That Dryden and Pope felt peculiar partialities for rhime, is best evinced by their constantly employ ing it in their most elevated performances, although indeed their opinions were somewhat different. Pope would, it is to be presumed, have thought rhime transcendantly excellent for every species of Poetry, when he replied to Voltaire, who looked with a sort of contempt on all other measure, that Milton did not write his Paradise Lost'in rhime because he could not. Dryden, however, has acknowledged, that "what rhime adds to sweetness it takes away from sense." The sentiments of La Fontaine, equally with those of Voltaire, and likewise of the most eminent of the French Poets, were in favour of rhime, which indeed is not much a source of wonder, as the genius and structure of their language, which rendered rhimes almost essential to their metrical composition, seemed to them to involve the same necessity in all others. An eminent writer and critic, however, of their own soil, Fenelon, has expressed himself of a different opinion, and there is, doubtless, much truth in what he says. "La rime," says he, in his correspondence with M. De la Motte, gêne plus qu'elle n'orne les vers. Elle les charge d'epithetes; elle rend souvent la diction forcé et pleine d'une vaine parure. En allongeant les discours elle les affoiblit. Souvent on a recours à un vers inutile pour en amener un bon.”

For the Dramatic uses in Poetry, however, scarcely any critic of respectability in our own language, has ever pleaded for the propriety of rhimes, the artificial and constrained dress in which they involved both the speakers and the sentiments, has appeared alike to their judgments and their feelings, altogether incompatible with the utterance of sudden emotion, or the risings of passion. The superiority which blank verse possesses over the shackled restraints of rhime has been happily expressed by a Critic of modest, but accomplished fame. "Blank verse," says the elegant Mrs. Montague, "is finely adapt ed to the Dramatic offices. It rises gracefully into the sublime, it can slide happily into the familiar, hasteus its career if impelled by passion, can pause in the perplexity of doubt, ap

pear lingering and languid in perplexity and sorrow, is capable of varying its accents and adapting its language to the sentiments it should convey, and the passion it would ex

cite in all the charms of musical

expression. The charms," observes Mrs. Montague," arising from English blank verse cannot be felt by a foreigner who never perfectly acquires the pronunciation of our language, and is but rarely acquainted with its idiom and force of expression."

If, however, in Tragic the use of rhimes appears unnatural_and_improper, their legitimacy in Epic Poetry may yet be advocated by some, who may plead that their subject or epopee being the recital of great and dignified actious, not varied or broken by those sudden changes in sentiment and passion which mark the conduct of the dialogue, or the developement of the plot in the former, only requires that the style of narration be uniformly elevated, and not debased by the pelty ornaments of composition. Of the possibility of rhimes being made, with very high success, subservient to the delineation of great actions and the utterance of sublime thoughts, our literature has already afforded one or more splendid examples,- for instance, the Iliad of Pope, to which we may add the Luciad of Mickle; but in general it is not so, and the performances, where the uniformity of termination which characterizes the couplet has been rejected, have, it is observable, been far superior in point of bold and nervous imagery and description, in free, forcible, and expansive eloquence. Milton, although his skill in eliciting dignity from the couplet had equalled that which strikes the mind in the English Iliad, or the Essay on Man, would clearly have outraged every sentiment of taste and propriety if he had sought to embody the conceptions of his soaring genius in the smooth and measured numbers of Dryden or Denham. "An Epic Poem in rhime," says Dr. Thomas Warton, "appears to be such a sort of thing as the Eniad would have been if it had been written, like Ovid's Fasti, in hexameters and pentameters, and the reading of it would have been as tedious as travelling through that one,

lung,

long, straight avenue of firs which leads from Moscow to St. Petersburg."

Goldsmith, however, appears to proscribe this measure, from all kinds of Poetry, when he states himself to be of opinion, that it is barbarous and uncouth, and that all authors, who in the least pretend to elegance and taste, should write in rhime. A Poet of inimitable beauty, sweetness, and delicacy, he seems to have been himself conscious of the purity and harmony of his rhimes, when he asserts that nothing but the highest sublimity of style can render this measure pleasing, and alleges, in favour of the latter, this extraordinary reason, that the difficulty of writing in rhime enhances its merit.

Of sentiments somewhat similar may be thought to have been a late Poet and Critic of eminence. In opposition to Dr. Warton, he is of opinion that, "in the hands of a skilful master, one who knows how to handle the tools of his profession, rhimes are not so fitted for the epopee as blank verse, and that the dissimilarity of Pope's translation to the original might arise from his imperfect knowledge of the Greek idiom, from a mere sportive fancy, or from carelessness, but rarely, if ever, from the inadequacy of his numbers, and the inappropriateness of rhimed measure to the exigencies of heroic narrative." Such appears to have been the dif ference of opinion which prevailed in the minds or the tastes of writers who each, both by nature and education, might be supposed to be capable of appreciating the genuine principles of harmony and beauty. It is, doubtless, the duty of all who write for the amusement and instruction of the public and of posterity, to inquire how far they are by nature fitted for the one or the other. If their bent or constitution of genius strongly inclines them to use rhime above any other measure, they would, of course, act highly injudicious, were they to put a constraint on native talent, in order to accommodate any pre-conceived notions of beauty; but this, on the other hand, it may be observed, does not by any means supersede this beauty. Eligibility must still immutably remain with blank verse, as connected with all the higher offices of Poetry. Whilst the perfection and diguity which rhime has acquired

