On Quantitative Metre 359If all the poem had been written in that manner or in accordant
rhythms, the problem of the English hexameter would have been
solved; there would have been no failure or half failure.^12
We begin to glimpse the conditions of success and may now
summarily state them. The hexameter is a dactylic metre and it
must remain unequivocally and patently dactylic; there can be
no escape from its difficulties by diminishing the dactylic beat:
rather its full quantitative force has to be brought out, — the
more that is done, the more the true rhythm will appear. But this
need not bring in any sing-song, treadmill walk or monotone. In
Longfellow, in Clough at their ordinary level, it is the low even
tone without relief, the repetition of a semi-trochaic jog-trot or
a smooth unvarying canter, the beat of tame dactyls, that gives
this impression. In Harvey or similar writers it is the constrained
artificial treatment of the metre that enforces a treadmill labour.
But this is not the true hexameter movement; the true movement
is a swift stream or a large flow, an undulating run, the impetuous
bounding of a torrent, an ocean surge or a divine gallop of the
horses of the sungod. There must be one underlying sameness
as in all metre, but there can and should be at the same time
a considerable diversity on the surface. That can be secured by
several means, each of which gives plenty of room for rhythmic
subtlety and for many turns of sound significance. There is the
pause in various places of the line, near the beginning, at the
middle or just after it or close to the end; all admit of a consid-
erable variety in the exact placing, modulation, combination of
the pause or pauses. There is also the line caesura and the foot
caesura. The hexameter line in English may be cut into two or
else three equal dactylic parts, or it may be cut anywhere in the
middle of a foot and this admits of a number of very effective(^12) Kingsley’s “Andromeda” deserves a mention, for it is the most readable of English
hexameter poems; the verse is well-constructed, much better than Clough’s; it has not
the sing-song tameness of Longfellow, there is rhythm, there is resonance. But though
the frame is correct and very presentable, there is nothing or little inside it. Kingsley
has the trick of romantic language, romantic imagination and thinking, but he is not an
original poet; the poetic value of his work is far inferior to Clough’s or Longfellow’s, it
is not sound and good stuff but romantic tinsel.