seems to have two superfluous syllables; but by eliding the final e of "noble" and "ensample," or making the termination of these words glide into the beginning of those that follow, we shall get rid of those redundant syllables, and reduce the line to its proper dimensions. Let it be remembered, however