under the hands of British genius, has made it the vehicle of many noble performances, it is not assuredly the form which Nature dictates, or enthusiasm points out for the expres sion of the more lofty thoughts of aspiring genius. The expansive and redundant flow which mark's the expression and cadence of blank verse, the unbounded scope and variety of its termination, its copiousness, and the facility it gives to the utterance of passion or of fancy in all their associated shapes, offer it peculiarly as a proper language for the imagi nation teeming with great and noble ideas, for the intellectual sight which looks above the pursuits, converse, and general views of ordinary mankind. It may, then, not without reason, be concluded, that Warton spoke with truth when he observed, haps rhime may be properest for shorter pieces, for Lyric, Elegiac, and Satiric Poems, for pieces where closeness of expression and smartness of style are expected, but for subjects of a higher order, where any enthusiasm or emotion is to be expressed, or for Poems of a greater length, blank verse is undoubtedly preferable."

66 per

At the commencement of the 19th century, an æra distinguished by the accuracy and extent of its knowledge in arts and in elegant literature, more discriminating care was exercised in the choice and arrangement of works destined not only to amuse and instruct the present age, but to become, in some degree, the classical precedents of succeeding days — poets, whose influence and whose power, in these enlightened times of discernment and wisdom, would, perhaps, obtain equal credit, and more frequently impart durable and rational pleasures, pleasures which must ever retain their ascendancy in the human breast. It is not enough, or it ought not to be enough, that they possess genius alone, this may prove, as in science, an ignis fatuus to lead those astray who implicitly follow its wanderings, the performances to which it gives birth ought to be conformed to the rules of reason and fine expression. Were the critical opinions of other days more frequently consulted by those who assume the province of sustaining the credit and reputation of this department of our

Literature, their varied productions would breathe a more elevating, pure, and classically elegant spirit, would soar more frequently above the petty and ephemeral subjects which, as they are raised far above their proper level, have of late seemed to sustain a marvellous interest in the public mind. After the example of writers who adorned some of our brightest Literary days, and who, until very recently have universally sustained an unshaken reputation for genius as for learning and taste, it would assuredly require no unworthy sacrifice of judgment to ascertain whether the materials be worthy of the genius employed upon them, or whether, ou the other hand, the form, polish, and style of the laboured production corresponds with the sentiment which adorns it, or the intellect which gave it birth. Then would be more distinctly seen how far the genius which now enlightens our Poetical hemisphere is equal to that which shone in past ages, how far the range and compass of their thinking approximate to the same standard with those whose felicity of conception, no less than their correct taste, has long been the subject of eulogy amongst mankind. Instead of the turgid die. tion, distorted sentiment, and puerile conceit which so frequently fill the pages of modern Poets,-fictions and fancy would then be more frequently associated and tempered with dignity and elevation of style and of sentiment. The mind, in the habit of studying classical models, would be receiving fresh accessions of intellectual pleasures, while the vitiated taste, which is apt to pervade the great mass of readers, would be reformed, and writers receive the grateful acknowledgments of those who are, in another age, to form an opinion.

Dec. 11. in these awful times, not only

not perhaps be thought improper or ill-timed. Christianity will, I think, make a Philosopher doubt, but a reasonable man believe; or I should rather say (for I by no means wish to cast a general imputation on Philosophy), that Christianity may make a Philosopher doubt, but it will make a reasonable man believe. Indeed I think that there is no real medium between Christianity and Atheism. The former, when fairly examined, will be found supported by such a prodigious mass of evidence, that the rejection of it will leave no principles in the mind to substantiate any other system of religious belief. Deism then (independently of some observations and reasonings that can have no firm hold upon the mind) will be a mere arbitrary supposition; and the disconsolate void of Atheism will be the real state of the mind, when left to its own conclusions. Yours, &c.

Mr. URBAN,

A LAYMAN.

Nov. 5.

THE following Epigram, from the

Greek Anthologia, has been hosions from the pens of those celenoured with two elegant Latin verbrated men, Hugo Grotius and Dr. Johnson. They are subjoined; and I have taken the liberty of adding a poetical translation, not recollecting received an English version. that the Epigram has ever before It is singularly beautiful, and, proceeding from a country more eminent for genius and science, than for purity of morals or strictness of decorum, deserves commendation for the chaste and elegant form of its expressions, and for the moral spirit which it breathes. The word κειμηλια pos sesses a peculiar grace, the beauty of which, I am apprehensive, fades in translation. Grotius, whose version approaches nearest to the original, has rendered it by honos, but this does not fully express the meaning of wagdering xauna, i.e. res pretiosa reconditæ virginitatis. The

System also is threatened (I do not say with any real danger to the latter, for the Rock" of Christianity will not be so easily overthrown) the following short observations may

*Alluding to some opinions in the LIIId. Number of the Edinburgh Review.

in Homer, in which it is used in a similar manner, in the sense of treasures.

Πολλα δ ̓ ἐν ἀφνειου παρος κειμηλια XEITOL.Iliad, Z. 47.

"And many precious things lie hoarded up in the house of my rich father."

Καλα