We give a specimen of the hexameters which satisfied so entirely the ear of Master Gabriel Harvey,--an ear that must have been long by position, in virtue of its place on his head.
"Not the like _Discourser_, for Tongue and head: to be fóund out; Not the like _resolute Man_, for great and serious áffayres; Not the like _Lynx_, to spie out secretes and priuities óf States; _Eyed_ like to _Argus, Earde_ like to _Mídas, Nosd_ like to _Naso_, Wingd like to _Mercury_, fitist of a Thousand for to be émployed."
And here are a few from "worthy M. Stanyhurst's" translation of the "AEneid."
"Laocoon storming from Princelis Castel is hastning, And a far of beloing: What fond phantastical harebraine Madnesse hath enchaunted your wits, you townsmen unhappie? Weene you (blind hodipecks) the Greekish nauie returned, Or that their presents want craft? is subtil Vlissis So soone forgotten? My life for an haulf-pennie (Trojans)," etc.
Mr. Abraham Fraunce translates two verses of Heliodorus thus:--
"Now had fyery Phlegon his dayes reuolution ended, And his snoring snowt with salt waues all to bee washed."
Witty Tom Nash was right enough when he called this kind of stuff, "that drunken, staggering kinde of verse which is all vp hill and downe hill, like the waye betwixt Stamford and Becchfeeld, and goes like a horse plunging through the myre in the deep of winter, now soust up to the saddle, and straight aloft on his tiptoes." It will be noticed that his prose falls into a kind of tipsy hexameter. The attempt in England at that time failed, but the controversy to which it gave rise was so far useful that it called forth Samuel Daniel's "Defence of Ryme," (1603,) one of the noblest pieces of prose in the language. Hall also, in his "Satires," condemned the heresy in some verses remarkable for their grave beauty and strength.
The revival of the hexameter in modern poetry is due to Johann Heinrich Voss, a man of genius, an admirable metrist, and, Schlegel's sneer to the contrary notwithstanding, hitherto the best translator of Homer. His "Odyssey," (1783,) his "Iliad," (1791,) and his "Luise," (1795,) were confessedly Goethe's teachers in this kind of verse. The "Hermann and Dorothea" of the latter (1798) was the first true poem written in modern hexameters. From Germany, Southey imported that and other classic metres into England, and we should be grateful to him, at least, for having given the model for Canning's "Knifegrinder." The exotic, however, again refused to take root, and for many years after we have no example of English hexameters. It was universally conceded that the temper of our language was unfriendly to them.