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Title: The art of scansion
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Author of introduction, etc.: Alice Meynell
Clement King Shorter
Other: Sir Uvedale Price
Release date: April 21, 2026 [eBook #78519]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Clement Shorter, 1916
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78519
Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ART OF SCANSION ***
THE ART
OF
SCANSION
BY
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
ALICE MEYNELL
LONDON
Privately printed by Clement Shorter, December 1916
PREFACE
My friend Mrs. Meynell has obliged me with a few words of introduction
to this letter by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, here printed for the first
time in an edition of twenty-five copies. It was written when she was
twenty-one years of age, and residing at her father’s house near Ledbury
in Herefordshire. She did not meet Robert Browning until nineteen years
later, but her girlish enthusiasm for poetry is reflected in this
letter. Her correspondent, Sir Uvedale Price (1747–1829), did not live
to see her recognition as a great poet, although her _Essay on Mind_ was
published when she was nineteen and her _Battle of Marathon_, published
in our day, was written at the age of fourteen. Price was a
Herefordshire neighbour. He was a schoolfellow of Charles James Fox at
Eton. He had great ideas on gardening, and developed them in his own
grounds at Foxley and wrote an _Essay on the Picturesque_ in 1784,
enlarged afterwards into a three-volume work. Sir Walter Scott utilised
Price’s ideas when he laid out the gardens at Abbotsford. Price was
created a baronet in 1828. Letters from him are to be found in Miss
Berry’s _Journals_. Miss Barrett’s letter was doubtless inspired by
Uvedale Price’s _An Essay on the Modern Pronunciation of Greek and
Latin_, which he had had privately printed at Oxford in the year 1827. I
have not seen the book, a copy of which he doubtless gave to his fair
neighbour. Its perusal served, I am sure, to explain certain obscure
allusions in the letter. It urged that “our system of pronouncing the
ancient languages is at variance with the principles and established
rules of ancient prosody and the practice of the best poets.”
CLEMENT SHORTER.
INTRODUCTION
It is interesting to see Elizabeth Barrett eager over the dead
languages. In her own living language she was modern in her day, more
modern than any contemporary except the poet whom, nearly twenty years
after this letter was written and the controversy closed, she married.
It was modern to write poetry as she wrote, with an emphatic use of
modern prose words; unlike Wordsworth’s, not at all childlike as were
his. Robert Browning and Elizabeth have a peculiar tone of defiance in
their nineteenth-century English; in the most gentle Elizabeth’s verse
it is nearly swaggering, certainly swashing and martial. Nothing could
be more sharply cut off from the eighteenth century, and the
seventeenth, and the sixteenth than the vocabulary of _Aurora Leigh_,
and, English apart, nothing could be more separated from Antiquity than
the style that was most characteristically hers. In her quieter moments,
when she is not marching, in doublet and hose, the march of her blank
verse, but pacing softly in the strictest measure of the bonds that all
true poets so love—the bonds of numbers, stress, quantity, rhyme, and
final shape—the great beauty of her sonnets proves her delight in that
order, and in these the diction is inconspicuous. It is in the romantic
poems, those that deal with the lady and the knight, that the modernism
is again evident. Where, in her language, is any trace of her reading of
the older English? Where in her style is any sign of her Latin and
Greek? In her most characteristic work she does not sow with her hand;
she tosses out the basketful, with a gesture generous but wilful. In one
respect—the point on which there was no question of deference to
Antiquity—she shows none to her English masters. Thence her rhymes:
“children” and “bewildering,” “islands” and “silence,” and the rest. She
had the right to make these experiments, and it is as evident a sign of
her resolute novelty as her husband’s different and less tolerable
rhymes were of his. But we may take such rhymes not only as
demonstrations of a new independence; they may have been in part due to
her peculiar position as the most secluded of poets. Elizabeth Barrett
saw and spoke to very few. She cannot have gathered much of the
pronunciation of English that was then usual. The friend to whom as a
girl she wrote this and other letters on the art of metre was so old as
to be numbered among eighteenth-century authors; he was not of her time.
If she had the habit of dropping her final g’s, for instance, there
might be none to correct it. It is noticeable that she writes of the
word “patriotism” as generally pronounced in five syllables. The
accepted way is to sound it as only three—crowded ones, it is true, but
only three, and any other way would seem to us provincial. Especially
would an educated ear resent the pronouncing of the last three letters
in “patriotism” in two syllables.
