t think they will be
struck with the Homeric resemblance in the poems of Sir Walter Scott.
Both great poets had, too, the same relish for natural scenery, the same
close observation; did we not pass over such passages lightly, we
should, I am persuaded, find in both the same nice discriminations in
characters of outward scenes, that we do in those of men. In both there
is the same kind of secret predominance of female character the same
delicacy, tenderness, (a wondrous thing in the age of Homer, or rather,
perhaps, showing we know nothing about that age, not even so much as we
do about those ages which we choose to call dark.) It must, however, be
noted, that Sir Walter Scott has limited himself to more confined
fields. There is not the same room for genius to work in--the production
is, therefore, in degree less varied, and less complete; but is there
not a likeness in kind? Is it too bold, is it merely fanciful, Eusebius,
to say, too, that there is a something not dissimilar in the measures
adopted by these ancient and modern poets. Homer possibly had no choice;
but in the hexameter there is the greatest versative power. How
different, for instance, are the first lines of the "Tale of Troy
Divine," and the more familiar adventures of Ulysses. The _ad libitum_
alternation of dactyl and spondee make the lively or the grave; and the
whole metrical glow is all life and action, without hitch or hindrance.

Our heroic measure is at once too long and too short--for, take the
caesura as a division of the line, (and what is it if not that?) and the
latter part of the line is too short for any effective power--a fault
that does not exist in the Greek hexameter. Without the caesura, or with
a very slight attention to it, the line is too long, and made tiresome
by the monotony which the necessary pause of the rhyme imposes. Besides,
how do we know, after all, that the Greeks did not read their one
hexameter like two lines, with a decided pause at the caesura, with the
additional grace of the short syllable at its end often passing the
voice into the second part, or, as we may call it in the argument, the
second line? Try, Eusebius; read off a dozen lines any where in Homer
with this view, and tell me what you think of the _possible_ short
measure of Homer. It is true our measures are of the iambic character,
which Horace says is the fittest for action--and therefore, in the
Greek, the dramatic. The trimeter iambic is a foot longe