Yet it is only by mere accident that Homer dealt with gods, wars, mythical events and employed dactylic hexameter.
"The Literature of Ecstasy"
Albert Mordell
The perfected poems in a pattern as regular as the dactylic hexameter were a stage of evolution and did not spring up out of the darkness of an age which had no literature.
"The Literature of Ecstasy"
Albert Mordell
Whatever may be held as to Longfellow's inventive powers as a creator of characters or an interpreter of American life, his originality as an artist is manifested by his successful domestication in Evangeline of the dactylic hexameter, which no English poet had yet used with effect.
"Brief History of English and American Literature"
Henry A. Beers