The pleasure
received or receivable has very much such progressive increase, and in
very nearly such mathematical relations as those which I have
suggested in the case of the crystal.
It will be observed that I speak of merely a proximate equality
between the first syllable of "dutiful" and that of "beautiful," and
it may be asked why we cannot imagine the earliest rhymes to have
had absolute instead of proximate equality of sound. But absolute
equality would have involved the use of identical words, and it is the
duplicate sameness or monotony, that of sense as well as that of
sound, which would have caused these rhymes to be rejected in the very
first instance.
The narrowness of the limits within which verse composed of
natural feet alone must necessarily have been confined would have led,
after a very brief interval, to the trial and immediate adoption of
artificial feet, that is to say, of feet not constituted each of a
single word but two, or even three words, or of parts of words.
These feet would be intermingled with natural ones. For example:
A breath / can make / them as / a breath / his made.
This is an iambic line in which each iambus is formed of two words.
Again:
The un / ima / gina / ble might / of Jove.
This is an iambic line in which the first foot is formed of a word and
a part of a word; the second and third of parts taken from the body or
interior of a word; the fourth of a part and a whole; the fifth of two
complete words.
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