indley Murray's revised scheme of feet, we have first a
paragraph from Sheridan's Rhetorical Grammar, suggesting that the ancient
poetic measures were formed of syllables divided "into _long_ and _short_,"
and affirming, what is not very true, that, for the forming of ours, "In
English, syllables are divided into _accented_ and _unaccented_."--_Rhet.
Gram._, p. 64; _Murray's Gram._, 8vo, 253; _Hart's Gram._, 182; and others.
Now _some_ syllables are accented, and others are unaccented; but syllables
singly significant, i.e., monosyllables, which are very numerous, belong to
neither of these classes. The contrast is also comparatively new; our
language had much good poetry, long before _accented_ and _unaccented_ were
ever thus misapplied in it. Murray proceeds thus: "When the feet are
formed by _accent on vowels_, they are _exactly of the same nature as
ancient feet_, and have the same just quantity in their syllables. So that,
in this respect, _we have all that the ancients had_, and something which
they had not. We have in fact _duplicates of each foot_, yet with such a
_difference_, as to fit them for _different purposes_, to be applied at our
pleasure."--_Ib._, p. 253. Again: "_We_ have observed, that _English verse
is composed of feet formed by accent_; and that when the accent falls on
_vowels_, the feet are equivalent to those formed by quantity."--_Ib._, p.
258. And again: "From the preceding view of English versification, we may
see _what a copious stock of materials_ it possesses. For _we are not only
allowed the use of all the ancient poetic feet_, in our _heroic measure_,
but we have, as before observed, _duplicates of each_, agreeing in
movement, though differing in measure,[501] _and which_ make different
impressions on the ear; _an opulence peculiar_ to our language, _and which_
may be the source of a boundless variety."--_Ib._, p. 259.

OBS. 6.--If it were not dullness to overlook the many errors and
inconsistencies of this scheme, there should be thought a rare ingenuity in
thus turning them all to the great advantage and peculiar riches of the
English tongue! Besides several grammatical faults, elsewhere noticed,
these extracts exhibit, first, the inconsistent notion--of "_duplicates
with a difference_;" or, as Churchill expresses it, of "_two distinct
species of each foot_;" (_New Gram._, p. 189;) and here we are gravely
assured withal, that these _different sorts_, which have no separate names,
are som