Elizabeth Barrett’s comments on a few of Milton’s lines leave her reader
at liberty to accept them or depart from them. No authority except that
of Milton’s shade will ever decide a question as to one of his lines
(page 10): whether we should begin it with two rather strained iambic
feet (which would be my scansion) or with a strained long syllable
followed by a dactyl (which is hers). It is remarkable, by the way, that
she never uses the word “stress” in writing of English prosody. It seems
to me to be the only safe word; “accent” being alien and ambiguous, and
“quantity” a valuable but nearly lawless part of our metre—present in
every poet’s intention in his line, but perhaps best unnamed.
“Her glories shall never fade,” wrote Browning of his wedded poet (in
regard, by the way, to a poem in which she rhymed “common” with
“human”), and they never shall. She is within English literature for
ever and ever. Coventry Patmore held poetry to be the gravest among the
undertakings of man, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—child, maid, and
wife—took her vocation with gravity, passion, and delight. In this
controversy on “accents” ancient and modern, she withstands her old
friend, literally foot to foot. She might even, but that she was humbly
obstinate and courteous and sweet, have lost her temper over a matter so
exciting. And what is so exciting to poets as these questions of their
technique? If I had ever had a fierce passage of arms with Francis
Thompson (but I never had) it would have been on the question of
trochaic endings, and whether one might pause on them before carrying on
the weak syllable to the next line. The girl who so passionately cared
for her Greek was, in time, the great woman who wrote memorable English
passionately. The slightness of the connexion between two such beloved
studies seems an incident in her life not easily understood; but she was
for poetry first and last.
ALICE MEYNELL.
THE ART OF SCANSION
A Letter from ELIZABETH BARRETT, afterwards MRS. BROWNING, to UVEDALE
PRICE, afterwards SIR UVEDALE PRICE, Bart.
To UVEDALE PRICE, Esq.
Hope End. April, 1827.
My dear Sir,—I shall not detain you for any unnecessary prologuizing
purpose, but with your permission shall go en avant at once, and “tell
you what I am going to say.” Pray have a great deal of indulgence ready
for me, for I assure you I shall want all you can spare. Page 32. “There
is a manifest absurdity in transferring the Latin mode of accentuation
to the Greek, yet we certainly should not like to follow the Greek
mode.” Here you give the general taste a great deal more credit than it
deserves, and more than you would give if you were acquainted with a
material circumstance which I certainly imagined I had mentioned to you,
but which either you must have overlooked in one of my letters, or I
omitted in the great hurry with which I wrote one of them. This is that
they do at the Charterhouse precisely what you say we should not like to
do: they read Greek by the Greek accents, and then dismiss their prisca
fides for the sake of embracing a new kind of idolatry, which has not
even the advantage of being sanctified (may I profane that word?) by old
prejudices. In short they have left Belze_bub_ and taken to Beelze_bul_,
and therefore I hope you will grant them, _par parenthèse_, the special
licence of liking to do anything that we certainly should not like to
do; and of being, at least in this instance, “uniformly and consistently
absurd.”
Page 34. There is a difference in the character of the anapæstic and
dactylic rapidity, and one that has been very happily marked by
Marmontel in a very few words, “le dactyl s’elance, et l’anapeste se
précipite.” This, I am persuaded, is not, what it may perhaps appear at
first sight, a fanciful distinction. I am very sure it is not and cannot
help pausing here to say how much I have been struck with the whole of
this forcible illustration of Marmontel’s position. Milton who often
likes to fill English verse from the iambic and trochaic dynasties,—you
_must_ let me think so still,—seems to have been quite aware of the
distinction on which the position is founded: and has made admirable use
of it in a line expressive of the lost Angels’ ‘ruining’ from Heaven—
Eternal wrath
Burnt āftĕr thĕm | tŏ thĕ bōttŏmlĕss pīt.
where by the grand situation of the first long monosyllable we have
revealed to us, first the Avenger with fixed foot on the battlement of
Heaven,—and then the dactylic out-darting of the scorching
thunderbolt—and then the headlong and precipitate descent of the
condemned.
