nefs of argument, and accuracy of method; and may enable himself to criticife with judgment, and difpute with fubtilty, while the chief ufe of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed. But though truth and virtue are thus frequently defeated by pride, obftinacy, or folly, we are not allowed to defert them; for whoever can furnish arms which they hitherto have not employed, may enable them to gain fome hearts which would have refifted any other method of attack. Every man of genius has fome arts of fixing the attention peculiar to himfelf, by which, honeftly exerted, he may benefit mankind; for the arguments for purity of life fail of of their due influence, not becaufe they have been confidered and confuted, but because they have been paffed over without confideration. To the pofition of Tully, that if Virtue could be seen, she must be loved, may be added, that if Truth could be heard, the must be obeyed. NUMB. 88. SATURDAY, January 19, 1751. Cum tabulis animum cenforis fumet honefti : But he that hath a curious piece defign'd, HOR. } CREECH. "THE “T Quintilian, to be gained by writing on HERE is no reputation for genius, fays tr things, which, however neceffary, have little fplendor or fhew. The height of a building at"tracts the eye, but the foundations lie without "regard. Yet fince there is not any way to the top of fcience, but from the lowest parts, I fhall "think nothing unconnected with the art of oratory, " which he that wants cannot be an orator." Confirmed and animated by this illuftrious precedent, I fhall continue my enquiries into Milton's art of verfification. Since, however minute the employment may appear, of analyfing lines into fyllables, and whatever ridicule may be incurred by a folemn deliberation upon accents and paufes, it is certain H 4 certain that without this petty knowledge no man can be a poet; and that from the proper difpofition of fingle founds refults that harmony that adds force to reason, and gives grace to fublimity; that fhackles attention, and governs paffions. That verfe may be melodious and pleafing, it is neceffary, not only that the words be fo ranged as that the accent may fall on its proper place, but that the fyllables themfelves be fo chofen as to flow. fmoothly into one another. This is to be effected by a proportionate mixture of vowels and confonants, and by tempering the mute confonants with liquids and femivowels. The Hebrew grammarians have obferved, that it is impoffible to pronounce two confonants without the intervention of a vowel, or without fome emiffion of the breath between one and the other; this is longer and more perceptible, as the founds of the confonants are lefs harmonically conjoined, and, by confequence, the flow of the verfe is longer interrupted. It is pronounced by Dryden, that a line of monofyllables is almost always harsh. This, with regard to our language, is evidently true, not because monofyllables cannot compofe harmony, but becaufe our monofyllables being of Teutonick original, or formed by contraction, commonly begin and end with confonants, as, Every lower faculty Of fefe, wherely they bear, fee, fmell, touch, tafli. The difference of harmony arifing principally from the collocation of vowels and confonants, will be be fufficiently conceived by attending to the follow ing paffages: Immortal Amarant-there grows And flow'rs aloft, fhading the fount of life, And where the river of blifs through midft of heav'n With these that never fade, the spirits elect The fame comparison that I propofe to be made between the fourth and fixth verfes of this paffage, may be repeated between the laft lines of the following quotations; Under foot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich in-lay Here in close recefs, With flowers, garlands, and fweet-fmelling herbs, Milton, whofe ear had been accuftomed, not only to the mufick of the ancient tongues, which, however vitiated by our pronunciation, excel all that are now in use, but to the foftnefs of the Italian, the moft mellifluous of all modern poetry, feems fully convinced of the unfitness of our language for fmooth verfification, and is therefore pleafed with an opportunity of calling in a fofter word to his affiftance; for this reason, and I believe for this only, he fometimes indulges himself in a long feries of proper proper names, and introduces them where they add little but mufick to his poem. -The richer feat Of Atabalipa, and yet unfpoil'd Guiana, whofe great city Gerion's fons The moon The Tufan artift views Or in Valdarns, to defery new lands.— He has indeed been more attentive to his fyllables than to his accents, and does not often offend by collifions of confonants, or openings of vowels upon each other, at leaft not more often than other writers who have had lefs important or complicated fubjects to take off their care from the cadence of their lines. The great peculiarity of Milton's verfification, compared with that of later poets, is the elifion of one vowel before another, or the fuppreffion of the laft fyllable of a word ending with a vowel, when a vowel begins the following word. Knowledge As Oppreffes elfe with furfeit, and foon turns This licence, though now difufed in English poetry, was practifed by our old writers, and is allowed in many other languages ancient and modern, and therefore the criticks on Paradife Loft have, without much deliberation, commended Milten for continuing it. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another. We have already tried and rejected |