Rhyme, he fays, and says truly, is no neceffary adjunct of true poetry. But perhaps, of poetry as a mental operation, metre or mufick is no neceffary adjunct: it is however by the mufick of metre that poetry has been difcriminated in all languages; and in languages melodiously conftructed, by a due proportion of long and fhort fyllables, metre is fufficient. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another: where metre is fcanty and imperfect, fome help is neceffary. The mufick of the English heroick line ftrikes the ear fo faintly that it is eafily loft, unless all the fyllables of every line co-operate together this co-operation can be only obtained by the preservation of every verfe unmingled with another, as a distinct system of founds; and this diftin&tnefs is obtained and preferved by the artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boafted by the lovers of blank verfe, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few fkilful and happy readers of Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin, Blank verse, verfe, faid an ingenious critick, seems to be verfe only to the eye. Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will not often please; nor can rhyme ever be fafely fpared but where the fubject is able to fupport itself. Blank verse makes fome approach to that which is called the lapidary ftyle; has neither the easiness of profe, nor the melody of numbers, and therefore tires by long continuance, Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, not one is popular; what reafon could urge in its defence, has been confuted by the ear, But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot with his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing, may write blank verse; but thofe that hope only to please, must condefcend to rhyme. The highest praife of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be faid to have con contrived the structure of an epick poem, and therefore muft yield to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations must be indebted for the art of poetical narration, for the texture of the fable, the variation of incidents, the interpofition or dialogue, and all the ftratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the borrowers from Homer, Milton is perhaps the least indebted. He was naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and difdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admiffion to the thoughts or images of his predeceffors, but he did not seek them. From his contemporaries he neither courted nor received fupport; there is in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praife, nor folicitation of fupport. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in blindness, but difficulties vanifhed at his touch; he was born for whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems, only be cause it is not the first. BUTLER. |