The intermediate monosyllable which, as you observe, is necessary in an
hexametral union of the two rhythms has been omitted by Milton, and
perhaps with a view to the expression. For the pause by which we
compensate the metre, adds, as I conceive, very singularly to the effect
of this sublime line; by giving something unusual to the cadence that
arrests the attention with the voice; as if one fear made us take breath
a moment before we could turn from the contemplation of _power_ to its
terrible effect. Reasoning as Paley’s savage did about the watch, it
becomes clear to me that the remarkable construction of this line is not
accidental, and what makes me still more satisfied that Milton really
intended to express the distinction in question is the circumstance that
during the whole of his description he has had so evidently in his head
the sublime combat of the immortals in the _Theogony_, where Hesiod has
made use of the very same cadence,—tho’ of course with an intermediate
syllable,—to express the precipitation of the conquered.
Ουρανοθεν κατιων δεκατη
It is clear then to my mind that Milton considered his “_tŏ thĕ
bōttŏmlĕss pīt_” as equivalent to Hesiod’s κατιων δεκατη; and that
consequently he would have agreed with you in your pronunciation of the
Greek, and have accepted your position. “Accent, in its modern sense,
gives length—both the first syllable of _bot´tomless_ and the concluding
word _pit´_ being accented,—and _long_, according to Hesiod’s
analogy,—if that be admitted, tho’ _short_ according to the new heresy.
Do not be ungrateful to Milton, and try to resolve his verse into iambi
and trochees: which you will here find a much too difficult matter to
accomplish. This is one instance out of the thousand he offers us:
Of English cut on Greek and Latin.
I know you will add, and justly;
Like fustian heretofore on satin.
“Page 36. In the second book of the Æneid, there is an instance of a
mixture of the two rhythms, but where the _expression is chiefly in the
anapæstic_.” I dare to contend upon your own principle founded on
Marmontel’s distinction that in your simile quoted from Virgil, the
expression neither lies _chiefly_ in the anapæstic cadence, or _chiefly_
in the dactylic but _equally_ in both. I appeal to Philip against
Philip,—and beg you to consider whether the dactylic impetus at the
beginning of the line Fertur in arva furens cumulo does not bring to the
mind the first out-bursting of the spumeus amnis, where it leaps forward
from the stronghold of its banks,—as much as the anapæstic fall does its
rushing descent upon the plains. You, who are so just and rigid in your
‘division of property’ should really adjudge this case equitably.
Page 37. “We have not many choriambi in English and of them none I
believe are of Greek or Latin or perhaps of Saxon origin.” I like so
much all you say about the choriambi, that I am the more sorry you
should shut the door of English poetry in their face.
If they were lame
Ugly and slanderous to our mother tongue
I would not care, I then might be content
but it really seems to me a little hard that we should be denied their
acquaintance the minute after you have proved it to be most desirable. I
shall try to maintain that, neither we or the choriambi having a
disinclination to each other’s company, you are very uncharitable to
make such mischief between us; and I shall therefore put down one or two
respectably sounding words derived from the Greek and Latin,—tho’ not
from Greek and Latin choriambi,—as candidates for that rank in English.
You will, I think, admit chārăctĕrīze—tēmpĕrămēnt—tēmpĕrăture,—if you
can by any means get over their disallegiance to ancient quantity. You
may, perhaps admit pātrĭŏtīsm: but I bring this example forward with no
kind of triumph: for, in common discourse, we pronounce it much as five
syllables; and find it rough and unmanageable on reducing it to _four_;
which however, I believe, is undeviatingly done in poetry. The most
inharmonious line Campbell ever wrote has no reason to be obliged to it—
If the pātrĭŏtīsm ŏf yŏur fathers.
You may not, _a fortiori_, refuse to admit rīghtĕousnēss—of Saxon
extraction,—
“Just confidence and native rīghtĕoŭsnēss”
and its connections _par la suite_;
hīdĕoŭsnēss—glōrĭoŭsnēss—hōrrĭblĕnēss, &c.
I think līnĕămēnt tho’ pleading guilty to the imperfections you find out
in chārĭŏtēer, has no weak claim—
“Six wings he wore to shade
His līnĕămēnts divine.”
And vīrtŭŏsēst,—rather a rusty word,—receives testimonials from Milton
for itself and kindred—
Seems wisest, vīrtŭŏsēst, discreetest, best.
It seems to me that you can only make one objection to my next
candidate—
Oh ālĭĕnāte from God! oh spirit accursed—
And that another is almost unexceptionable
Plēnĭpŏtēnt on earth of matchless might,
I feel so sure about this last word plēnĭpŏtēnt that I should not
scruple to treat him as Atlas and make him bear the whole burden of my
defence—without going on,—which I might do,—to such compound
tetrasyllables as ōvĕrfătīgue—ōvĕr-dĕlīght—cōnquerŏr-like _sex_.
