When a paragraph incorrectly begins, connect the two parts by a line, and write in the margin run on, or no break.

The transposition of a letter or word is indicated by drawing a line around it, and writing in the margin tr.

Lines too far apart, or too close together, are indicated by this sign (1) between them, and (Яld.) (erase lead) in the margin.

Query. When it is desired to call the attention of the author to a mistake or a doubtful construction, Qy. or? is placed in the margin.

CHAPTER XVII.

PROSODY.

Prosody treats of the laws of verse-making,

or yersification.

each

Poetic Feet are the divisions of a verse, consisting of two or more syllables arranged according to accent. The dividing of a verse into feet is termed scanning.

The accented syllable is usually called long, and the unaccented short.

The principal feet are four:

The Iambus (~~), consisting of a short and a long syllable, as invite, retain, repine.

The Trochee (-). consisting of a long and a short syllable, as father, listen, holy.

The Anapest (

-), consisting of two short syllables and a long one, as comprehend, entertain, intervene.

The Dactyl (~~), consisting of one long and two short syllables, as innocence, heavenly, beautiful.

:

The number of feet in a verse or line: Monometer is a verse of one foot; Dimeter, a verse of two feet; Trimeter, of three; Tetrameter, of four; Pentameter, of five; Hexameter, of six; Heptameter, of seven.

NOTE. A Spondee is a foot consisting of two accented syllables, as outside; but a verse cannot be made up of spondees.

Examples.

Iambic Hexameter:

| Thy realm | forev | er lasts | thy own | Messi | ah reigns |

Trochaic Pentameter:

| Satyrs | by the | brooklet | love to | dally | Anapaestic Tetrameter:—

| When repo | sing that night | on my pal | let of straw |

Dactyllic Trimeter :—

| Weary and worn she a waited thee | Iambic Dimeter:

| To me | the rose |

Mixed Verse. It is the prevailing law of English verse that the feet in any one line shall

be of one kind. In the poetry of the Ancients the feet are mixed. Some English poets have attempted mixed verse, with some degree of success. Longfellow's Evangeline, and Golden Legend; Whittier's Barbara Fritchie; and Sheridan's Ride, by Read, are examples.

A Stanza is a number of lines taken together, and so adjusted as to form a distinct division of the whole. Verse is used in Prosody as synonymous with line.

A Couplet is two successive lines rhyming together.

A Triplet is three successive lines rhyming together.

A Quatrain is a stanza of four lines.

Blank Verse is verse that does not rhyme. English blank verse is usually written in iambic pentameter. For example, Paradise Lost. It may, however, be written with two, three, or four feet to the line, as well as with five, and in measures other than iambic.

The Number of Lines in a Stanza. A stanza may consist of almost any number of lines, from two upwards.

Some particular stanzas have acquired historical celebrity.

Rhythm-Royal, or seven lined stanza, was invented by Chaucer. It is an iambic pentameter, the first four lines of which form an ordinary quatrain, the lines rhyming alternately; the fifth

line repeats the rhyme of the fourth, and the last two form a couplet.

The Spenserian Stanza is the stanza in which Spenser wrote his Færie Queen. It consists of nine lines; eight iambic pentameter; the ninth, hexameter. It is composed of two quatrains, the lines rhyming alternately, and the last line of the first quatrain must rhyme with the first line of the second; the ninth line rhymes with the eighth.

This stanza was borrowed from the Italian. Byron's Childe Harold is one of the most noted productions written in this form.

"To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock, that never needs a fold;
Alone, o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;-
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled."-Byron.

Heroic Measure is the iambic pentameter. It is peculiarly adapted to grave, dignified, or heroic subjects.

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herds winds slowly o'er the lea;

The ploughman homeward trods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me."-Gray. The Alexandrine is a line of six iambic feet, so called from a poem on Alexander the Great in which it was first employed. It is occasionally

used as the third line of a triplet, or at the close of a stanza.

"Majestic moves along, and awful peace maintains."-Dryden.

Hymn Measures are the long, short and common metres. They are all quatrains and all in iambic feet: but the Long Metre consists of tetrameters; the Common Metre has its first and third lines tetrameter, and its second and fourth trimeter; the Short Metre has its first, second and fourth lines trimeter, while its third is tetrameter. In respect to rhyme, the stanzas vary: 1-2; 3-4: 1–3; 2-4: 1-3, without rhyme; 2–4.

Devotional Songs are written in an almost endless variety of verse, measure and rhyme.

THE SONNET.

"The sonnet, like the Spenserian stanza, was borrowed from the Italians. Petrarch is reckoned the father of it. It is still more difficult of construction than the Spenserian stanza; for, besides requiring a greater number of rhymes, it demands a terseness of construction, and a point in the thought, which that does not. In the sonnet, no line should be admitted merely for ornament, and the versification should be faultless. It is composed of exactly fourteen lines, so constructed that the first eight lines shall contain but two rhymes, and the last six but two more."-Everett.

The two cardinal laws of the sonnet demand that it shall consist of fourteen decasyllabic (ten)