OBS. 5.—­In Lindley Murray’s revised scheme of feet, we have first a paragraph from Sheridan’s Rhetorical Grammar, suggesting that the ancient poetic measures were formed of syllables divided “into long and short,” and affirming, what is not very true, that, for the forming of ours, “In English, syllables are divided into accented and unaccented.”—­Rhet.  Gram., p. 64; Murray’s Gram., 8vo, 253; Hart’s Gram., 182; and others.  Now some syllables are accented, and others are unaccented; but syllables singly significant, i.e., monosyllables, which are very numerous, belong to neither of these classes.  The contrast is also comparatively new; our language had much good poetry, long before accented and unaccented were ever thus misapplied in it.  Murray proceeds thus:  “When the feet are formed by accent on vowels, they are exactly of the same nature as ancient feet, and have the same just quantity in their syllables.  So that, in this respect, we have all that the ancients had, and something which they had not.  We have in fact duplicates of each foot, yet with such a difference, as to fit them for different purposes, to be applied at our pleasure.”—­Ib., p. 253.  Again:  “We have observed, that English verse is composed of feet formed by accent; and that when the accent falls on vowels, the feet are equivalent to those formed by quantity.”—­Ib., p. 258.  And again:  “From the preceding view of English versification, we may see what a copious stock of materials it possesses.  For we are not only allowed the use of all the ancient poetic feet, in our heroic measure, but we have, as before observed, duplicates of each, agreeing in movement, though differing in measure,[501] and which make different impressions on the ear; an opulence peculiar to our language, and which may be the source of a boundless variety.”—­Ib., p. 259.

OBS. 6.—­If it were not dullness to overlook the many errors and inconsistencies of this scheme, there should be thought a rare ingenuity in thus turning them all to the great advantage and peculiar riches of the English tongue!  Besides several grammatical faults, elsewhere noticed, these extracts exhibit, first, the inconsistent notion—­of “duplicates with a difference;” or, as Churchill expresses it, of “two distinct species of each foot;” (New Gram., p. 189;) and here we are gravely assured withal, that these different sorts, which have no separate names, are sometimes forsooth, “exactly of the same nature”!  Secondly, it is incompatibly urged, that, “English verse is composed of feet formed by accent,” and at the same time shown, that it partakes largely of feet “formed by quantity.”  Thirdly, if “we have all that the ancients had,” of poetic feet, and “duplicates