Nēvĕrthĕlēss before dismissing the subject, it is quite proper for me to
be candid, and confess that I am aware of the imperfection of most of
our choriambi, and that, generally speaking, the foot is considerably
_mutatus ab illo_ in the process of its naturalization into our
language. But you do recognise our dactyls; for which they owe you no
obligation; for you must do so on your principle, and the recognition is
unattended with any complimentary or obliging expression on your
part,—rather with Boileau’s pathetic remonstrance.
Que vous ont fait nos oreilles
Pour les traites si durement?
Therefore I submit to you whether our choriambi do not deserve a similar
recognition, tho’ possibly a similar remonstrance.
Page 46. “If my mode of accenting Pope’s verse be thought the right one,
it seems clear that a trochee at the beginning of an English verse, if
followed by another trochee, tho’ it may give vigour, does not also
produce grace.” I have so little intention of decrying the choriambus,
in marking down the above passage, that I have merely been induced to do
so by sympathizing very strongly with your delighted feelings respecting
it,—and by a consequent regret that you should depreciate its propriety
in the _second place_,—which you seem to do, with some reservation.
There can I should think be no doubt as to the propriety of your
reading, in Pope’s line,—
Jumping hīgh ŏ’er thĕ shrūbs ŏf thĕ rōugh grōund
and there can be no doubt that, according to your reading, the line has
much more vigour than grace. The ungracefulness, however, seems to me
produced, not so much by the choriambus, as by that very rough
termination of the whole—a spondee preceded by a pyrrhic; so that,
according to my idea, ce n’est que le _dernier_ pas qui coute,—unless
indeed we take into consideration the cacophonous assembage of harsh
consonants and vowels which are “rather seen than heard.” As the line
stands, however, it is extremely expressive, but perhaps hardly a fair
specimen of the introduction of a choriambus into the second place.
There is a considerable degree less roughness and more impetuous energy
in the following example
Shoots ĭnvīsĭble vīrtue ē’en tŏ thĕ dēep
where the _dernier pas_ is composed of another choriambus. I hope you do
not disapprove of choriambi introduced into the internal part of the
line, but as you only mention, approvingly, the incipient and final
choriambus I am half afraid that you do.
I shall not be satisfied if you profess to tolerate them sometimes “for
the sake of expression,” a principle on which we admire many
deformities, and among them those multiplied elisions that make Virgil’s
line a “monstrum nonendum informe” in itself: The plea of _expression_
in versification is something like the plea of _expediency_ in morals;
and the internal choriambi do not seem to me reduced to such a last
resource. When a dactyl, or amphibrach, begins the verse, the choriambus
appears to follow it in a singularly pleasing manner, giving to the
cadence of the line a swelling graceful movement which is quite
delightful to my ear: as in Lord Byron’s
Thou wert a bēautĭfŭl thōught, and softly bodied forth
or Shakespeare’s
As zephyr blōwĭng bĕlōw the violet—
which you can hardly find fault with; for you say (page 65) in your
observations on a_mi_citi_am_ that “its cadence (that of a choriambus
with a preceding short syllable) is of a very pleasing kind.” Also
before the last iambus, as Chamberlayn has it,
His yielding spirits now prepare to meet
Death, clothed in thoughts whīte ăs hĭs wīnding sheet.
I think with regard to these examples that they are both harmonious and
expressive; tho’ in all of them we feel the “_fall_” which you
mention,—in the case of the choriambus following the commencing
trochee,—rather in a tone of regret as far as relates to the general
harmony. To go to another part of the subject, I observe that you only
notice two feet which follow the trochee commencing an English verse:
viz. the iambus _usually_, and the trochee _casually_: whereas it is
sometimes followed by a pyrrhic as in Milton’s—
“Mȳrĭăds, bĕtwēen two brazen mountains lodged”
“Embry̆ŏes and īdiots, eremites and friars—”
and not unfrequently by a spondee with very good effect—
“Bōne ŏf mȳ bōne, thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted.”
“Strāins hĭs yōung nērves and puts himself in posture.”—_Cymbeline._
“Rāpture! bōld mān! who temp’st the wrath divine.”
Page 47. I am glad you have marked “Hīgh _ŏvĕr-ārched_” as a choriambus.
