IAMBIC, the term employed in prosody to denote a succession of verses, each consisting of a foot or metre called an iambus (lap00s), formed of two syllables, of which the first is short and the second long (,-, -).
The normal blank verse in English is founded upon an iambic basis, and Milton's line And swims or sinks J or wades or creeps or flies exhibits it in its primitive form.
The ordinary alexandrine of French literature is a hexapod iambic, but in all questions of quantity in modern prosody great care has to be exercised to recollect that all ascriptions of classic names to modern forms of rhymed or blank verse are merely approximate.
In modern speech, verse is directly contrasted with prose, as being essentially the result of an attention to determined rules of form.
Roman verse, though essentially the same as Greek verse, was modified by the national development of Italian forms of poetry, by a simplified imitation of Greek measures, and by a varied intensity in the creation of new types of the old Greek artistic forms (Volkmann).
The rules of French verse being, in fact, very severe, and weakness, excess of audacity and negligences of all sorts being very harshly repressed, it is not surprising that, as the personal authority of Hugo declined, various projects were started for lightening the burden of prosodical discipline.
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