DYER: _Johnson's British Poets_, Vol. vii, p. 65.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.--This is the most common of our trochaic measures; and it seems to
be equally popular, whether written with single rhyme, or with double; in
stanzas, or in couplets; alone, or with some intentional intermixture. By a
careful choice of words and style, it may be adapted to all sorts of
subjects, grave, or gay; quaint, or pathetic; as may the corresponding
iambic metre, with which it is often more or less mingled, as we see in
some of the examples above. Milton's _L'Allegro_, or _Gay Mood_, has one
hundred and fifty-two lines; ninety-eight of which are iambics; fifty-four
trochaic tetrameters; a very few of each order having double rhymes. These
orders the poet has _not_--"very ingeniously _alternated_" as Everett
avers; but has simply interspersed, or commingled, with little or no regard
to alternation. His _Il Penseroso_, or _Grave Mood_, has twenty-seven
trochaic tetrameters, mixed irregularly with one hundred and forty-nine
iambics.

OBS. 2.--Everett, who divides our trochaic tetrameters into two species of
metre, imagines that the catalectic form, or that which is single-rhymed,
"has a _solemn effect_,"--"imparts to all pieces _more dignity_ than any of
the other short measures,"--"that no trivial or humorous subject should be
treated in this measure,"--and that, "besides dignity, it imparts an air of
_sadness_ to the subject."--_English Verses._, p. 87. Our "line of four
trochees" he supposes to be "_difficult_ of construction,"--"not of very
_frequent_ occurrence,"--"the most _agreeable_ of all the trochaic
measures,"--"remarkably well adapted to lively subjects,"--and "peculiarly
expressive of the eagerness and fickleness of the passion of love."--_Ib._,
p. 90. These pretended metrical characteristics seem scarcely more worthy
of reliance, than astrological predictions, or the oracular guessings of
our modern craniologists.

OBS. 3.--Dr. Campbell repeats a suggestion of the older critics, that
gayety belongs naturally to all trochaics, as such, and gravity or
grandeur, as naturally, to iambics; and he attempts to find a reason for
the fact; while, perhaps, even here--more plausible though the supposition
is--the fact may be at least half imaginary. "The iambus," says he, "is
expressive of dignity and grandeur; the trochee, on the contrary, according
to Aristotle, (Rhet. Lib. Ill,) is frolicsome and gay. It were difficult to
assign a re