ORDER III.—­ANAPESTIC VERSE.

In full Anapestic verse, the stress is laid on every third syllable, the first two syllables of each foot being short.  The first foot of an anapestic line, may be an iambus.  This is the most frequent diversification of the order.  But, as a diversification, it is, of course, not regular or uniform.  The stated or uniform adoption of the iambus for a part of each line, and of the anapest for the residue of it, produces verse of the Composite Order.  As the anapest ends with a long syllable, its rhymes are naturally single; and a short syllable after this, producing double rhyme, is, of course, supernumerary:  so are the two, when the rhyme is triple.  Some prosodists suppose, a surplus at the end of a line may compensate for a deficiency at the beginning of the next line; but this I judge to be an error, or at least the indulgence of a questionable license.  The following passage has two examples of what may have been meant for such compensation, the author having used a dash where I have inserted what seems to be a necessary word:—­

   “Apol | -lo smil’d shrewd | -ly, and bade | him sit down,
    With ’Well, | Mr. Scott, | you have man | -aged the town;
    Now pray, | copy less—­ | have a lit | -tle temer | -_~it~y_—­
    [And] Try | if you can’t | also man | -age poster | -ity.
    [For] All | you add now | only les | -sens your cred | -it;
    And how | could you think, | too, of tak | -ing to ed | -ite?’”
        LEIGH HUNT’S Feast of the Poets, page 20.

The anapestic measures are few; because their feet are long, and no poet has chosen to set a great many in a line.  Possibly lines of five anapests, or of four and an initial iambus, might be written; for these would scarcely equal in length some of the iambics and trochaics already exhibited.  But I do not find any examples of such metre.  The longest anapestics that have gained my notice, are of fourteen syllables, being tetrameters with triple rhyme, or lines of four anapests and two short surplus syllables.  This order consists therefore of measures reducible to the following heads:—­

MEASURE I.—­ANAPESTIC OF FOUR FEET, OR TETRAMETER.

Example I.—­A “Postscript.”—­An Example with Hypermeter.

“Lean Tom, | when I saw | him, last week, | on his horse | awry,
Threaten’d loud | -ly to turn | me to stone | with his sor | -cery. 
But, I think, | little Dan, | that, in spite | of what our
| foe says,
He will find | I read Ov | -id and his | Meta_mor_ | -phoses. 
For, omit | -ting the first, | (where I make | a com_par_ | -ison,
With a sort | of allu | -sion to Put | -land or Har | -rison,)
Yet, by | my descrip | -tion, you’ll find | he in short | is