It gives me an opportunity of writing down an anapæstic line of
Stevens’s—
Fire artillery tīer ŏvĕr tīer
and of submitting to you whether you are not forced by the metre; your
suprema lex; to treat _over_, the distinct dissyllable,—exactly as you
have treated _over_,—the compounded; by taking away the accent. And if
you take away the accent, which seems to me a most evident necessity,
you are immediately reduced to another necessity quite as evident, that
of recognizing English pyrrhics. I believe that English pyrrhics exist
much in the same word that Latin unaccented words may be said to exist
by the doctrine of atonics: and I am struck with a singular analogy
between the two cases. There is, I concede, no English dissyllable, a
pyrrhic _per se_; and, in Latin, according to Quinctillian “non est
aliqua vox sine acuta.” But in Latin, according to Quinctillian, some
words by juxtaposition with others lose their own accent, ex. gr:
_circum litora_ or ab óres and, in an analogous manner many English
dissyllables either by incorporation with other words, as Hīgh
ŏvĕr-ārched, or by juxtaposition with them, as tīer ōvĕr tīer, lose
their own accent, in its modern sense. English pyrrhics made by these
means seem to me sufficiently abundant: I shall put down a few exemplary
lines: one from Anstey
The ladies you sēe vĕry jūstly remark
from Cowper
You spēak vĕry fīne and you lōok vĕry grāve.
And again Anstey’s
O’erflow all my hay, may my dōgs nĕvĕr hūnt
and Cowper
But the sound of the Chūrch-gŏĭng bell
These valleys and rōcks nĕvĕr hēard—
Nĕvĕr sīghed at the sound of a knell.
Page 50. “As far as I have observed the hexameter never begins with a
dispondee.” There are several examples to militate against the
“_never_”: one I shall take from Lucretius—
Immōrtāli sunt natura proedita certe
and a very expressive one from the _Theogony_—
Νικησαντες χερσιν ὑπερθυμους περ εοντας
Page 54. By laying our accent wherever the Romans laid theirs, and
nowhere else, we have left them but one dissyllabic foot in the
language. Should we not, even by the misapplied accentual rule, give the
Romans one or two iambi? It appears so; if there be any correctness in a
note attached to my edition of Foster, where I find an extract from
Ælius Donatus (supported by Victorinus) who makes some exceptions to the
general rule of the accent falling on the _first_ of dissyllables “pro
causa discretionis, ut in adverbio _pone_, ideo ne verbum putetur
imperativi modi:—ut in ea particula quæ est _ergo_.” From which, it
appears that our measure of absurdity is not yet filled up; that accent
(or rather, as you would say, _quantity_, under its name) having turned
so many iambi into trochees, has to do now; pro causa discretionis; the
very different office of turning trochees into iambi; or else cry
peccavi,—_pro causa discretionis_ indeed! This is a case analogous to
that you mentioned to Mr. Commeline, of Θοαι and _diu_, and which he
tried to get rid of by the adoption of a monosyllabic pronunciation. But
such a measure, could it be admitted in that case, is no _panacea_,—as
is obvious from the present case of _pone_ and _ergo_.
Page 81. You observe relatively to the first lines of Virgil, first
eclogue, that if an advocate for the system gave a length to _tu_ and
_nos_ for the sake of expression “he would do wrong in respect to his
system and its rules,—one of which is that all unaccented syllables
should be quickly passed over to the next accented one.” I will submit
to you with deference whether you do not rather _beg the question_ by
calling _tu_ and _nos_ “unaccented syllables.” You are well aware of the
old rule so simply and clearly stated by Franciscus Sanctius,—“accentum
in se monosyllaba dictio ponit;” and tho’ the rule be, in practice,
modified by the doctrine of atonics, yet I have some doubts,—and, _a
fortiori_, an advocate of the system might possibly have,—whether such
discriminating monosyllables should not in recitation be _separated_
from the neighbouring words, on account of the expression; and so claim
a _length_ even on accentual principles. This is an impression which
perhaps I should not have felt but for want of better information, and
which I certainly should not communicate to you but in desire of it.
