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An English Paraphrase of Horace's Art of Poetry
An English Paraphrase of Horace's Art of Poetry Author:Horace Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LESSON III. DIFFERENCES IN METER AND STYLE. (73-118) The different kinds of poetry are marked by characteristic meters, which seemed to their inventors ... more »best adapted in their movement and melody to the spirit of the subject. A poet should strive to discern these appropriate differences and observe them in composing his verses. You can profit by studying the examples of the several kinds of poetry of the great masters and leaders in the art. Homer, in writing his great epics, the II iad and Odyssey,used the Hexameter, a verse of six feet, and demonstrated that the deeds of Kings and Generals and the sad incidents of war could be most effectively narrated in that measure. There is a natural accordance between the dignity and importance of such actions and the stately movement of the Hexameter. It is not definitely known, and is still a subject of controversy and discussion, who first produced the shorter poems, called Elegies, which are written in alternate hexameter and pentameter lines; that is to say, of six and five feet respectively. The early elegy expressed grief for the loss or death of a friend, and was devoted to sad and mournful subjects. The broken quality of every other line may have made it seem particularly suitable as an expression of intense grief. But afterwards poets used the elegiac formof verse in the rejoicing of a successful lover and declaring sweet and tender sentiments. Archilockus invented the iambic measure, when his rage demanded an efficient weapon to revenge an insult. He was an Ionian of the Island of Pares and had been promised by her father, Lycambes, the hand of the beautiful Neobule in marriage. Lycambes broke faith, and Archilochus in his anger wrote in iambic verse a bitter satire on the family. It is said he did this with such ski...« less