in answer to your letter, or at least suggested by it; for what is coming I have not the shadow of an excuse, it is a wanton exercise of your patience and indulgence. I will tell you fairly, in case you should like to stop where you are, that you will have to read a pretty long comment on what you know much better than I do, but a necessary preparation; after which you will come to what certainly will surprise you by the boldness of the attempt, to use a mild term, and by the still greater boldness of making you the confidant. I was lately looking over the games in the 23d book of the Iliad, particularly the chariot and footrace, though I almost know them by heart. In the first of them that discrimination of characters and manners, so true, so strikingly diversified throughout the whole poem, appears in a peculiar light, from the comparatively peaceful and gay circumstances of the scene. Achilles, the most highly dramatic character ever conceived in poetry, is shown in a new, though perfectly consistent point of view, as a model of the most dignified, attentive, and delicate good breeding: I like even the sparring between Ajax, Oileus, and Idomeneus, and the slang of an heroic race-course; but am delighted with Antilochus, with his frank yet guarded appeal to Achilles, his animated challenge to any who should dispute his claim to the prize; and one is pleased to see what one never saw before, Achilles's good-humoured smile at his young friend's spirited behaviour; but the scene that immediately follows between Antilochus and Menelaus is what above all others delights me. The touches of character in Menelaus are most masterly: that pride which his brother, himself the proudest of men, warns him, in the camp-scene, against giving way to, here breaks out at various times, accompanied, however, with kind and highly honourable feelings. While every word that falls from Antilochus, as he goes on in his most candid and conciliating speech, makes more and more impres sion; we feel gradually softened, as Menelaus does, and forgive the jockeying trick which it must be owned the other had been playing. So ends this long comment; next comes my motive for making it. This same Antilochus, this amiable young man for whom we had been so interested in the chariot-race, is again one of the three competitors in the foot-race, and a very proper one, as his swiftness is repeatedly noticed; yet there never was

so perfect a cypher throughout; all we hear is, that the three start together; he is never mentioned afterwards as running or contending in any way; the sole contest is between the other two: Ajax is foremost; but just at the end slips in the cow-dung, falls on his nose, Ulysses passes him, carries off the first prize; and Ajax, in spite of such a complete somerset, which fills his nose and mouth full of dung, and just as if there had been no other competitor, takes the second; and all we know of our dear Antilochus is, that he gained, what he could not lose, the third prize. One can hardly conceive that the old bard, having just interested us so highly in his favour, and made him act so conspicuous a part on a recent occasion, should on this have laid him so completely on the shelf: and I suppose have likewise neglected such an evident source of interest and variety on the race itself; one might almost be led to imagine, that some lines here and there had been lost. On this idea I have been amusing myself with what will probably amuse you at my expence, with writing a few hexameters de ma façon, in order to give my young friend some share in the action at least, though I have not ventured to alter the distribution of the prizes. And it is to you of all men that I voluntarily expose such an attempt! I am not afraid of you, however; for though the most acute and rigid of critics, yet, as a friend, I know it by experience, no one can be more mild and indulgent. I shall write down the whole suite, from where my interpolation begins to where it ends, that you may judge whether the connection at least is tolerably preserved: and I cannot resist this opportunity, having so long a suite of verses to write down, of consulting you about the effect of the ictus metricus (which in hexameters I conceive to be nearly the same as the arsis) in recitation, and for that purpose shall mark what I imagine to be the place of it on each syllable. In reciting the lines according to my own marks it seems to me that the rhythm goes on with an uninterrupted flow and animation, very differently from what it does in our mode; that the place of the cæsura, which we seldom indicate, is in most of the lines well marked, and with the right quantity; and that the double place of the ictus is particularly useful in the numerous choriambi; as, in our usual practice, by laying our accent on the second syllable only, and consequently lengthening that and

shortening all the others, we are every time guilty of two false quantities, just as if the words were marked τεμένω ευχομενος, All that has just been said respecting the ictus, and its use in the recitation of hexameters, had but very recently occurred to me, when I ventured to show you at Guy's Cliff a page or two I had written on the subject; you had but little time for reading them, and none for giving me your opinion on any particular point; I therefore felt very desirous to recall the subject to your recollection, and to lay it more fully before you, in hopes of having my notions either confirmed or corrected by your judgment. Here, then, at last comes my interpolation, mixed with the genuine lines, the dross and the ore together. I shall begin a little earlier than was necessary, for the sake of bringing in a justly celebrated line, on which also I shall have a remark or two to offer: I will only add, in the Italian phrase, compatisca.

Ιχνια τυπτε ποδεσσι παρος κονιν αμφιχυθήναι, &c.

