ADVERTISEMENT. I INTENDED that these Parodies should embrace at least one example of every lyric measure in Horace; but the unexpected bulk of the volume obliges me to confine my specimens to the present number, while the rate at which the work is now going through the press, and the quantity of matter I have yet to write, deprive me of the chance of substituting for some of the Sapphic odes other odes that would more vary the selection. The ridicule with which the imitation of ancient metres has been visited would have fallen to the ground, had the imitation been properly conducted. It is the absurdity of the poet that is ridicu lous, the ill success of his effort, not the effort itself. Thus, when Mr. SOUTHEY wrote, "Cold was the night wind, drifting fast the snow fell, Wide were the downs and shelterless and naked, When a poor wanderer struggled on her journey, he wrote well; nor could twice the wit of CANNING make us look upon this single stanza with contempt. On the contrary the measure (1), it appears to me, is exquisitely sweet, and the absence of (1) The substitution, in the third place, of an amphibrach (~~) for a dactyl (~~), thus: wind, drifting, is a necessity in English for all who write the Sapphic measure. It in no wise injures the rythm; and for the quantity of the syllable, it is in fact the same. Every prosodian knows that, if you except perhaps the hexameter, there is scarcely an ancient measure which is not varied by similar licenses. rhyme is fairly supplied by the music of the numbers: but when the poet goes on to tell us, "Then on the snow she laid her down to rest her; She heard a horseman; Pity me, she groan'd out. it is impossible to refrain from laughter; for the second line is only verse by an arbitrary and unnatural disposition of the emphasis; nor, had the poet designed to burlesque the very measure he was writing in, could he have done it more effectually than by either hemistich of that line: She heard a horseman - Pity me, she groan'd out. Again, in Mr. SOUTHEY'S "Dactylics", we have, "Cold is the baby, that hangs at thy bending back"; where the stress of the voice is, in the last foot, forced by the rythm upon the participle, on which it would not fall by any other disposition of the clause, and makes the line ludicrous at once. For these Parodies, I would observe to the prosodian, that the music of the original measure has been of course more regarded than the prescribed feet. Hence, besides applying to an imitation of Horace the metrical varieties found in other ancient poets who have used similar measures, I have occasionally in a metre assumed a license of my own; but it is always, I trust, such as in a like case the classic poet might himself have sanctioned. That is to say, the metrical time is invariably the same, and if the musical accentuation be not always strictly in correspondence with that of the parent bar or measure, yet the key of the metre, so to speak, is never forgotten. He who studies attentively the prosody of the ancients will find no real difference therein, as I have before asserted, from the laws which regulate the versification of the moderns. Verse, like music, is a single science, belonging to all nations; and like music, it might well have notes which should express the same relations everywhere, however one people might read them by alphabetic characters and another by monosyllabic sounds. The same varieties and the same licenses, in verse, were of old adopted that prevail now; for they then arose, as they now arise, from the dictates of taste and harmony, or had their origin, as they have it still, in the exigences of the composer. I may add, that in my parodies I have usually mimicked the peculiarities of style in the Roman lyric; and these are not always excellences. Further, that the parodies were composed for the sake of exhibiting the metres, not the metres adopted to accommodate the parodies. HORATII CARMINA. LIB. I. 32. POSCIMUR. AD LYRAM. Si quid vacui sub umbra Lusimus tecum, quod et hunc in annum Vivat, et plures, age dic Latinum, Lesbio primum modulate civi; Sive jactatam religarat udo Liberum et Musas, Veneramque et illi Semper hærentem Puerum, canebat, Et Lycum nigris oculis nigroque Crine decorum. O decus Phœbi, et dapibus supremi Dulce lenimen, mihi cumque salve Rite vocanti. PARODIES OF HORACE. ODE I. TO THE LUTE. SPITE of false tongues, if in MANHATTAN'S Babel Lend thy soft music, Lute whose Lesbian tone perfected the ROMAN, Sung the light joys that sparkle in the winecup, Wantonly scornful. Glory of MOORE, O lute that polish'd CAMPBELL |
