There are no natural feet in either line. Again:
Can it be / fancied that / Deity / ever vin / dictively
Made in his / image a / mannikin / merely to / madden it?
These are two dactylic lines in which we find natural feet ("Deity,"
"mannikin"); feet composed of two words ("fancied that," "image a,"
"merely to," "madden it"); feet composed of three words, ("can it be,"
"made in his"); a foot composed of a part of a word ("dictively"); and
a foot composed of a word and a part of a word ("ever vin").
And now, in our suppositional progress, we have gone so far as to
exhaust all the essentialities of verse. What follows may, strictly
speaking, be regarded as embellishment merely, but even in this
embellishment the rudimental sense of equality would have been the
never-ceasing impulse. It would, for example, be simply in seeking
further administration to this sense that men would come in time to
think of the refrain or burden, where, at the closes of the several
stanzas of a poem, one word or phrase is repeated; and of
alliteration, in whose simplest form a consonant is repeated in the
commencements of various words. This effect would be extended so as to
embrace repetitions both of vowels and of consonants in the bodies
as well as in the beginnings of words, and at a later period would
be made to infringe on the province of rhyme by the introduction of
general similarity of sound between whole feet occurring in the body
of a line- all of which modifications I have exemplified in the line
above.
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