As the sense of my Greek may not be very clear, I will put down in English what I meant to express, and in part to suggest. My supposition is, that when Ajax falls, Ulysses, who was close behind, whipt round him to the right, where it may be supposed the ground was pretty clear from the dung, or, if not, that his guardian deity, " επιρροθος ηλθε ποδοιιν,” so he got in first; that on the left of Ajax, it may again be supposed, the ground was covered with dung and blood, and that Antilochus, who was on that side, seeing from what had happened the danger of slipping, checked his speed; at which moment Ajax sprung up, darted forward, and came in second. All this, with very little Greek, and as little practice in Greek hexameters, Į have been trying to make out, and again repeat compatisca!

I have another explanation to make of a different kind, which I foresee will be of some length; but I am so deep in sin that I am grown quite hardened: it relates to a little mark I have placed on the last syllable of some of the pyrrhics. We uniformly lay our accent on the first, as indeed in all dissyllables, and thence spoil many a dactyl, and often where the dactylic rhythm has its most stiking effect, as in the first line of the quotation, which I shall now mark with our accents as we always lay them.

Ιχνια τυπ'τε ποδεσσι, παρος κόνιν αμφιχυθήναι.

As long as our accent is on the long syllables, and on them only, the dactylic rhythm, so well suited to the occasion, springs forward without a check, but at once breaks down where it is on two short ones, πάρος κόνιν. Now, though either the ictus or our accent would equally secure the quantity of the iambus, após, yet there is nothing to secure the omission of our accent on both the syllables of the pyrrhic, without which omission it cannot have its true sound, or form a dactyl with the last syllable of após. The fact is (at least after much reflection, and much discussion and amicable controversy on the point, I am convinced of it), that we English never give to any dissyllable, either in our own or the ancient languages, the sound which a pyrrhic ought to have; and for the obvious reason, that we always lay an accent, which gives length, either on the first or the last; it is therefore a sound, as far as the detached foot is concerned, totally unknown to us, as likewise, I believe, to the Italians, and for the same reason. But, though no single detached dissyllable can be produced as a proper standard, yet many of them become such when joined in composition with a preceding long syllable, and thence forming the end of a dactyl. Thus, for instance, color is, with our accent color, as much a trochee as sólor, or, I might add, sólans with the same accent: were it to be laid, where we never lay it on any Latin word, on the last, color, it would be an iambus, both equally distant from the pyrrhic; but if you pronounce the compound dis'color in the usual manner, and then the two last syllables without the dis, exactly as you did with it, you will have a sound or cadence, neither that of a trochee nor an iambus, but formed by the unaccented or short syllable of each, color. The mark is meant as a warning, and a very necessary one, that we are not to lay the accent where we are used to lay it, on the first, but to pass quickly over it to the last, just touch upon that, and quit it instantly. This mode of pronouncing the pyrrhic gives what is so much wanting, a distinct and appropriate cadence to a distinct foot, and one which accords with and displays its peculiar characteristic, that of lightness; the lightness of the most volatile part of the element, from which it is named; it is the way, if my notions be just, in which the pyrrhic ought always to be pronounced, either when sounded separately as a detached word,

which the sense sometimes requires, or when it forms the end of a dactyl; in which last case I should join it to the preceding word, nearly as if they formed a single one, as τapós-коviv, reλeóv-Epoμov. In such cases, however, I believe in all, the sylJables may be divided and arranged, similar quantities should produce a similar rhythm or cadence; certainly not one of a totally dissimilar kind; but we are creatures, nay, slaves of habit. We should start at hearing the compound pronounced Tépidpóμos, yet patiently hear it so pronounced if the two words happen to be separate, as if πέρι δρόμος, οι τέλεον Spóμov, were less opposed to every just idea of quantity, metre, and rhythm! *

Believe me, my dear Sir, with great regard and respect, most sincerely and faithfully yours, U. PRICE.

Mr. James Perry, to Dr. Parr.

DEAR SIR,

Strand, No. 143, Sept. 19, 1805. Your approbation of the manner in which the Morning Chronicle is conducted is a higher gratification to my heart than all that the mob of readers could say in its praise, and I trust you will believe that the hope of preserving the esteem of such a judge is one of the strongest incentives to exertion and integrity that my nature can feel. I am not insensible of the very humble rank of a journalist in the republic of letters (if he is at all to be considered as a member of the community); but when you regard the usefulness of a periodical paper, conducted with fidelity in its political character, and with a just respect for morals in its miscellaneous features, the editor of it is not undeserving the consolation which he must derive from the approbation of the good and wise. It is in that sense, after a service of twentynine years, in which I have never deviated from the principles of Whiggism, and never outraged the decorums of private life, that I receive your most valuable and soothing commendation. Believe me to be, with a grateful heart, my dear Sir, your truly obliged and faithful servant, JAMES PERRY.

In a Treatise on Latin Versification, prefixed to Dr. Nuttall's recent editions of Virgil and Horace, this subject is amply discussed and elucidated. EDIT.