by two things, and in general by two only; the number of syllables taken as a foot, and the order of their quantities.  Trochaic verse is always as distinguishable from iambic, as iambic is from any other.  Yet have we several grammarians and prosodies who contrive to confound them—­or who, at least, mistake catalectic trochaic for catalectic iambic; and that too, where the syllable wanting affects only the last foot, and makes it perhaps but a common and needful caesura.

OBS. 2.—­To suppose that iambic verse may drop its initial short syllable, and still be iambic, still be measured as before, is not only to take a single long syllable for a foot, not only to recognize a pedal caesura at the beginning of each line, but utterly to destroy the only principles on which iambics and trochaics can be discriminated.  Yet Hiley, of Leeds, and Wells, of Andover, while they are careful to treat separately of these two orders of verse, not only teach that any order may take at the end “an additional syllable,” but also suggest that the iambic may drop a syllable “from the first foot,” without diminishing the number of feet,—­without changing the succession of quantities,—­without disturbing the mode of scansion!  “Sometimes,” say they, (in treating of iambics,) “a syllable is cut off from the first foot; as,

Praise | to God, | immor |-tal praise,
For | the love | that crowns | our days."[—­BARBAULD.]
Hiley’s E. Gram., Third Edition, London, p. 124;
Wells’s, Third Edition, p. 198.

OBS. 3.—­Now this couplet is the precise exemplar, not only of the thirty-six lines of which it is a part, but also of the most common of our trochaic metres; and if this may be thus scanned into iambic verse, so may all other trochaic lines in existence:  distinction between the two orders must then be worse than useless.  But I reject this doctrine, and trust that most readers will easily see its absurdity.  A prosodist might just as well scan all iambics into trochaics, by pronouncing each initial short syllable to be hypermeter.  For, surely, if deficiency may be discovered at the beginning of measurement, so may redundance.  But if neither is to be looked for before the measurement ends, (which supposition is certainly more reasonable,) then is the distinction already vindicated, and the scansion above-cited is shown to be erroneous.

OBS. 4.—­But there are yet other objections to this doctrine, other errors and inconsistencies in the teaching of it.  Exactly the same kind of verse as this, which is said to consist of “four iambuses” from one of which “a syllable is cut off,” is subsequently scanned by the same authors as being composed of “three trochees and an additional syllable; as,

    ’Haste thee, | Nymph, and | bring with | thee
    Jest and | youthful | Jolli |-ty.’—­MILTON.”
        Wells’s School Grammar, p. 200.