Each chief his fev'nfold hield difplay'd, By the hero's armed fhades, Glitt❜ring thro' the gloomy glades. Ode on St. Cecilia's Day. In a lefs careful verfifier, fuch effects might be imputed to negligence; but here, I doubt, they were defigned as beauties. When the habit of playing with sounds is once admitted into poetry, it branches out into innumerable triflings. We cannot, in this cafe, be too much on our guard againft the force of example. The reputation of a writer makes even his errors fafhionable: we naturally imitate those whom we admire and when we cannot affume ; their graces, we adopt their foibles. I fear, Afpafiay Afpafia, that this minute criticifm has tired your patience. Afp. Nor at all: I look upon it as an artful lowering of your fubject, from whence you are to rise to the fentimental harmony. Eug. You give authority to my ideas, by the ufe you make of them. IN treating the fecond part of my fub ject, you will, no doubt, expect, that I fhould borrow, as I have already done, my examples from Milton: but here, I am tempted to change my author; principally, as it gives me an opportunity of doing juftice in this particular, to the most extraor ordinary genius, that our country, or, perhaps, any other has produced. It feems then to me, that, Shakefpear, when he at tends 2 tends to it, is not only excellent in the mechanism of his verfe, but, in the fentimental harmony, equal, if not fuperior to any of our English poets. The first example I fhall give you of his merit in this kind, is in the celebrated fpeech of King John to Hubert, when he first opens to him his defigns on the life of Arthur. Hubert. I am much bounden to your majesty. Good friend, thou haft no cause to fay so yet; fo flow, " Yet it shall come for me to do thee good. To give me audience. bell * If the midnight Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth "Sound on unto the drowfie race of night; "If this fame were a church-yard where we stand, "And thou poffeffed with a thousand wrongs; "Or if that furly fpirit, Melancholy, "Had bak'd thy blood and made it heavythick, "Which elfe runs tickling up and down the veins. &c. Hor. I ALLOW you, that in these lines, there is a general agreement between the found, or [] rather, between the movement [i] The neceffity of this distinction will appear from hence, that the movement of a verse may be good, and the found at the fame time may be faulty.D of of the verfe and the idea which it conveys but it will not fo readily be allowed you that this was defigned: and the generality of readers will, I dare fay, esteem it rather cafual than artificial. ...... Eug. WHEN a man ftrongly affected by any paffion, expreffes himself in words, the The Greek Critics carefully obferved this distinction thus Ariftotle Λεγω δε ηδυσμένον μεν λόγον, τον εχονία ρυθμου και αρμονίαν και μέλος. By the guess was meant the meafute or movement of the verfe; by hor, the fweetness of the found; and by Harmony, the agreement of either, or of both with the idea. The French Critic, Dacier, by not entering into this diffinction, has fallen into a strange error; for he fuppofes that by the eulues and hos Ariftotle meant the dancing and mufic which usually accompanied the Greek drama. But I cannot conceive how either dancing or piping could be reckoned a conftituent part of verfification➡oyer, Tov ixoila gulμor, &c.—Efpecially, if, as this fame Critic informs us, the dancing and mufic were at the end of the Acts. natural |