was not so easily pleased, and readily discovered that the heroic line
consists of four groups, or, if you prefer the phrase, contains four
pauses:

"All night | the dreadless | angel | unpursued."

Four groups, each practically uttered as one word: the first, in this
case, an iamb; the second, an amphibrachys; the third, a trochee; and
the fourth an amphimacer; and yet our schoolboy, with no other liberty
but that of inflicting pain, had triumphantly scanned it as five iambs.
Perceive, now, this fresh richness of intricacy in the web; this fourth
orange, hitherto unremarked, but still kept flying with the others. What
had seemed to be one thing it now appears is two; and, like some puzzle
in arithmetic, the verse is made at the same time to read in fives and
to read in fours.

But again, four is not necessary. We do not, indeed, find verses in six
groups, because there is not room for six in the ten syllables; and we
do not find verses of two, because one of the main distinctions of verse
from prose resides in the comparative shortness of the group; but it is
even common to find verses of three. Five is the one forbidden number;
because five is the number of the feet; and if five were chosen, the two
patterns would coincide, and that opposition which is the life of verse
would instantly be lost. We have here a clue to the effect of
polysyllables, above all in Latin, where they are so common and make so
brave an architecture in the verse; for the polysyllable is a group of
Nature's making. If but some Roman would return from Hades (Martial, for
choice), and tell me by what conduct of the voice these thundering
verses should be uttered--"_Aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum_," for a case in
point--I feel as if I should enter at last into the full enjoyment of
the best of human verses.

But, again, the five feet are all iambic, or supposed to be; by the mere
count of syllables the four groups cannot be all iambic; as a question
of elegance, I doubt if any one of them requires to be so; and I am
certain that for choice no two of them should scan the same. The
singular beauty of the verse analysed above is due, so far as analysis
can carry us, part, indeed, to the clever repetition of L, D and N, but
part to this variety of scansion in the groups. The groups which, like
the bar in music, break up the verse for utterance, fall uniambically;
and in declaiming a so-called iambic verse, it may so happen that we
never utter one i