seem to have been taken into consideration
by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable
genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with
the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical
invention of the anapaestic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in
a language to which all variations and combinations of anapaestic,
iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and
spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this
highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to
detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical context, as
it was easy to give line for line of it in English. In two metrical
points only does my version vary from the verbal pattern of the
original. I have of course added rhymes, and double rhymes, as necessary
makeweights for the imperfection of an otherwise inadequate language;
and equally of course I have not attempted the impossible and
undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line
overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees:
and this for the obvious reason that even if such a line--which I
doubt--could be exactly represented, foot by foot and pause for pause,
in English, this English line would no more be a verse in any proper
sense of the word than is the line I am writing at this moment. And my
main intention, or at least my main desire, in the undertaking of this
brief adventure, was to renew as far as possible for English ears the
music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full
gallop as of horses who

'dance as 'twere to the music
Their own hoofs make.'

I would not seem over curious in search of an apt or inapt quotation:
but nothing can be fitter than a verse of Shakespeare's to praise at
once and to describe the most typical verse of Aristophanes.

_THE BIRDS._

(685-723.)

Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves'
generations,
That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and
shadowlike nations,
Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of creatures
fast fleeing,
Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of
our being:
Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts