metrical composition

The conscientious rigour with which they will discharge this new and congenial duty may perhaps be better understood after perusing the little prophetic sketch which follows; for Mr. Punch's Poet, when not employed in metrical composition, is a Seer of some pretensions in a small way, and several of his predictions have already been shamelessly plagiarised by the unscrupulous hand of Destiny.

On the authority of the above expression, “composée,” and also on that of La Croix du Maine, Marchant has been made the author as well as the printer of the work; but M. De la Monnoye is not of that opinion, nor indeed is there any other metrical composition by this printer known to exist.

C. Lucilius invented satire, by first imparting a definite purpose to an inartistic kind of metrical composition, in which miscellaneous topics had been treated in accordance with the occasional mood or interests of the writer.

But, apparently, the first metrical composition committed to writing was a poem of an ethical or didactic character, written two generations before the first dramatic representation of Livius Andronicus, by Appius Claudius Caecus, who is also the earliest known to us in the long line of Roman orators15.

While the literature and civilisation of Greece were still unknown to them, the Romans had produced certain rude kinds of metrical composition; they preserved some knowledge of their history in various kinds of chronicles or annals: they must have been trained to some skill in oratory by the contests of public life, and by the practice of delivering commemorative speeches at the funerals of famous men.