hexameter might be easily observed, but in English will very frequently be in danger of violation; for the order and regularity of accents cannot well be perceived in a succession of fewer than three syllables, which will confine the English poet to only five pauses; it being supposed that when he connects one line with another, he should never make a full pause at less distance than that of three syllables from the beginning or end of a verse.

It is very difficult to write on the minuter parts of literature without failing either to please or instruct. Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common That this rule should be universally and inunderstandings of little use. They who under-dispensably established, perhaps cannot be take these subjects are therefore always in dan- granted; something may be allowed to variety, ger, as one or other inconvenience arises to their and something to the adaptation of the numbers imagination, of frighting us with rugged science, to the subject; but it will be found generally or amusing us with empty sound. necessary, and the ear will seldom fail to suffer by its neglect.

In criticising the work of Milton, there is, indeed, opportunity to intersperse passages that can hardly fail to relieve the languors of attention; and since, in examining the variety and choice of the pauses with which he has diversified his numbers, it will be necessary to exhibit the lines in which they are to be found, perhaps the remarks may be well compensated by the examples, and the irksomeness of grammatical disquisitions somewhat alleviated. Milton formed his scheme of versification by the poets of *Greece and Rome, whom he proposed to himself for his models, so far as the difference of his language from theirs would permit the imitation. There are indeed many inconveniences inseparable from our heroic measure compared with that of Homer and Virgil; inconveniences, which it is no reproach to Milton not to have overcome, because they are in their own nature insuperable; but against which he has struggled with so much art and diligence, that he may at least be said to have deserved success.

The hexameter of the ancients may be considered as consisting of fifteen syllables, so melodiously disposed, that, as every one knows who has examined the poetical authors, very pleas ing and sonorous lyric measures are formed from the fragments of the heroic. It is, indeed, scarce possible to break them in such a manner, but that invenias etiam disjecta membra poeta, some harmony will still remain, and the due proportions of sound will always be discovered. This measure therefore allowed great variety of pauses, and great liberties of connecting one verse with another, because wherever the line was interrupted, either part singly was musical. But the ancients seem to have confined this privilege to hexameters; for in their other mea. sures, though longer than the English heroic, those who wrote after the refinements of versification, venture so seldom to change their pauses, that every variation may be supposed rather a compliance with necessity than the choice of judgment.

Milton was constrained within the narrow li mits of a measure not very harmonious in the utmost perfection; the single parts, therefore, into which it was to be sometimes broken by pauses, were in danger of losing the very form of verse. This has, perhaps, notwithstanding all his care, sometimes happened.

As harmony is the end of poetical measures, no part of a verse ought to be so separated from the rest as not to remain still more harmonious than prose, or to show, by the disposition of the tones, that it is part of a verse. This rule in the old

Thus when a single syllable is cut off from the rest, it must either be united to the line with which the sense connects it, or be sounded alone. If it be united to the other line, it corrupts its harmony; if disjoined, it must stand alone, and with regard to music be superfluous; for there is no harmony in a single sound, because it has no proportion to another.

-Hypocrites austerely talk;
Defaming as impure what God declares

Pure; and commands to some, leaves free to all.

When two syllables likewise are abscinded from the rest, they evidently want some associ ate sounds to make them harmonious.

-Eyes

-more wakeful than to drowse,
Charm'd with Arcadian pipe, the past'ral reed
Of Hermes, or his opiate rod. Meanwhile
To re-salute the world with sacred light
Leucothea waked.

He ended, and the Son gave signal high
To the bright minister that watch'd: he blew
His trumpet.

First in the east his glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day; and all th' horizon round
luvested with bright rays, joeund to run
His longitude through heaven's high road; the gray
Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence.

The same defect is perceived in the following line, where the pause is at the second syllable from the beginning

-The race

Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamour drown'd
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores

When the pause falls upon the third syllable or the seventh, the harmony is better preserved, but as the third and seventh are weak syllables the period leaves the ear unsatisfied, and in ex pectation of the remaining part of the verse.

-He, with his horrid crew,

Lay vanquish'd rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded though immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him.

God, with frequent intercourse,
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errands of supernal grace. So sung
The glorious train ascending.

