and Hector in the Iliad, when he sees Andro- | by the sun, will be pleased to see a fainter oro mache overwhelmed with terrors, sends her for arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from consolation to the loom and the distaff. total darkness, though with weak and borrowed lustre. Addison, though he has considered this poem under most of the general topics of criticism, has barely touched upon the versification; not probably because he thought the art of numbers unworthy of his notice, for he knew with what mi It is certain that any wild wish or vain imagination never takes such firm possession of the mind, as when it is found empty and unoccupied. The old peripatetic principle, that Nature abhors a vacuum, may be properly applied to the intellect, which will embrace any thing, however absurd or criminal, rather than be wholly without an ob-nute attention the ancient critics considered the ject. Perhaps every man may date the predominance of those desires that disturb his life and contaminate his conscience, from some unhappy hour when too much leisure exposed him to their incursions; for he has lived with little observation either on himself or others, who does not know that to be idle is to be vicious. ONE of the ancients has observed, that the burden of government is increased upon princes by the virtues of their immediate predecessors. It is, indeed, always dangerous to be placed in a state of unavoidable comparison with excellence, and the danger is still greater when that excellence is consecrated by death; when envy and interest cease to act against it, and those passions by which it was at first vilified and opposed, now stand in its defence, and turn their vehemence against honest emulation. He that succeeds a celebrated writer has the same difficulties to encounter; he stands under the shade of exalted merit, and is hindered from rising to his natural height, by the interception of those beams which should invigorate and quicken him. He applies to that attention which is already engaged, and unwilling to be drawn off from certain satisfaction; or perhaps to an attention already wearied, and not to be recalled to the same object. disposition of syllables, and had himself given hopes of some metrical observations upon the great Roman poet; but being the first who undertook to display the beauties, and point out the defects of Milton, he had many objects at once before him, and passed willingly over those which were most barren of ideas, and required labour rather than genius. Yet versification, or the art of modulating his numbers, is indispensably necessary to a poet. Every other power by which the understanding is enlightened, or the imagination enchanted, may be exercised in prose. But the poet has this peculiar superiority, that to all the powers which the perfection of every other composition can require, he adds the faculty of joining music with reason, and of acting at once upon the senses and the passions. I suppose there are few who do not feel themselves touched by poetical melo dy, and who will not confess that they are more or less moved by the same thoughts, as they are conveyed by different sounds, and more affected by the same words in one order than in another. The perception of harmony is indeed conferred upon men in degrees very unequal; but there are none who do not perceive it, or to whom a regular series of proportionate sounds cannot give delight. In treating on the versification of Milton I am desirous to be generally understood, and shall therefore studiously decline the dialect of grammarians; though, indeed, it is always difficult, and sometimes scarcely possible, to deliver the precepts of an art, without the terms by which the peculiar ideas of that art are expressed, and which had not been invented but because the language already in use was insufficient. If, therefore, I shall sometimes seem obscure, it may be imputed to this voluntary interdiction, and to a desire of avoiding that offence which is always given by unusual words. One of the old poets congratulates himself that he has the untrodden regions of Parnassus before him, and that his garland will be gathered from plantations which no writer had yet culled. But the imitator treads a beaten walk, and with The heroic measure of the English language all his diligence can only hope to find a few flow-may be properly considered as pure or mixed. ers or branches untouched by his predecessor, It is pure when the accent rests upon every se the refuse of contempt, or the omissions of negli-cond syllable through the whole line. gence, The Macedonian conqueror, when he was once invited to hear a man that sung like a nightingale, replied with contempt, “that he had heard the nightingale herself;" and the same treatment must every man expect, whose praise is, that he imitates another. Yet, in the midst of these discouraging reflections, I am about to offer to my reader some observations upon "Paradise Lost," and hope, that, however I may fall below the illustrious writer who has so long dictated to the commonwealth of learning, my attempt may not be wholly useless. There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed. False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forsaken S Courage uncertain dangers may abate, DRYDEN. Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings, Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile Of harlots, loveless, joyless, únendeared. MILTON. The accent may be observed, in the second line of Dryden, and the second and fourth of Milton, to repose upon every second syllable. The repetition of this sound or percussion at equal times, is the most complete harmony of which a single verse is capable, and should therefore be exactly kept in distichs, and generally in the last line of a paragraph, that the ear may rest without any sense of imperfection. But, to preserve the series of sounds untrans- | retrograde or inverted; the first syllable being posed in a long composition, is not only very diffi- strong or acute, and the second weak. The decult, but tiresome and disgusting; for we are soon triment which the measure suffers by this inverwearied with the perpetual recurrence of the same sion of the accents is sometimes less perceptible, cadence. Necessity has therefore enforced the when the verses are carried one into another, but mixed measure, in which some variation of the is remarkably striking in this place, where the accents is allowed; this, though it always injures vicious verse concludes a period, and is yet more the harmony of the line, considered by itself, yet offensive in rhyme, when we regularly attend to compensates the loss by relieving us from the the flow of every single line. This will appear continual tyranny of the same sound, and makes by reading a couplet in which Cowley, an autho us more sensible of the harmony of the pure not sufficiently studious of harmony, has commit ted the same fault. measure. Of these mixed numbers every poet affords us innumerable instances, and Milton seldom has two pure lines together, as will appear if any of his paragraphs be read with attention merely to the music. Thus at their shady lodge arrived both stood, In this passage it will be at first observed that all the lines are not equally harmonious, and upon a nearer examination it will be found that only the fifth and ninth lines are regular, and the rest are more or less licentious with respect to the accent. In some the accent is equally upon two syllables together, and in both strong. As Thus at their shady lodge arrived, both stood, The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven. In others the accent is equally upon two sylla bles, but upon both weak. -his harmless life Does with substantial blessedness abound, In these the law of metre is very grossly violated THAT few things are so liberally bestowed, of squandered with so little effect, as good advice, In the first pair of syllables the accent may devi-has been generally observed; and many sage po ate from the rigour of exactness, without any un-sitions have been advanced concerning the reapleasing diminution of harmony, as may be ob- sons of this complaint, and the means of removserved in the lines already cited, and more reing it. It is indeed an important and noble inmarkably in this, quiry, for little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it. -Thou also mads't the night, Maker omnipotent! and thou the day. But, excepting in the first pair of syllables, which may be considered as arbitrary, a poet who, not having the invention or knowledge of Milton, has more need to allure his audience by musical cadences, should seldom suffer more than one aberration from the rule in any single verse. There are two lines in this passage more remarkably unharmonious: This perverse neglect of the most salutary precepts, and stubborn resistance of the most pathetic persuasion, is usually imputed to him by whom the counsel is received, and we often hear it mentioned as a sign of hopeless depravi ty, that though good advice was given, it has wrought no reformation. Others, who imagine themselves to have quicker sagacity and deeper penetration, have found out that the inefficacy of advice is usually the fault of the counsellor, and rules have been laid down, by which this important duty may be successfully performed: we are directed by what tokens to discover the favourable moment at which the heart is disposed for the operation of truth and reason, with what address to adminis- | viate the rage with which the slothful, the impoter, and with what vehicles to disguise the cathartics of the soul. But, notwithstanding this specious expedient, we find the world yet in the same state: advice is still given, but still received with disgust; nor has it appeared that the bitterness of the medicine has been yet abated, or its power increased, by any methods of preparing it. If we consider the manner in which those who assume the office of directing the conduct of others execute their undertaking, it will not be very wonderful that their labours, however zeal ous or affectionate, are frequently useless. For what is the advice that is commonly given? A few general maxims, enforced with vehemence and inculcated with importunity, but failing for want of particular reference and immediate application. tent, and the unsuccessful, vent their discontent upon those that excel them. Modesty itself, if it is praised, will be envied; and there are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but be cause obligation is a pain. The number of those whom the love of themselves has thus far corrupted, is perhaps not great; but there are few so free from vanity, as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence: and few to whom it is not unpleasing to receive documents, however tenderly and cautiously delivered, or who are not willing to raise themselves from pupilage, by disputing the propos.dons of their teacher. It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of It is not often that any man can have so much Arragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The knowledge of another, as is necessary to make grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the instruction useful. We are sometimes not our-information that we receive from books is pure selves conscious of the original motives of our from interest, fear, or ambition. Dead counselactions, and when we know them, our first care lors are likewise most instructive; because they is to hide them from the sight of others, and often are heard with patience and with reverence. from those most diligently, whose superiority We are not unwilling to believe that man wiser either of power or understanding may entitle than ourselves, from whose abilities we may rethem to inspect our lives; it is therefore very pro-ceive advantage, without any danger of rivalry bable that he who endeavours the cure of our in- or opposition, and who affords us the light of his tellectual maladies, mistakes their cause; and experience, without hurting our eyes by flashes that his prescriptions avail nothing, because he of insolence. knows not which of the passions or desires is vitiated. Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious. But for the same reason every one is eager to instruct his neighbours. To be wise or to be virtuous, is to buy dignity and importance at a high price; but when nothing is necessary to elevation but detection of the follies or the faults of others, no man is so insensible to the voice of fame as to linger on the ground. Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes, at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer. It is, indeed, seldom found that any advantages are enjoyed with that moderation which the uncertainty of all human good so powerfully enforces; and therefore the adviser may justly suspect, that he has inflamed the opposition which he laments by arrogance and superciliousness. He may suspect, but needs not hastily to condemn himself, for he can rarely be certain that the softest language or most humble diffidence would have escaped resentment; since scarcely any degree of circumspection can prevent or ob By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his service unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent. We see that volumes may be perused, and perused with attention, to little effect; and that maxims of prudence, or principles of virtue, may be treasured in the memory without influencing the conduct. Of the numbers that pass thei. lives among books, very few read to be made wiser or better, apply any general reproof of vice to themselves, or try their own manners by ax ioms of justice. They purpose either to con sume those hours for which they can find no other amusement, to gain or preserve that respect which learning has always obtained; or to gratify their curiosity with knowledge, which, like treasures buried and forgotten, is of no use to others or themselves. "The preacher (says a French author) may spend an hour in explaining and enforcing a pre cept of religion, without feeling any impression from his own performance, because he may have no further design than to fill up his hour." A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists, without any practical regard to morality or religion; he may be learning not to live, but to reason; he may regard only the elegance of style, justness of argument, and accuracy of method; and may enable himself to criticise with judgment, and dispute with subtility, while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unre- monosyllables is almost always harsh. This, formed. with regard to our language, is evidently true, not because monosyllables cannot compose harmony, but because our monosyllables being of Teutonic original, or formed by contraction, commonly begin and end with consonants, as, -Every lower faculty But though truth and virtue are thus frequently defeated by pride, obstinacy or folly, we are not allowed to desert them; for whoever can furnish arms which they hitherto have not employed, may enable them to gain some hearts which would have resisted any other method of attack. Every man of genius has some arts of fixing the attention peculiar to himself, by which, honestly exerted, he may benefit mankind; for the arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration. To the position of Tully, that if Virtue could be seen, she must be loved, may be added, that if Truth could be heard, she must be obeyed. But he that hath a curious piece design'd, "THERE is no reputation for genius," says Quin- not be an orator." Confirmed and animated by this illustrious precedent, I shall continue my inquiries into Milton's art of versification. Since, however minute the employment may appear, of analysing lines into syllables, and whatever ridicule may be incurred by a solemn deliberation upon accents and pauses, it is certain, that without this petty knowledge no man can be a poet; and that from the proper disposition of single sounds results that harmony that adds force to reason, and gives grace to sublimity; that shackles attention, and governs passions. That verse may be melodious and pleasing, it is necessary, not only that the words be so ranged as that the accent may fall on its proper place, but that the syllables themselves be so chosen as to flow smoothly into one another. This is to be effected by a proportionate mixture of vowels and consonants, and by tempering the mute consonants with liquids and semivowels. The Hebrew grammarians have observed, that it is impossible to pronounce two consonants without the intervention of a vowel, or without some emission of the breath between one and the other; this is longer and more perceptible, as the sounds of the consonants are less harmonically conjoined, and, by consequence the flow of the verse is longer interrupted. It is pronounced by Dryden, that a line of Of sense, whereby they hear, sec, smell, touch, taste. The difference of harmony arising principally from the collocation of vowels and consonants, will be sufficiently conceived by attending to the following passages: Immortal Amarant-there grows And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life, The same comparison that I propose to be made between the fourth and sixth verses of this passage may be repeated between the last lines of the following quotations: -Under foot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone -Here in close recess, With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs, Milton, whose ear had been accustomed, not only to the music of the