THE Ode and Satire admit of the boldest Hyperboles fuch exaggerations fuit the impetuous warmth of the one; and in the other have a good effect in expofing folly, and exciting horror against vice. They may be likewife fuccefsfully used in Comedy, for moving and managing the powers of ridicule. ESSAY XIX. VERSE is an harmonious arrangement of long and short fyllables, adapted to different kinds of Poetry, and owes its origin entirely to the measured cadence, or mufic, which was used when the first songs or hymns were recited. This mufic, divided into different parts, required a regular return of the fame measure, and thus every ftrophe, antistrophe, or stanza, contained the fame number of feet. To know what conftituted the different kinds of rythmical feet among the antients, with refpect to the number and quantity of their fyllables, we have nothing to do but to confult those who have written on grammar and profody : it is the business of a schoolmaster rather than the accomplishment of a Man of Taste. VARIOUS effays have been made in different countries to compare the characters of antient and modern verfification, and to point out the difference beyond any poffibility of mistake. But they they have made diftin&tions where, in fact, there was no difference, and left the criterion unobferved. They have transferred the name of rhyme to a regular repetition of the fame found at the end of the line, and fet up this vile monotony as the characteristic of modern verfe, in contradiftinction to the feet of the antients, which they pretend, the Poetry of modern languages will not admit. RHYME, from the Greek word Pulpos, is nothing elfe but number, which was effential to the antient as well as to the modern verfification. As to the jingle of fimilar founds, though it was never used by the antients in any regular return in the middle, or at the end of the line, and was by no means deemed effential to the versification, yet they did not reject it as a blemish, where it occurred without the appearance of constraint. We meet with it often in the epithets of Homer,Αργυρίονα Βιοιο - Αναξ Ανδρών Αγαμεμνων alof the whole firft Ode of Anacreon is what we call rhyme. The following line of Virgil has been. admired for the fimilitude of found in the first two words.. Qre Arethufa tuo ficulis confunditur undis. RYTH RYTHMUS, or number, is certainly effential to verfe, whether in the dead or living languages; and the real difference between the two, is this: The number in antient verfe relates to the feet, and in modern Poetry to the fyllables; for to affert that modern Poetry has no feet, is a ridiculous abfurdity. The feet that principally enter into the compofition of Greek and Latin verses, are either of two or three fyllables: thofe of two fyllables are either both long, as the fpondee; or both short, as the pyrrhic; or one short and the other long, as the iambic, or one long and the other fhort, as the trochee. Thofe of three fyllables are the dactyl of one long and two short fyllables; the anapeft, of two fhort and one long; the tribrachium, of three short; and the moloffus, of three long. FROM the different combinations of these feet, reftricted to certain numbers, the antients formed their different kinds of verfes, fuch as the hexameter or heroic, diftinguished by fix feet dactyls and fpondees, the fifth being always a dactyl, and the last a spondee: 2. g. I 2 3 4 5 6 Principi-is obf-ta, fe-ro medi-cina paratur. The The pentameter of five feet, dactyls and fpondees, or of fix, reckoning two cæfuras. I 2 3 4 5 6 Cum mala per lon-gas invalu-ere mo-ras. They had likewife the iambic of three forts, the dimeter, the trimeter, and the tetrameter, and all the different kinds of lyric verfe specified in the odes of Sappho, Alcæus, Anacreon, and Horace. Each of thefe was diftinguifhed by the number, as well as by the fpecies of their feet; fo that they were doubly reftricted. Now, all the feet of the antient poetry are still found in the verfification of living languages; for as cadence was regulated by the ear, it was impoffible for a man to write melodious verfe without naturally falling into the use of ancient feet, though, perhaps, he neither knows their measure nor denomination. Thus, Spenfer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, and all our Poets, abound with dactyls, fpondees, trochees, anapests, &c. which they use indifcriminately in all kinds of compofition, whether Tragic, Epic, Paftoral, or Ode, having in this particular greatly the advantage of the antients, who were restricted to particular kinds of feet in particular kinds of Verfe. If we then are confined with the fetters of what is called rhyme, they |