Hexameter

“ It was Clough's hexameters, together with some "English Hexameter Translations" by Dr. Hawtrey and Mr. Lockhart (1847) , that chiefly encouraged Matthew Arnold to believe that the measure might be well adapted to a translation of Homer. "The hexameter, whether alone or with the pentameter, possesses a movement, an expression, which no metre hitherto in common use amongst us possesses, and which I am convinced English poetry, as our mental wants multiply, will not always be content to forego." ”

“ If the hexameter best helps the translator to the Homeric rapidity, what style may best help him to the Homeric plainness and directness? It is the merit of a metre appropriate to your subject, that it in some degree suggests and carries with itself a style appropriate to the subject; the elaborate and self-retarding style, which comes so naturally when your metre is the Miltonic blank verse, does not come naturally with the hexameter; is, indeed, alien to it. ”

“ For example, three dactylic stanzas, in each of which a pentameter couplet is followed by a hexameter line, and this again by a heptameter, are introduced by Prof. Hart thus: "The Dactylic Tetrameter, Pentameter, and Hexameter, with the additional or hypermeter syllable, are all found combined in the following extraordinary specimen of versification. * * * This is the only specimen of Dactylic hexameter or even pentameter verse that the author recollects to have seen." ”

“ Spedding objects to the English hexameter that it imperfectly represents the movement of the ancient hexameter, I answer: We must work with the tools we have. The received English type, in its general outlines, is, for England, the necessary given type of this metre; it is by rendering the metrical beat of its pattern, not by rendering the accentual beat of it, that the English language has adapted the Greek hexameter. To render the metrical beat of its pattern is something ”

“ In the first instance we may trace it in those hymns possessing a content as yet more akin to the epic mode, which do not so much express in their epic metre a personal enthusiasm as they set before us a plastic image of gods in deliberately objective outlines. The next step, so far as metre is concerned, we mark in the elegiac syllabic measure, which associates the pentameter with the hexameter, which, in the regular recurrence of its ending after the hexameter, and with its two equally divided sections, opens the way to the complete singularity of the verse strophe. ”

“ The above hexameters are perfectly regular, both in being purely dactylic, and in having the regular cæsura, namely the end of a word at the beginning of the third dactyl, as—
We from the land that we love
We go as exiles away.
But these hexameters admit of irregularities in the same manner as the common English measures of which we have spoken. We may have dissyllable feet instead of trissyllable in any place in the line; thus in the fourth—
Tityrus, you in the shade of a chestnut idly reclining. ”

“ Hexameter.—The great staple metre of Greek and Latin epic, in which the line consists of six feet, dactyls or spondees at choice for the first four, but normally always a dactyl in the fifth and always a spondee in the sixth—the latter foot being by special licence sometimes allowed in the fifth also (in which case the line is called spondaic) , but never a dactyl in the sixth. To this metre, and to the attempts to imitate it in English, the term should be strictly confined, and never applied to the Alexandrine or iambic trimeter. ”

“ We all know what hexameters are, because we have all read some Latin poetry. But there is this difficulty: a hexameter line must end in a spondee—or a foot of two long or equally accented syllables. Now there is only here and there a word in the whole English language that is a spondee. The only spondees available in English are made up of two long, or two equally accented monosyllables. That is why the metre of Evangeline is so hard to read with ease, or at any rate it is one of the reasons. Longfellow uses trochees—that is to say, feet composed of one long and one short syllable, instead. ”

“ When only two feet go to a line, it is a dimeter. Three form a trimeter, four a tetrameter, five a pentameter, six a hexameter, seven a heptameter, eight an octameter, which, however, is usually resolved into two tetrameters. If the feet be iambics or trochees, of course the number of syllables will be double that of the feet—thus a pentameter will be decasyllabic. When dactyls or anapæsts are used, of course the number of syllables exceeds the double of the feet. ”

“ It curdles my blood to think that some obscure person in America, who has latterly been indulging in dactyllic and spondaic metre, has dared to name himself [102] partly in imitation of the sobriquét by which we designated our friend.
Recollecting poor Pellucid’s warm admiration of the hexameter then, I have made strict search among his papers, on the chance of finding some classical Latin or Greek poem of his composition, but without success. At one time a ray of hope darted through me, as I came upon a paper carefully folded, and docketted, “Notions for a Fight between Hector and Achilles;” ”

“ But thus humbly useful to the future translator I still hope my hexameters may prove; and he it is, above all, whom one has to regard. The general public carries away little from discussions of this kind, except some vague notion that one advocates English hexameters, or that one has attacked Mr. Newman. On the mind of an adversary one never makes the faintest impression. ”

“ This ἔκφρασις, consisting of 416 hexameters, forms the second book of the Palatine Anthology. The writer’s chief models are Homer and Nonnus, whom he follows closely in the structure of his hexameters. Opinions are divided as to the merits of the work. ”

“ Arnold, of all men, should be a patron of English hexameters. His own I have tried in vain to reduce by scansion into any metrical feet at all; they look like nothing on earth, and sound like anapests broken up and driven wrong.... And at [Pg 354] best what ugly bastards of verse are these self-styled hexameters! how human tongues or hands could utter or could write them except by way of burlesque improvisation I could never imagine, and never shall." (Essays and Studies, p. 163.) From this condemnation Mr. Swinburne excepts only the hexameters of Dr. ”

“ In 1608 he published Latin hexameters, entitled ‘Ilium in Italiam. Oxonia ad Protectionem Regis sui omnium optimi filia, pedisequa,’ Oxford, 8vo (Bodl. Libr.) . The dedication to James I shows that the poems were written in 1606. Of this rare and valuable work there is no copy in the British Museum Library. Each page contains the arms of one of the colleges, and beneath are nine hexameters giving an explanation of them, and containing a compliment to the king. ”