ancient tongues, which, however vitiated by our pronunciation, excel all that are now in use, but to the softness of the Italian, the most mellifluous of all modern poetry, seems fully convinced of the unfitness of our lan guage for smooth versification, and is therefore pleased with an opportunity of calling in a softer word to his assistance: for this reason, and I believe for this only, he sometimes indulges himself in a long series of proper names, and introduces them where they add little but music to his poem. -The richer seat Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoil'd The moon-The Tuscan artist views He has indeed been more attentive to his syilables than to his accents, and does not often offend by collisions of consonants, or openings of vowels upon each other, at least not more often than other writers who have had less important or complicated subjects to take off their care from the cadence of their lines. The great peculiarity of Milton's versification, compared with that of later poets, is the elision of one vowel hefore another, or the suppression of the last syllable of a word ending with a vowel, when a vowel begins the following word. As We Lost" have, without much deliberation, commend- Milton frequently uses in his poems the bypermetrical or redundant line of eleven syllables -Thus it shall befall I also err'd in over-much admiring. Verses of this kind occur almost in every page; but, though they are not unpleasing or There is reason to believe that we have negli dissonant, they ought to be admitted into heroic gently lost part of our vowels, and that the silent e, which our ancestors added to the most of our allow us no other distinction of epic and tragic poetry, since the narrow limits of our language monosyllables, was once vocal. By this detruncation of our syllables, our language is over-ing at will the terminations of the dramatic lines, measures, than is afforded by the liberty of changstocked with consonants, and it is more necessa- and bringing them by that relaxation of metrical ry, to add vowels to the beginning of words, than rigour nearer to prose. to cut them off from the end. TUESDAY, JAN. 22, 1751. Dulce est desipere in loco. Milton therefore seems to have somewhat mis- What be gives, Fruits, Hesperian fables true, If true, here only, and of delicious taste. -Evening now approach'd, For we have also our evening and our morn. Of guests he makes them slaves, Inhospitably, and kills their infant males. And vital Virtue infused, and vital warmth, Throughout the fluid mass. Wisdom at proper times is well forgotten. HOR. LOCKE, whom there is no reason to suspect of being a favourer of idleness or libertinism, has advanced, that whoever hopes to employ any part of his time with efficacy and vigour, must allow some of it to pass in trifles. It is beyond the powers of humanity to spend a whole life in profound study and intense meditation, and the most rigorous exacters of industry and seriousness have appointed hours for relaxation and amuse ment. It is certain, that, with or without our consent, many of the few moments allotted us will slide imperceptibly away, and that the mind will break, from confinement to its stated task, into sudden excursions. Severe and connected attention is preserved but for a short time; and when a man shuts himself up in his closet, and bends his thoughts to the discussion of any abstruse question, he will find his faculties continually stealing I believe every reader will agree, that in all away to more pleasing entertainments. He often those passages, though not equally in all, the perceives himself transported, he knows not music is injured, and in some the meaning ob-how, to distant tracts of thought, and returns to his first object as from a dream, without knowing scured. There are other lines in which the vowstracted from it. when he forsook it, or how long he has been ab God made thee of choice his own, and of his own To serve him. el is cut off, but it is so faintly pronounced in common speech, that the loss of it in poetry is scarcely perceived; and therefore such compliance with the measure may be allowed. -Nature breeds Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, -From the shore They view'd the vast immeasurable abyss, To none communicable in earth or heaven. Yet even these contractions increase the roughness of a language too rough already; and though in long poems they may be sometimes suffered, it never can be faulty to forbear them. *In the original Rambler, in folio, our author's opinion appears different, and is thus expressed:-"This license, though an innovation in English poetry, is yet allowed in many other languages ancient and modern, and therefore the critics on 'Paradise Lost' have, without much deliberation, commended Milton for introducing it." It has been observed that the most studious are not always the most learned. There is, indeed, no great difficulty in discovering that this difference of proficiency may arise from the dif ference of intellectual powers, of the choice of books, or the convenience of information. But I believe it likewise frequently happens that the most recluse are not the most vigorous prosecutors of study. Many impose upon the world, and many upon themselves by an appearance of severe and exemplary diligence, when they, in reality, give themselves up to the luxury of fancy, please their minds with regulating the past, or planning out the future; place themselves at will in varied situations of happiness, and slumber away their days in voluntary visions. In the journey of life some are left behind because they are naturally feeble and slow: some because they miss the way, and many because they leave it by choice, and, instead of pressing onward with a steady pace, delight themselves with momentary deviations, turn aside to pluck every flower, and repose in every shade. |