It may be, I think, established as a rule, that a pause which concludes a period should be made

The rest in the fifth place has the same inconvenience as in the seventh and third, that the syl-vened, in which it was resolved, that Patronage

ways made haste to rectify ner mistakes, a few instances of her fallibility encouraged every one to appeal from her judgment to his own, and that of his companions, who are always ready to clamour in the common cause, and elate each other with reciprocal applause.

competitors. Infamy flew round the hall, and scattered mildews from her wings, with which every one was stained; Reputation followed her with slower flight, and endeavoured to hide the blemishes with paint, which was immediately brushed away, or separated of itself, and left the stains more visible; nor were the spots of Infamy ever effaced, but with limpid water effused by the hand of Time from a well which sprung up beneath the throne of Truth.

Hope was a steady friend to the disappointed, and Impudence incited them to accept a second invitation, and lay their claim again before Patronage. They were again, for the most part, sent back with ignominy, but found hope not alienated, and Impudence more resolutely zeal-ing to lose the ancient prerogative of recomous; they therefore contrived new expedients, and hoped at last to prevail by their multitudes, which were always increasing, and their perseverance, which Hope and Impudence forbade

them to relax.

Patronage having been long a stranger to the heavenly assemblies, began to degenerate towards terrestrial nature, and forgot the precepts of Justice and Truth. Instead of confining her friendship to the Sciences, she suffered herself, by little and little, to contract an acquaintance with Pride the son of Falsehood, by whose embraces she had two daughters, Flattery and Caprice. Flattery was nursed by Liberality, and Caprice by Fortune, without any assistance from the lessons of the Sciences.

It frequently happened that Science, unwillmending to Patronage, would lead her followers into the Hall of Expectation; but they were soon discouraged from attending; for not only Envy and Suspicion incessantly tormented them, but Impudence considered them as intruders, and incited Infamy to blacken them. They therefore quickly retired, but seldom without some spots which they could scarcely wash away, and which showed that they had once waited in the Hall of Expectation.

The rest continued to expect the happy moment, at which Caprice should beckon them to approach; and endeavoured to propitiate her, not with Homerical harmony, the representation of great actions, or the recital of noble sentiments, but with soft and voluptuous melody, intermingled with the praises of Patronage and Pride, by whom they were heard at once with pleasure and contempt.

Patronage began openly to adopt the sentiments and imitate the manners of her husband, by whose opinions she now directed her decisions with very little heed to the precepts of Truth; and as her daughters continually gained upon her affections, the Sciences lost their influence, till none found much reason to boast of their reception, but those whom Caprice or Flat-ed to regulate their lives by her glances and her tery conducted to her throne.

The throngs who had so long waited, and so often been dismissed for want of recommendation from the Sciences, were delighted to see the power of those rigorous goddesses tending to its extinction. Their patronesses now renewed their encouragements. Hope smiled at the approach of Caprice, and Impudence was always at hand to introduce her clients to Flattery.

Some were indeed admitted by Caprice, when they least expected it, and heaped by Patronage with the gifts of Fortune; but they were from that time chained to her footstool, and condemn

nods; they seemed proud of their manacles, and seldom complained of any drudgery however servile, or any affront however contemptuous; yet they were often, notwithstanding their obedience, seized on a sudden by Caprice, divested of their ornaments, and thrust back into the Hall of Expectation.

bitations of Disease, and Shame, and Poverty, and Despair, where they passed the rest of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, of joys and sorrows, of hopes and disap

Here they mingled again with the tumult, and all, except a few whom experience had taught to Patronage had now learned to procure herself seek happiness in the regions of liberty, continued reverence by ceremonies and formalities, and, in- to spend hours, and days and years, courting the stead of admitting her petitioners to an immedi- smile of Caprice by the arts of Flattery; till at ate audience, ordered the antechamber to be length new crowds pressed in upon them, and erected, called among mortals the Hall of Ex-drove them forth at different outlets into the hapectation. Into this hall the entrance was easy to those whom Impudence had consigned to Flattery, and it was therefore crowded with a promiscuous throng, assembled from every corner of the earth, pressing forward with the ut-pointments. most eagerness of desire, and agitated with all The Sciences, after a thousand indignities, rethe anxieties of competition. tired from the palace of Patronage, and having They entered this general receptacle with ar-long wandered over the world in grief and disdour and alacrity, and made no doubt of speedy tress, were led at last to the cottage of Independ access, under the conduct of Flattery, to the pre-ence, the daughter of Fortitude; where they sence of Patronage. But it generally happened were taught by Prudence and Parsimony to supthat they were here left to their destiny, for the port themselves in dignity and quiet. inner doors were committed to Caprice, who opened and shut them, as it seemed, by chance, and rejected or admitted without any settled rule of distinction. In the mean time, the miserable attendants were left to wear out their lives in alternate exultation and dejection, delivered up to the sport of Suspicion, who was always whispering into their ear designs against them which were never formed, and of Envy, who diligently pointed out the good fortune of one or other of their T

