fore the wax on his patent, while the

pectation is a most steady adherent.

And what is become of your muse?—Is she frightened into silence by the clamours of repressed ambition, struggling around the vacant throne? You have not sent me a sonnet time immemorial, and I sicken in deprivation.

Behold two of mine, and pay me in kind, I pray you. When your muse discharges debt of this sort, she pays them back with interest. Ask again about the quotation for Mr Croft. Adio!

LETTER LVIII,

MORFITT, ESO.*

Lichfield, Feb. 7, 1789.

My best thanks are due to the poetical friends for their elegant copy of their ingenious publication. I prefer the rhyme translation, not because

* Died at Birmingham in 1809.

+ The Woodman of Arden, a poem, written by Mr Morfitt in Latin, and of which his friend, Mr Weston, gave two translations, one in blank verse, the other in rhyme.—S.

it is in rhyme, but because it is paraphrastic, and the other close. All close translations have about them an air of ungraceful restraint. I confess also, that

it

appears to me that our friend has not formed his blank verse after the best examples, viz. Milton, Thomson, and Akenside. Else, however unfashionable, I think blank verse much the superior vehicle for the effusions of genius;-but the often recurrence of the redundant syllable at the end of a line, (so frequent in Mr Weston's poem) is highly injurious to that harmony and freedom which result from the varied pauses, undulating from line to line through the work, and forming, in sound, the magic curve, so dear to beauty; and whose floating course the redundant syllable interrupts. I have never known it used, in any frequency, by the best writers, except in dramatic poetry,-believe it will scarce once be found in the Paradise Lost. Its effect upon my ear, in our friend's translation, is like that which my eye would perceive by sudden jirking curtesies being made by a fine woman, as she was gliding through the Louvre, " with arms sublime that floated on the air."

Milton, Thomson, and Akenside, knew how to give contrasting and picturesque harshness to some of their lines, without this jirking redundancy at their final syllables.

This rhyme-translation is charmingly spirited, though, to my ear, its versification is clogged and encumbered by what Mr W. fancies gives it freedom, the frequent triplet, and the Alexandrine that does not terminate a passage.

I admire our friend's genius, but, in the same degree, do I lament the strength of his prejudices, and the errors of his system. They have betrayed him, through the preface to this work, into mistakes the most glaring, and into injustice to the illustrious band of poets, that, with redoubled rays, have warmed the nation within the last halfcentury; injustice, that wears the appearance of an invidiousness which, I feel assured, has not, in reality, tainted his honest heart. If I do not publicly enter my protest against his injustice to the writers I revere, the immeasurably high and much unmerited compliments which he pays me in the close of that afflicting preface, together with our known friendship, will make it believed, that our opinions are one respecting his infatuated assertion, that the modern poets have poisoned the Pierian spring.

Mr W. writes, in this preface, as if the excellence, or non-excellence, of a poem, had its final dependence upon the mode of its versification, and as if the couplet were the only order of rhyme. He seems to forget, that the lyric, with its count

less varieties and unlimited privileges, affords an ample field for his Alexandrines and triplets, whose licentious use suits not the requisite chastity of the couplet-melodies; though the sense frequently overflowing the couplet cannot, I think, be justly termed a violation of that chastity; but it is destroyed by jingling into the botching triplet, or by lagging in Alexandrines, during the middle of a passage. Their effect is majestic, not only at the termination of a poem, but of its sentences, provided a new subject commences immediately.

After all, it is a small part of the intrinsic excellence of poetry, that depends on what the Drydenic slovenliness, or the Popeian elegance, can give or take away. A composition is worth little, that does not remain fine poetry after being taken out of all measure. Where it has sublimity of sentiment, ingenuity of allusion, and strength of imagery, to stand that test, just Taste gives an author leave to do almost what he pleases with the numbers, provided he does not insist upon a preference of the slovenly to the polished ones, readily promising that such a work will be dear to her in any dress.

Mr Weston's reasoning about the eligibility of keeping down certain parts of poetry, upon the painter's system, is perfectly just; but, unfortu

nately for Dryden, it is no excuse for bombast, fustian, incongruous metaphor, inconsistent fable, and impertinent familiarity of style. These are the corruptions with which he defiled, at times, the living waters of the Pierian spring, to which his fine genius had such constant access.

The only thing which I protest against in our friend's first translation of your poem, is the melting down four brothers into one, by giving them the sign of the person singular. Without a note, nobody could have guessed the meaning of the pas sage; and though a note is always better than a passage left in obscurity, yet is it highly desirable to avoid all unnecessary expressions, which demand a prose explanation. The epithet fourfold, could not have expressed the idea sufficiently. A mystery at least one degree harder to be conceived than that of the Trinity.

Apropos of compound epithets. How much is our friend out in calling them tinkling, and in ranking them amongst the habits of the Popeian school! They are of the Miltonic school-have a nervous condensing power; and, through an erroneous dread of their producing harshness, were too much disused by Pope and his disciples.

It is not true of Pope, that he polished every thing high. His Satires, his Ethic Epistles, the glorious Dunciad, and even several parts of the