“ When the standard quantity is greater than that to be measured, we often adopt the first mode, and subdivide the unit until we get a magnitude equal to that measured. The angles observed in surveying, in astronomy, or in goniometry are usually smaller than a whole revolution, and the measuring circle is divided by the use of the screw and microscope, until we obtain an angle undistinguishable from that observed. The dimensions of minute objects are determined by subdividing the inch or centimetre, the screw micrometer being the most accurate means of subdivision. ”

“ The metre is a length of 40 inches nearly, and by applying to it exclusively the principle of decimal division, no measure corresponding to the ancient foot was provided. A unit of that denomination, though with slightly varied differences of length, was in universal use among all civilised nations, and the type of it is found in the dimensions of the human body. Perhaps for half of the occasions which arise in the life of every individual for a linear measure, the instrument to suit his purpose must be portable, and fit to be carried in his pocket. ”

“ In rough work, such as carpentry, it does not, indeed, matter if measurements are the hundredth of an inch or so out. But when we have to deal with scientific instruments, telescopes, measuring machines, engines for dividing distances on a scale, or even with metal turning, the utmost accuracy becomes needful; and a number of instruments will be much more alike in all dimensions if compared individually with a common standard than if they were only compared with one another. Supposing, for instance, a bar of exact diameter is copied ”

“ When desiring to measure a number of pieces, a standard size piece or gage is placed between the plunger B and the face L of the micrometer screw, and the instrument is adjusted until the indicator points exactly to zero on the small scale provided on the body of the micrometer. After this the micrometer is locked, and the pieces to be measured are pushed one after another between the face L and the plunger B, the indications of the pointer M being meanwhile observed. Whenever the pointer shows too great a difference, the piece, of course, does not pass inspection. ”

“ Finding that the capacities of similar conductors are proportional to their linear dimensions, he adopted a sphere of one inch diameter as the unit of capacity, and when he speaks of a capacity of so many "inches of electricity," he means a capacity so many times that of his one-inch sphere, or equal to that of a sphere whose diameter is so many inches. The modern unit of capacity in the electro-static system is that of a sphere of one centimetre radius, and the capacity of any sphere is numerically equal to its radius expressed in centimetres. ”

“ What gives the metric system pre-eminence is the simplicity and uniformity of its decimal scale, forming part and parcel as it does of the decimal system of notation, and lending itself to a decimal coinage as in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The metre is organically related to all measures of length, surface, capacity, solidity, and weight. A cubic centimetre of water, taken as it melts in a vacuum, at 4° C., the temperature of maximum density, is the gram from which other weights are derived ”

“ The nails serve to distinguish the number of windings in each layer.
The measure of the circumference of each layer furnishes a test of the regularity of the winding, and enables us to calculate the electrical constants of the coil. For if we take the arithmetic mean of the circumferences of the channel and of the outer layer, and then add to this the circumferences of all the intermediate layers, and divide the sum by the number of layers, we shall obtain the mean circumference, and from this we can deduce the mean radius of the coil. ”

“ The answer is that the requirements of scientific measurement are growing more and more rigorous every year. A hundred years ago a measurement made to within one-thousandth of an inch was considered rather phenomenal. Now it is one of the modern requirements in the most accurate machine work. At present a few measurements are relied upon to within one ten-thousandth of an inch. There are cases in which an accuracy of one-millionth of an inch has been attained, and it is even possible to detect differences of one five-millionth of an inch. ”

“ Besides which, the cubit being the unit, the half cubit might serve the purpose of the foot; but the metre, divisible only by two and ten, gave no measure practically corresponding to the foot whatever. It appears to have been considered that decimal arithmetic, although affording great facilities for the computation of numbers, is not equally well suited for the division of material substances. A glance of the eye is sufficient to divide material substances into successive halves, fourths, eighths, and sixteenths. A slight attention will give thirds, sixths, and twelfths. ”

“ But, the circumference being deducible from the diameter only by approximation, the surface alluded to cannot be computed with mathematical rigour; yet the result can be obtained with all desirable precision by the aid of the ratios usually given for such purpose; for instance, the area of the space included within a circle of thirty-eight millions of leagues radius, may be determined within such a degree of precision that the probable error shall not exceed the space of a mite. ”

“ To realize what is meant when an angle is measured with a “probable error” of a few hundredths of a second of arc, it should be remembered that one second of arc on a circle 10 inches in diameter is less than 1/40000 of an inch. The accuracy which has been attained in the measurement of base lines is not easily realized by a layman. An engineer realizes the practical impossibility of measuring a line twice and obtaining356 precisely the same result to the finest unit of measurement. ”

“ In order to determine large differences of potential in absolute measure we may employ the attracted disk electrometer, and compare the attraction with the effect of a weight. If at the same time we measure the difference of potential of the same conductors by means of the quadrant electrometer, we shall ascertain the absolute value of certain readings of the scale of the quadrant electrometer, and in this way we may deduce the value of the scale readings of the quadrant electrometer in terms of the potential of the suspended part, and the moment of torsion of the suspension apparatus. ”

“ It is mathematically equal to the product of the length of the circumference, multiplied by half the radius. To square a circle of a given diameter in mètres, is the same as giving the number of squares, of a mètre in each side, of which the surface is the equivalent. If, the diameter being given, the exact circumference were known by a sort of inspiration, the superficial extent of the circular space would be deducible from the two numbers, by the mere multiplication of the numerical length of the circumference by the fourth of the diameter, or half the radius. ”