On Quantitative Metre 321the method has invariably resulted in failure from Spenser to
Bridges; the greatness of some of the poets who have made this
too daring and unnatural effort, has not been great enough to
bring success to an impossible adventure.
There remains the alternative way, the adaptation of clas-
sical metres to the accentual mould, of which the accentual
hexameter is the not too successful consequence; but this is not
a solution of the problem of English quantitative verse. Even if
successful, in every field and not only in the treatment of the
hexameter, it would have only solved the other quite distinct
problem of naturalising Greek and Latin metres in English. But
even in this direction success has been either nil or partial and
defective. The experiments have always remained experiments;
there has been no opening of new paths, no new rhythmic
discoveries or triumphant original creations. The writers carry
with them very evidently the feeling of being experimenters in
an abnormal kind; they achieve an artificial rhythm, their very
language has an artificial ring: there is always a stamp of manu-
facture, not a free outflow of significant sound and harmonious
word from the depths of the spirit. A poet trying to naturalise in
English the power of the ancient hexameter or to achieve a new
form of its greatness or beauty natural to the English tongue
must have absorbed its rhythm into his very blood, made it a
part of himself, then only could he bring it out from within him
as a self-expression of his own being, realised and authentic. If
he relies, not on this inner inspiration, but solely on his technical
ability for the purpose, there will be a failure; yet this is all that
has been done. There have been a few exceptions like Swin-
burne’s magnificent sapphics; but these are isolated triumphs,
there has been no considerable body of such poems that could
stand out in English literature as a new form perfectly accom-
plished and accepted. This may be perhaps because the attempt
was always made as a sort of leisure exercise and no writer of
great genius like Spenser, Tennyson or Swinburne has made it
a main part of his work; but, more probably, there is a deeper
cause inherent in the very principle and method of the endeavour.
Two poets, Clough and Longfellow, have ventured on a