You have now the whole history of my doubts and difficulties; as I have
reported them very faithfully in obedience to your desire. The obedience
was at least a proof of my confidence in your kindness; and in that
light I hope you will consider it; for I have run a great risk in
passing such an _Ægæan_ in such a _scaphula_. My _general_ debt of
information, to you, is put down among those singular debts which are
pleasant to think of, and which the debtor can never be expected to
repay, but I must be allowed to thank you in particular for that
_percussion vers le fin_ you give the _Abbate Scopha_. It is extremely
forcible and entertaining,—and presents an example of your peculiar
manner of amusing your readers—by _convincing_ them. You have indeed
made it abundantly clear that the Abbate for his system’s credit should
have been _muet_ as his French _e_. But, tho’ I have put off making the
charge so long, my poetical conscience wont let me rest till I accuse
you of committing heinous profanation in page 48; first by quoting _Wīll
ŏ thĕ Wīsp_ contemptuously as “a little phrase,” and secondly by
introducing it to your readers in such company as _Jāck ĭn ă bōx´_ |
_Mōuse ĭn ă chēese´_, Būg ĭn ă rūg´, &c. And should you really feel
“some regret” if it became the fashion to say _Wĭll ō thĕ Wĭsp_—Bŭg īn ă
rūg &c.? Our poets, from Milton upwards and downwards, who have
sanctified the first of those “little phrases” in their melodious
verses, would sympathize feelingly in your regret; and might beg you at
the same time to disengage Will o’ the wisp from Bug in a rug forthwith.
Could not rīddle mĕ rēe do your business as well, without sacrificing
such an Iphigenia?
I have done reading your correspondence with Mr. Commeline; and with all
your adversary’s ingenuity, am considerably confirmed in my convictions
on your side. I thought it odd that an article of the Edinburgh Review
should be referred to, on a philological subject; and, on looking into
the one which Mr. Commeline calls the ‘Manual of his heresy,’ I was
surprised to find us accused there of subverting the true metrical
structure of Latin hexameters, even according to the accentual system
“by _not_ laying our accent on the _long_ syllable, and by laying it on
the short ones.” The Reviewer seems confused in his speculations: but
that passage is so decidedly in favour of your position that I think you
can hardly have seen the article or would have retorted Mr. Commeline’s
own _Manual_ on himself.
Papa was very glad to see you at Hereford, and _I_ was very glad to hear
from him, _nomine mutato_, exactly what you have since said of _his_
good looks. We hope to have favorable accounts of you all; dear Miss
Price in particular, and, with our best regards,
Believe me
Your grateful
E. B. BARRETT.[1]
Footnote 1:
Mrs. Browning’s name was Elizabeth Barrett Barrett before her
marriage.
_Of this letter twenty-five copies only
have been privately printed by Clement
Shorter for distribution among his
friends._
_London. December 1916._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
4 in English. You will, I think, admit in English. You will, I think, admit
c̄harătĕrīze—tēmpĕrămēnt—tēmpĕrăture,—if chārăctĕrīze—tēmpĕrămēnt—tēmpĕrăture,—if
5 tetrasyllables as tetrasyllables as
ōvĕrfătīgue—ōvĕr-dĕlīght—cŏnquerŏr-like ōvĕrfătīgue—ōvĕr-dĕlīght—cōnquerŏr-like
sex. Nēvĕrthĕlēss sex. Nēvĕrthĕlēss
6 Jumping hīgh aĭr thĕ shrūbs ŏf thĕ rōugh Jumping hīgh ŏ’er thĕ shrūbs ŏf thĕ
grōund rōugh grōund
7 Shoots ĭnvīsĭble vīrtue ē’en tō thĕ dēep Shoots ĭnvīsĭble vīrtue ē’en tŏ thĕ dēep
9 Quinctillian “non est aliqua vox sine Quinctillian “non est aliqua vox sine
acata.” But in Latin, according acuta.” But in Latin, according
9 Immōrtāli sunt natura proedita cesti Immōrtāli sunt natura proedita certe
9 Νικηὀαντες χερσιν ὑπερθυμους περ εοντας Νικησαντες χερσιν ὑπερθυμους περ εοντας
10 verbum putelier imperativi modi:—ut in verbum putetur imperativi modi:—ut in ea
ea particula quæ est ergo particula quæ est ergo
10 analogous to that you mentioned to Mr. analogous to that you mentioned to Mr.
Commeline, of θοαι and diu Commeline, of Θοαι and diu
11 Wĭsp—Bŭg īn ă rŭg &c.? Our poets, from Wĭsp—Bŭg īn ă rūg &c.? Our poets, from
Milton upwards and downwards Milton upwards and downwards
● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
5
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