# Mirth and metre

Author: Smedley, Frank E. (Frank Edward), 1818-1864; Yates, Edmund, 1831-1894; McConnell, William, 1833-1867 [Illustrator]

Genre: Category: Poetry

Language: English

License: Public domain

Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69177

Amazon editions: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Mirth+and+metre+Smedley&tag=cyberlibrar00-20

## Summary

My poor friend had always within him a certain classical fondness of the ancient style of poetry; none of your vulgar Alcaics and Sapphics—“These,” he used to remark, “Horace, Tibullus, or any fellow of that calibre could manage; but the glorious hexameters and pentameters of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid,—they’re the things, my boy!” His delight in this species of composition was so great that at school we used to call him, as a nickname, “Professor Long-and-short-fellow.” It curdles my blood to think that some obscure person in America, who has latterly been indulging in dactyllic and spondaic metre, has dared to name himself partly in imitation of the _sobriquét_ by which we designated our f...

## Chapters

- [Chapter II.](https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/books/mirth-and-metre-69177/chapters/1/index.md)
- [Chapter IV.](https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/books/mirth-and-metre-69177/chapters/3/index.md)
- [Chapter III.](https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/books/mirth-and-metre-69177/chapters/2/index.md)