“Now, mor |-tal, prepare, For thy fate | is at hand; Now, mor |-tal, prepare, And surr=en |-d~er.

    For Love | shall arise,
    Whom no pow’r | can withstand,
    Who rules | from the skies
    T~o th~e c=en |-tr~e.” 
        GRANVILLE, VISCOUNT LANSDOWNE:  Joh.  Brit.  Poets, Vol. v, p. 49.

The following extract, (which is most properly to be scanned as anapestic, though considerably diversified,) has two lines, each of which is pretty evidently composed of a single anapest:—­

Example II.—­A Chorus in the Same.

   “Let trum |-pets and tym |-b~als,
    Let at~a |—­bals and cym |-b~als,
    Let drums | and let haut |-boys give o |-v~er;
    B~ut l~et fl=utes,
    And l~et l=utes
    Our pas |-sions excite
    To gent |-ler delight,
    And ev |-ery Mars | be a lov |-er.”
        _Ib._, p. 56.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—­That a single anapest, a single foot of any kind, or even a single long syllable, may be, and sometimes is, in certain rather uncommon instances, set as a line, is not to be denied.  “Dr. Caustic,” or T. G. Fessenden, in his satirical “Directions for Doing Poetry,” uses in this manner the monosyllables, “Whew,” “Say,” and “Dress” and also the iambs, “The gay” and, “All such,” rhyming them with something less isolated.

OBS. 2.—­Many of our grammarians give anonymous examples of what they conceive to be “Anapestic Monometer,” or “the line of one anapest,” while others—­(as Allen, Bullions, Churchill, and Hiley—­) will have the length of two anapests to be the shortest measure of this order.  Prof.  Hart says, “The shortest anapaestic verse is a single anapaest; as,

    ’In =a sw=eet
    Res~on=ance,

    All their f=eet
    In th=e d=ance

    All th=e n=ight
    Tinkl~ed l=ight.’

This measure,” it is added, “is, however, ambiguous; for by laying an accent on the first, as well as the third syllable, we may generally make it a trochaic.”—­Hart’s English Gram., p. 188.  The same six versicles are used as an example by Prof.  Fowler, who, without admitting any ambiguity in the measure, introduces them, rather solecistically, thus:  “Each of the following lines consist of a single Anapest.”—­Fowler’s E. Gram., 8vo, 1850, Sec.694.

OBS. 3.—­Verses of three syllables, with the second short, the last long, and the first common, or variable, are, it would seem, doubly doubtful in scansion; for, while the first syllable, if made short, gives us an anapest, to make it long, gives either an amphimac or what is virtually two trochees.  For reasons of choice in the latter case, see Observation 1st on Trochaic Dimeter.  For the fixing of