that must have been long by position,
in virtue of its place on his head.

Not the like _Discourser_, for Tongue and head to be found out;
Not the like _resolute Man_, for great and serious affayres;
Not the like _Lynx_, to spie out secretes and priuities of States;
_Eyed_ like to _Argus_, _Earde_ like to _Midas_, _Nosd_ like to _Naso_,
Winged like to _Mercury_, fittst of a Thousand for to be employed.

And here are a few from "worthy M. Stanyhurst's" translation of the
"Aeneid."

Laocoon storming from Princelie Castel is hastning,
And a far of beloing: What fond phantastical harebraine
Madnesse hath enchaunted your wits, you townsmen unhappie?
Weene you (blind hodipecks) the Greekish nauie returned,
Or that their presents want craft? is subtil Vlisses
So soone forgotten? My life for an haulfpennie (Trojans), etc.

Mr. Abraham Fraunce translates two verses of Heliodorus thus:--

Now had fyery Phlegon his dayes reuolution ended,
And his snoring snowt with salt waues all to bee washed.

Witty Tom Nash was right enough when he called this kind of stuff, "that
drunken, staggering kinde of verse which is all vp hill and downe hill,
like the waye betwixt Stamford and Beechfeeld, and goes like a horse
plunging through the myre in the deep of winter, now soust up to the
saddle, and straight aloft on his tiptoes." It will be noticed that his
prose falls into a kind of tipsy hexameter. The attempt in England at
that time failed, but the controversy to which it gave rise was so far
useful that it called forth Samuel Daniel's "Defence of Ryme" (1603),
one of the noblest pieces of prose in the language. Hall also, in his
"Satires," condemned the heresy in some verses remarkable for their
grave beauty and strength.

The revival of the hexameter in modern poetry is due to Johann Heinrich
Voss, a man of genius, an admirable metrist, and, Schlegel's sneer to
the contrary notwithstanding, hitherto the best translator of Homer. His
"Odyssey" (1783), his "Iliad" (1791), and his "Luise" (1795), were
confessedly Goethe's teachers in this kind of verse. The "Hermann and
Dorothea" of the latter (1798) was the first true poem written in modern
hexameters. From Germany, Southey imported that and other classic metres
into England, and we should be grateful to him, at least, for having
given the model for Canning's "Knife-grinder." The exotic, however,
again refused to take root, and for many years after we have n