VIRGIL.
• The hexameter has been frequently employed in modern poetry, especially in German and English. The facility with which the first of these languages forms compounds is favorable to its use; and Klopstock, Goethe, and Voss have produced admirable speci mens of this kind of verse. It has been doubted whether the English is not too stubborn am] intractable for the free-flowing majesty of the hexameter; and no small discussion with regard to this point has been carried on among scholars of the present day; although many think that the Evangeline of Longfellow, and to some extent the Vacation of Clough, have definitely settled the question in favor of the practicability of this measure being adopted into English. Our readers may judge from the opening lines of Evangeline: This is the 1 forest primleval. The murmuring 1 pines and the 1 hemlocks Bearded with 1 moss, and with 1 garments green, indis J tinct in the I twilight, Stand like 1 Druids of 1 old, with 1 voices 1 sad and prolphettc, Stand like 1 harpers 1 hoar with 1 beards that 1 rest on their i bosoms.
The last two lines show where English versification is weak—viz., in its spondees, unac cented syllables being compelled to do the duty of accented ones.
HErAPLA (Gr. hexapla, sixfold"), a celebrated edition of the Septuagint ver sion, compiled by Origen for the purpose of restoring the purity of its text, and bring ing it into closer agreement with the original Hebrew. Owing to the multiplication of transcripts of the Greek text, numerous errors had crept in; and in the frequent contro versies which arose between the Jews and the Greek or Hellenist (q.v,) Christians, the latter, in appealing to the Greek text, were often mortified by the discovery that it by no means represented faithfully the Hebrew original. In order to meet thisevil, Origen undertook to provide a means of at least verifying the genuine Greek text, as well as of confronting it with the original. With this view he prepared what is known as his Tetrapla, or " fourfold " version, which he afterwards extended into the hexapla. The Tetrapla contained, in four parallel columns, the Septuagint version, together with those of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. The hexapla contained, in addition,
the Hebrew text, together with a transcript of that text in Greek characters. In some parts of the Old Testament there were superadded one, two, and even three other ver sions; so that in some parts the work contains nine columns, whence it is occasionally ..designated the Henneapla, or "ninefold." Of the origin of these latter versions but little is known.
The hexapla, however, was something more than a mere compilation of these ver sions. In the margin were given notes, chiefly explanatory, as, for instance, of do liebrew names. But a still more important characteristic of the work were its restora tions and corrections of the original, in which Origen was guided chiefly by the version ,or:Theodotion. This, however, he did not effect by arbitrary alterations of the received but, while he retained the common text, by indicating with the help of certain signs (an asterisk for an addition, an obelisk for a retrenchment), the corrections which he sought to introduce. Both these texts, the common (koine ekdosis) and that of the lexapla, are found combined in existing MSS. The hexapla, as a whole, has long been:lost; several editions of those fragments of it which it has been possible to recover autve'-been printed; by far the most complete of which is that of the celebrated dicane. Montfaucon (2 vols. fol., Paris, 1714), which retains, so far as it was preserved an :the7MSS., the arrangement and even the asterisks and obelisks of Origen. For a moreidetailed account, see the preface and Praliminaria of this learned work.
•IrEXHAM, a small market t. of England, in the co. of Northumberland, is agreeably fdtuated..on the right bank of the Tyne, 20 m. w. of Newcastle. The Tyne is here crossed by a bridge of nine arches. The priory church, an old cruciform structure of the 12.th c., is now used as the parish church.. It has a lofty central tower, and at its avester•end are remains of the magnificent monastery erected in the 7th c. by St. Wil frid. • "Thft.chief manufactures of the town are gloves and hats. Pop. '71, 5,331.