_." It is perhaps as good an
example as we have of the species. It consists of nine stanzas, of which I
shall here cite the first three, dividing them into feet as above:--

"When the fierce | North Wind, | with his | airy | forces,
Rears up the | Baltic | to a | foaming | fury;
And the red | lightning | with a | storm of | hail comes
Rushing a | -main down;

How the poor | sailors | stand a | -maz'd and | tremble!
While the hoarse | thunder, | like a bloody | trumpet,
Roars a loud | onset | to the | gaping | waters,
Quick to de | -vour them.

Such shall the | noise be, | and the | wild dis | -order,
(If things e | -ternal | may be | like these | earthly,)
Such the dire | terror, | when the | great Arch | -angel
Shakes the cre | -ation."--_Horae Lyricae_, p. 67.

"These lines," says Humphrey, who had cited the first four, "are good
English Sapphics, and contain the essential traits of the original as
nearly as the two languages, Greek and English, correspond to each other.
This stanza, together with the poem, from which this was taken, may stand
for a model, in our English compositions."--_Humphrey's E. Prosody_, p. 19.
This author erroneously supposed, that the trissyllabic foot, in any line
of the Sapphic stanza, must occupy the second place: and, judging of the
ancient feet and quantities by what he found, or supposed he found, in the
English imitations, and not by what the ancient prosodists say of them, yet
knowing that the ancient and the modern Sapphics are in several respects
unlike, he presented forms of scansion for both, which are not only
peculiar to himself, but not well adapted to either. "We have," says he,
"no established rule for this kind of verse, in our English compositions,
which has been uniformly adhered to. The rule for which, in Greek and Latin
verse, _as far as I can ascertain_, was this: = ~ | = = = | ~ ~ |= ~ | = =
a trochee, a _moloss_, a _pyrrhic_, a trochee, and [a] _spondee_; and
_sometimes, occasionally_, a trochee, instead of a spondee, at the end. But
as our language is not favourable to the use of the spondee and moloss, the
moloss is seldom or never used in our English Sapphics; but, instead of
which, some other _trissyllable_ foot is used. Also, instead of the
spondee, a trochee is commonly used; and sometimes a trochee instead of the
pyrrhic, in the third place. As some prescribed rule, or model for
imitation, may be necessar