And all the three
final syllables can be called short only with the same understanding
of the term. The three together are equal only to the one short
syllable (whose place they supply) of the ordinary trochee. It follows
that there is no sense in accenting these syllables with [a crescent
placed with the curve to the bottom]. We must devise for them some new
character which shall denote the sixth of long. Let it be the crescent
placed with the curve to the left. The whole foot (many are the) might
be called a quick trochee.
We now come to the final division (me) of Mr. Cranch's line. It is
clear that this foot, short as it appears, is fully equal in time to
each of the preceding. It is, in fact, the caesura- the foot which, in
the beginning of this paper, I called the most important in all verse.
Its chief office is that of pause or termination; and here- at the end
of a line- its use is easy, because there is no danger of
misapprehending its value. We pause on it, by a seeming necessity,
just so long as it has taken us to pronounce the preceding feet,
whether iambuses, trochees, dactyls, or anapaests. It is thus a
variable foot, and, with some care, may be well introduced into the
body of a line, as in a little poem of great beauty by Mrs. Welby:
I have / a lit / tle step / son / of on / ly three / years old.
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