“M=an is a | c=ompl=ex, | c=omp=ound | c=omp=ost, | y=et is he
| G=od-b=orn.”

OBS. 7.—­Of this species of versification, which may be called Mixed or Composite Hexameter, the most considerable specimen that I have seen in English, is Longfellow’s Evangeline, a poem of one thousand three hundred and eighty-two of these long lines, or verses.  This work has found admirers, and not a few; for, of these, nothing written by so distinguished a scholar could fail:  but, surely, not many of the verses in question exhibit truly the feet of the ancient Hexameters; or, if they do, the ancients contented themselves with very imperfect rhythms, even in their noblest heroics.  In short, I incline to the opinion of Poe, that, “Nothing less than the deservedly high reputation of Professor Longfellow, could have sufficed to give currency to his lines as to Greek Hexameters.  In general, they are neither one thing nor another.  Some few of them are dactylic verses—­English dactylics.  But do away with the division into lines, and the most astute critic would never have suspected them of any thing more than prose.”—­Pioneer, p. 111.  The following are the last ten lines of the volume, with such a division into feet as the poet is presumed to have contemplated:—­

“Still stands the | forest pri | -meval; but | under the | shade of its
| branches
Dwells an | -other | race, with | other | customs and | language. 
Only a | -long the | shore of the | mournful and | misty At | -lantic
Linger a | few A | -cadian | peasants, whose | fathers from | exile
Wandered | back to their | native | land to | die in its | bosom. 
In the | fisherman’s | cot the | wheel and the | loom are still | busy;
Maidens still | wear their | Norman | caps and their | kirtles of
| homespun,
And by the | evening | fire re | -peat E | -vangeline’s  story,
While from its | rocky | caverns the | deep-voiced, | neighbouring
| ocean
Speaks, and in | accents dis | -consolate | answers the | wail of the
| forest.” 
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW:  Evangeline, p. 162.

OBS. 8.—­An other form of verse, common to the Greeks and Romans, which has sometimes been imitated—­or, rather, which some writers have attempted to imitate—­in English, is the line or stanza called Sapphic, from the inventress, Sappho, a Greek poetess.  The Sapphic verse, according to Fabricius, Smetius, and all good authorities, has eleven syllables, making “five feet—­the first a trochee, the second a spondee, the third a dactyl, and the fourth and fifth trochees.”  The Sapphic stanza, or what is sometimes so called, consists of three Sapphic lines and an Adonian, or Adonic,—­this last being a short line composed of “a dactyl and a spondee.”  Example from Horace:—­

   “=Int~e | -g=er v=i | -tae, sc~el~e | -r=isqu~e | p=ur~us
    Non e | -get Mau | -ri jacu | -lis ne | -qu’ arcu,
    Nec ven | -ena | -tis gravi | -da sa | -gittis,
        Fusce, pha | -retra.”