rendered it incapable of
numbers formed by poetic feet. For it has neither accent nor quantity
suited to the purpose; the syllables of their words being for the most part
equally accented; and the number of long syllables being out of all
proportion greater than that of the short. Hence for a long time it was
supposed, _as it is by most people at present_, that our verses were
composed, not of feet, but syllables; and accordingly they _are
denominated_ verses often, eight, six, or four syllables, _even to this
day_. Thus have we lost sight of the great advantage which our language has
given us over the French, in point of poetic numbers, by its being capable
of a geometrical proportion, on which the harmony of versification depends;
and blindly reduced ourselves to that of the arithmetical kind which
contains no natural power of pleasing the ear. And hence like the French,
our chief pleasure in verse arises from the poor ornament of
rhyme."--_Sheridan's Rhetorical Gram._, p. 64.

OBS. 15.--In a recent work on this subject, Sheridan is particularly
excepted, and he alone, where Hallam, Johnson, Lord Kames, and other
"Prosodians" in general, are charged with "astonishing ignorance of the
first principles of our verse;" and, at the same time, he is as
particularly commended of having "especially insisted on the subject of
Quantity."--_Everett's English Versification, Preface_, p. 6. That the
rhetorician was but slenderly entitled to these compliments, may plainly
appear from the next paragraph of his Grammar just cited; for therein he
mistakingly represents it as a central error, to regard our poetic feet as
being "formed by quantity" at all. "Some few of our Prosodians," says he,
"finding this to be an error, and that our verses were really composed of
feet, not syllables, without farther examination, boldly applied all the
rules of the Latin prosody to our versification; though scarce any of them
answered exactly, and some of them were utterly incompatible with the
genius of our tongue. _Thus because the Roman feet were formed by quantity,
they asserted the same of ours, denominating all the accented syllables
long; whereas I have formerly shewn, that the accent, in some cases, as
certainly makes the syllable on which it is laid, short, as in others it
makes it long_. And their whole theory of quantity, borrowed from the
Roman, in which they endeavour to establish the proportion of long and
short, as immutably fixed to th