nd perhaps can never be made
more. It will be observed that they are more negative than positive. The
reason of this is not far to seek. The main difference between my verses
and those of other contemporary writers--the one point on which I claim
for myself the merit of novelty--is the strict observance throughout of
the rules of position. But the strict observance of position is in
effect the strict avoidance of unclassical collocations of syllables: it
is almost wholly negative. To illustrate my meaning I will instance the
poems written in pure iambics, the _Phaselus ille_ and _Quis hoc potest
uidere_. Heyse translates the first line of the former of these poems by

_Die Galeotte, die ihr schauet, liebe Herrn,_

and this would be a fair representation of a pure iambic line, according
to the views of most German and most English writers. Yet not only is
_Die_ no short syllable, but _ihr_, itself long, is made more hopelessly
long by preceding three consonants in _schauet_, just as the last
syllable of _schauet_, although in itself short, loses its right to
stand for a true short in being followed by the first consonant of
_liebe_. My own translation,

_The puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern,_

whatever its defects, is at least a pretty exact representation of a
pure iambic line. xxix. 6-8, are thus translated by Heyse:--

_Und jener soll in Uebermuthes Ueberfluss
Von einem Bett zum andern in die Runde gehn?_

by me thus,

_Shall he in o'er-assumption, o'er-repletion he,
Sedately saunter every dainty couch along?_

The difference is purely negative; I have bound myself to avoid certain
positions forbidden by the laws of ancient prosody. To some I may seem
to have lost in vigour by the process; yet I believe the sense of
triumph over the difficulties of our language, the satisfaction of
approaching in a novel and perceptibly felt manner one of those
excellences which, as much as anything, contributes to the permanent
charm of Catullus, his dainty versification, will more than compensate
for any shortcomings which the difficulty of the task has made
inevitable. The same may be said of the elaborately artificial poem to
Camerius (c. lv.), and the almost unapproachable Attis (c. lxiii.).
Here, at least half the interest lies in the varied turns of the metre;
if these can be represented with anything like faithfulness, the gain in
exactness of prosody is enough, in my judgment, to c