為span標簽內的href指定行數

Question

我有一個<span>標記.lastMessageLink ，其中帶有一個<a> .lastMessageText 。 可以放在.lastMessageText的文本可以短至幾個字符，也可以長至一個段落，但是我想顯示最多4行文本。

我目前無法使用的樣式是這樣的：

.lastMessageLink {
    line-height: 1em;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
    max-height: 4em;
    overflow: hidden;
}

.lastMessageText {
    color: black;
    word-wrap: break-word;
}

這是HTML：

<span class="lastMessageLink">
    <a id="undefined" class="lastMessageText" title="now i need a really really long message so that i can test this whole multiple lines thing which is gonna be a problem and a trickier problem than we had initially thought. it's interesting because you'd think a couple css styles would be enough, but we might have to go by characters" href="#conversation:cid=10714&amp;mid=10735">
        now i need a really really long message so that i can test this whole multiple lines thing which is gonna be a problem and a trickier problem than we had initially thought. it's interesting because you'd think a couple css styles would be enough, but we might have to go by characters
    </a>
</span>

我看過HTML / CSS：指定<span>內的行數，使用CSS 將文本長度限制為n行，使用CSS文本溢出來更改設置高度的元素內的文本行數，以及如何為固定數量的文本行設置元素高度。

我對使用jQuery或Javascript的解決方案持開放態度，因為我無法僅憑CSS取得進步。