well as of earlier ones, for
saying, "Good verse requires to be read _with the natural quantites
[sic--KTH] of the syllables_," (p. 487,) a doctrine with which that of the
_redivision_ appears to clash. If the example given be read with any regard
to the _caesural pause_, as undoubtedly it should be, the _th_ of _their_
cannot be joined, as above, to the word _tale_; nor do I see any propriety
in joining the _s_ of _music_ to the third foot rather than to the fourth.
Can a theory which turns topsyturvy the whole plan of syllabication, fail
to affect "the _natural quantities_ of syllables?"

OBS. 22--Different modes of reading verse, may, without doubt, change the
quantities of very many syllables. Hence a correct mode of reading, as well
as a just theory of measure, is essential to correct scansion, or a just
discrimination of the poetic feet. It is a very common opinion, that
English verse has but few spondees; and the doctrine of Brightland has been
rarely disputed, that, "_Heroic Verses_ consist of five _short_, and five
_long_ Syllables _intermixt_, but not so very strictly as never to alter
that order."--_Gram._, 7th Ed., p. 160.[504] J. D. W., being a heavy
reader, will have each line so "_stuffed out with sounds_," and the
consonants so syllabled after the vowels, as to give to our heroics three
spondees for every two iambuses; and lines like the following, which, with
the elisions, I should resolve into four iambuses, and without them, into
three iambuses and one anapest, he supposes to consist severally of four
spondees:--

"'When coldness wraps this suffering clay,
Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?'

[These are] to be read," according to this prosodian,

"Whencoldn--esswrapsth--issuff'r--ingclay,
Ah! whith--erstraysth'--immort--almind?"

"The verse," he contends, "is perceived to consist of _six_ [probably he
meant to say _eight_] heavy syllables, each composed of a vowel followed by
a group of consonantal sounds, the whole measured into four equal feet. The
movement is what is called spondaic, a spondee being a foot of two heavy
sounds. The absence of short syllables gives the line a peculiar weight and
solemnity suited to the sentiment, and doubtless prompted by
it."--_American Review_, Vol. i, p. 487. Of his theory, he subsequently
says: "It maintains that good English verse is as thoroughly quantitative
as the Greek, though it be _much more heavy and spondaic_."--_Ib._, p.
491.[505]