s eight,
will often produce different modes of measuring the same lines; and since
it is desirable to measure verses with uniformity, and always by the
simplest process that will well answer the purpose; we usually scan by the
principal feet, in preference to the secondary, where the syllables give us
a choice of measures, or may be divided in different ways.

A single foot, especially a foot of only two syllables, can hardly be said
to constitute a line, or to have rhythm in itself; yet we sometimes see a
foot so placed, and rhyming as a line. Lines of two, three, four, five,
six, or seven feet, are common; and these have received the technical
denominations of _dim'eter, trim'eter, tetram'eter, pentam'eter,
hexam'eter_, and _heptam'eter_. On a wide page, iambics and trochaics may
possibly be written in _octom'eter_; but lines of this measure, being very
long, are mostly abandoned for alternate tetrameters.

ORDER I.--IAMBIC VERSE.

In Iambic verse, the stress is laid on the even syllables, and the odd ones
are short. Any short syllable added to a line of this order, is
supernumerary; iambic rhymes, which are naturally single, being made double
by one, and triple by two. But the adding of one short syllable, which is
much practised in dramatic poetry, may be reckoned to convert the last foot
into an amphibrach, though the adding of two cannot. Iambics consist of the
following measures:--

MEASURE I.--IAMBIC OF EIGHT FEET, OR OCTOMETER.

_Psalm XLVII, 1 and 2_.

"O =all | y~e p=eo | -pl~e, cl=ap | y~our h=ands, | ~and w=ith | tr~i=um
| -ph~ant v=oi | -c~es s=ing;
No force | the might | -=y power | withstands | of God, | the u
| -niver | -sal King."
See the "_Psalms of David, in Metre_," p. 54.

Each couplet of this verse is now commonly reduced to, or exchanged for, a
simple stanza of four tetrameter lines, rhyming alternately, and each
commencing with a capital; but sometimes, the second line and the fourth
are still commenced with a small letter: as,

"Your ut | -most skill | in praise | be shown,
for Him | who all | the world | commands,
Who sits | upon | his right | -eous throne,
and spreads | his sway | o'er heath | -en lands."
_Ib._, verses 7 and 8; _Edition bound with Com. Prayer_,
N. Y., 1819.

_An other Example_.

"The hour | is come | --the cher | -ish'