No. 92] SATURday, Feb. 2, 1751.

HOR

Jam nunc minaci murmure cornuum
Perstringis aures, jam lituí strepunt.
Lo! now the clarion's voice I hear,
Its threatening murmurs pierce my ear,
And in thy lines with brazen breath
The trumpet sounds the charge of death.
Ir has been long observed, that the idea of beau
ty is vague and undefined, different in different

FRANCIS.

minds, and diversified by time or place. It has been a term hitherto used to signify that which pleases us we know not why, and in our approbation of which we can justify ourselves only by the concurrence of numbers, without much power of enforcing our opinion upon others by any argument, but example and authority. It is, indeed, so little subject to the examinations of reason, that Paschal supposes it to end where demonstration begins, and maintains, that without incongruity and absurdity we cannot speak of geometrical beauty.

To trace all the sources of that various pleasure which we ascribe to the agency of beauty, or to disentangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would, perhaps, require a very great part of the life of Aristotle or Plato. It is, however, in many cases apparent that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful because they have something which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge increases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view.

Much of the beauty of writing is of this kind, and therefore Boileau justly remarks, that the books which have stood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has suffered from the various revolutions of knowledge, and the prevalence of contrary customs, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature.

It is, however, the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal only to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantress of the soul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription.

The critic then proceeds to show, that the efforts of Achilles struggling in his armour against the current of a river, sometimes resisting, and sometimes yielding, may be perceived in the elisions of the syllables, the slow succession of the feet, and the strength of the consonants.

Δεῖνον δ' ἀμφ' Αχιλήα κυκώμενον ἵστατο κῦμα,
*Ωθει δ' ἐν σάκεῖ πίπτων ρόος· οὐδὲ πόδεσσιν
Έσκε στηρίξασθαι.

So oft the surge, in watery mountains spread,
Beats on his back, or bursts upon his head;
Yet, dauntless still, the adverse flood he braves,
And still indignant bounds above the waves,
Tired by the tides, his knees relax with toil;
Wash'd from beneath him, slides the slimy soil.

Many other examples Dionysius produces; There is nothing in the art of versifying so but these will sufficiently show, that either he much exposed to the power of imagination as the was fanciful, or we have lost the genuine proaccommodation of the sound to the sense, or the nunciation; for I know not whether, in any one representation of particular images, by the flow of these instances, such similitude can be disof the verse in which they are expressed. Every covered. It seems, indeed, probable, that the student has innumerable passages, in which he, veneration with which Homer was read, proand perhaps he alone, discovers such resem- duced many supposititious beauties; for though blances; and since the attention of the present it is certain, that the sound of many of his verses race of poetical readers seems particularly turned very justly corresponds with the things expressupon this species of elegance, I shall endeavoured, yet, when the force of his imagination, which to examine how much these conformities have been observed by the poets, or directed by the critics, how far they can be established upon nature and reason, and on what occasions they have been practised by Milton.

Homer, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as he that, of all the poets, exhibited the greatest variety of sound;" for there are, (says he,) innumerable passages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extremity of passion, and stillness of repose; or, in which, on

gave him full possession of every object, is considered, together with the flexibility of his language, of which the syllables might be often contracted or dilated at pleasure, it will seem unlikely that such conformity should happen less frequently even without design.

It is not however to be doubted, that Virgil, who wrote amidst the light of criticism, and who owed so much of his success to art and labour, endeavoured among other excellences, to exhibit this similitude; nor has he been less happy in this than in the other graces of versification.