Stuk 76 - William Whewell to Julius Charles Hare

WW returns JCH's hexameters and pentameters. He gives an example from JCH's work highlighting a typical mistake made by all those who write hexameters from German. 'I believe the chance of making hexameters in England liked by the general body of readers to the same extent as they are in Germany, depends very much upon a poem of considerable bulk, attractive in its subject and treatment, being written in them. As Southey [Robert Southey] says, if you could march a body of 10000 or 20000 hexameters into the country you might succeed, but your detailments of a few at a time are cut off as fast as they appear'. John Herschel has distributed among his friends an excellent translation of Schiller's [Friedrich Schiller] 'Walk'. WW is surprised that the Etymological Society have not yet included Bunsen [Christian Bunsen] among their numbers: 'They do not appear to me as yet - judging from their proceedings which they print and send me - to have made any great way in the philosophy of languages or in the knowledge of what has been done'.