it is an iterative monosyllable; but it is not always so. For example, we have

"Break, | burn, ¦ stab. | "

The mone is sometimes used to give variety to iambic rhythm. Although Guest, in his History of English Rhythms, does not recognize the existence of this foot, in so many words, yet he quotes an example that illustrates its use in giving variety to an iambic rhythm:

66 Virtue beau tie and speech | did strike, | wound, charm |

My heart, eyes, ears, with won | der, love, | delight. "

We italicize the mones for clearness.

Again we have iambics relieved in this way:

"Scots, wha hae | wi' Wal | lace bled, |
Scots, wham Bruce has aft | en led, |
Welcome to your go | ry bed,

Or to glorious victory! | "

In The Bridge of Sighs we find:

"One more unfortunate,
Weary of breath, |
Rashly import | unate,

Gone to her death! |

wherein the syllables "one" and "rash" are

mones, and all the other feet anapests. Tennyson gives us:

66

Break, break | break, |

On thy cold gray stones, | O Sea!|'

where we find the mone, the anapest, and the iamb, all in two verses; and in Whittier's Maud Muller we have

66

'Ah, well for us all some sweet | hope lies; | Deeply bur | ied from human eyes;|"

and, again, in Owen Meredith we find

"Born of the toil | ing sea, | nurst | in the seething storms. "

י,

66

Poe recognized the existence of this foot, and says of it that it is a perfect foot-the most important in all verse-and consists of a single long syllable;" and yet he calls it a cæsura, and seems chary of giving it full title to a place among the feet. Guest had taken substantially the same view in 1838; but calls them syllables merely.

But by far the most common use of this foot is to give variety to anapestic rhythm. As in The Song of the Shirt:

"Work-work | --work |

Till the brain | begins to swim. |
Work-work-work |

Till the eyes are heavy and dim! |

Seam, and gus set, and band |

Band, and gus set and seam |
Till over the but | tons I fall asleep,
And sew them on | in a dream!|'

The FOURTH PEON (~~

is always in anapestic rhythm. Its occurrence is very rare; and should be still rarer than it is. The necessity for the foot comes of there being, in English, words with three weak syllables together; such as monastery and cemetery. These words are just the reverse of fourth pæons, however; but in connection with other words this foot may be formed of them. Thus, we might say:

"As if the mōn | ăstěry cẽm | ětěry bells-;|"

Thus forcing three fourth pæons in succession, which should never occur in poetry. In Poe's Bells we have the foot several times; in such lines as:

"To the throb | bing of the bells

To the sobbing of the bells
And he dances and he yells

With the pae | an of the bells."

The foot most frequently occurs from the blending of what is usually called a hypermeter syllable in one line with the initial foot of the following line; as in

"Like a sum | mer-dried fountain

When our need was the sor | est;"

wherein "tain When our need" is a fourth pæon. We find another in Poe's Ligeia, so subtle that we venture to present it in detail. It occurs in the third and fourth verses of the following four:

"Ligeia! Legeia!

My beautiful one!
Whose harshest idea

Will to melody run."

In order to bring clearly to view the foot we are illustrating we give the eight feet separate from the beginning:

"Lige-
ia, Lige-

ia, My beau

tiful one,

Whose harsh

est ide

a Will to mel-
ody run.

The rhythm is anapestic, variety being introduced to the extent of two iambs"Lige" "Whose harsh"-and one fourth paeon-"a Will to mel." Again, in Lucile, we have a more extensive employment of this exceptional foot:

"Thou false mistress of man! | thou dost sport | with him light | ly

In his hours of ease and enjoyment; and brightly

Dost thou smile | to his smile; | to his joys | thou inclinest,

But his sorrows, thou know | est them not, nor divin | est.

While he woos, | thou art want on; thou let | test him love thee;

But thou art | not his friend, | for his grief | cannot move thee.

And at last, when he sick | ens and dies, | what dost thou? | "

We note the fourth paeons-just half a dozen of them-with italics.

In the divisions just made it will be perceived that we have no acephalous verses; no catalectics, brachycatalectics, nor hypercatalectics; and there are none, and cannot be any save at the close of a system. Then we hold that such close is faulty or inartistic. The hypercatalectic of those who insist upon lugging in the Greek terminology is, in almost every instance, a part of the next foot which is usually but erroneously held to begin with the line. The few other instances are of the nature of double rhymes. Of the former we have many examples, like this: