The “Hexameter”,

Abstract

IT is surely no argument against Prof, Clerk Maxwell's notion, that in the epistle (James i. 17) the enclitic particle τε is omitted. Read, of course, Πάσα δóις τ άγαθή καί πάε δώρημα τέλειου, and the verse is perfect. The practice of omitting a word (or part of a word) necessary to the scansion of a verse is all too common with prosists quoting poetry. I give one example from an English writer. Robert Greene, the earliest to allude to Shakespeare, in his “Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance” (1692), quotes, just as if they were, prose, six lines from a contemporary poet; and in so doing inserts two words and omits two and part of another! He writes, as prose, omitting all that I here give in italics—