'All night | the dread | less an | gel un | pursued,' {2}

goes the schoolboy; but though we close our ears, we cling to our
definition, in spite of its proved and naked insufficiency. Mr.
Jenkin was not so easily pleased, and readily discovered that the
heroic line consists of four groups, or, if you prefer the phrase,
contains four pauses:


'All night | the dreadless | angel | unpursued.'


Four groups, each practically uttered as one word: the first, in
this case, an iamb; the second, an amphibrachys; the third, a
trochee; and the fourth, an amphimacer; and yet our schoolboy, with
no other liberty but that of inflicting pain, had triumphantly
scanned it as five iambs. Perceive, now, this fresh richness of
intricacy in the web; this fourth orange, hitherto unremarked, but
still kept flying with the others. What had seemed to be one thing
it now appears is two; and, like some puzzle in arithmetic, the
verse is made at the same time to read in fives and to read in
fours.

But again, four is not necessary. We do not, indeed, find verses
in six groups, because there is not room for six in the ten
syllables; and we do not find verses of two, because one of the
main distinctions of verse from prose resides in the comparative
shortness of the group; but it is even common to find verses of
three. Five is the one forbidden number; because five is the
number of the feet; and if five were chosen, the two patterns would