While English verse is generally admitted to be based on a different
system from that of Greek and Latin poetry (the element of accent
obscuring that of quantity in English prosody, as the element of
quantity obscures that of accent in classical prosody), there have been
repeated attempts to introduce the more familiar classical measures into
English. Most of these attempts have been academic and have attracted
the attention only of critics and scholars; a few have interested the
reading public.
Imitations of classical verse in English may conveniently be divided
into two classes: imitations of lyrical measures, and imitations of the
dactylic hexameter. The latter group is of course much the larger,
especially in modern poetry. It will appear that the classical measures
might also be divided into two groups according to another distinction:
those attempting to observe the quantitative prosody of the original
language, and those in which the original measure is transmuted into
frankly accentual verse.
The original impulse toward this classical or pseudo-classical
verse was a product of the Renaissance, when all forms of art not
based on Greek and Latin models were suspected. Rime, not being
found in the poetry of the classical languages, was treated as a
product of the dark ages,--the invention of "Goths and Huns." See
Roger Ascham's _Schoolmaster_ (1570) for the most characteristic
representative of this phase of thought in England. The new forms
of verse were, naturally enough, first tried in Italy. Schipper
traces the beginning of the movement to Alberti (1404-1484). A
century later Trissino wrote his _Sophonisbe_ and _Italia Liberata_
in unrimed verse, in professed imitation of Homer, and was looked
upon as the inventor of _versi sciolti_, that is, verses "freed"
from rime (compare the remarks of Milton in the prefatory note to
_Paradise Lost_). In 1539 Claudio Tolomei wrote _Versi e Regole
della Poesia Nuova_, a systematic attempt to introduce the
classical versification. He also wrote hexameters and sapphics. In
France there were similar efforts in the sixteenth century. Mousset
translated Homer into hexameters in 1530, and A. de Baïf, a member
of the "Pleiade" (1532-1589), devised some French hexameters which
he called _vers baïfins_. The English experiments were worked out
independently, and yet under the same neo-classical influences. On
this subject, see Schipper, vol. ii. pp. 2-12, 439-464.