Further, when Mr. Knight says, that "Hall, Donne, Hobbes, and Crashaw, are as licentious in their pauses as Milton," are we to admit the implication that Milton is a versifier no better than these? No insinuation can be more unjust. Nor in the anomalies of Milton's versification, which are fastidiously termed the "strains of negligence and rust of antiquity," can the discerning reader find many causes of offence. The care, rather than the negligence, of the poet, in regard to these matters, may be also inferred from his own assertion: "This good hap I had from a careful education, to be inured and seasoned betimes with the best and elegantest authors of the learned tongues, and thereto brought an ear that could measure a just cadence and scan without articulating; rather nice and humourous in what was tolerable, than patient to read every drawling versifier." We are indebted, it seems, to an hobbling distich" for this remarkable assertion of Milton. 66 0 To the more brilliant parts of Paradise Lost, Mr. Knight, however, concedes even the beauty of versification; yet still argues, that blank verse “Prequires so many inversions and transpositions to keep it out of prose, as render it quite unsuitable to the enthusiastick spirit and glowing simplicity of heroick narrative." -It was an observation of Dr. Woodford, not long after the publication of Paradise Lost," though Blank Verse, as we call it, that is, number metrical (as they would have it) without rhythm, considering the natural fitness and customary tendence of our language, may do excellently in the drama, because it comes nearest the ordinary way of speech, wherein the interlocutors are supposed to converse, &c. yet in an Epick Poem, to mention no other, I know not how with us it can be well maintained. For it wants the proper and particular character, which we assign Verse, Rhythm I mean; and were it written as Prose usually is, in its just periods, would both be read, and be, as indeed it is, no other than poetical Prose, that is, masculine Prose, drest up like Hercules by Omphale in the attire of one of her women, but whose Essay, ut supr. p. 115. "Apology for Smectymnuus, sect. 6. P Essay, ut supr. p. 121. m Ibid. o Ibid. 4 Preface to a Paraphrase upon the Canticles, &c. By Samuel Woodford, D.D. 8vo. 1679. г shape and warlike limbs could not be concealed by the disguise." He offers an instance from that most excellent and divinely flowing speech of our first mother, in the fourth book of Paradise Lost; than which neither Milton himself ever said any thing softer and more poetical, nor can almost be imagined to be said of man." Having exhibited this passage s written as prose usually is, he adds, "Who now in the world would ever dream that this were Verse, and verse too the softest and most tunable, and with as great a ráfos, suitable to the occasion, as can be conceived? I confess some few words, and manner of contexture, and an image of the thing different, and some things more tender than that which Prose commonly renders, would make it suspected that the writer was in a poetical rapture; but still, through the disguise, the prose appears, or rather cannot be hid."— t I have thus stated perhaps the earliest, as well as the latest, condemnatory criticism on the usage of blank verse in an English heroick poem. Dryden pretends, that the true reason why Milton wrote the Paradise Lost in blank verse was, that Rhyme was not his talent. This is a misrepresentation, to which no unprejudiced reader of Lycidas, or L'Allegro, or Il Penseroso, can listen with patience. However, let the reader peruse Milton's own apology for the verse, which was prefixed to his first edition of the Paradise Lost, with a new title-page, in the year following its original appearance. For an explanation of that formidable circumstance which had "stumbled many," why the poem rimes not, had, it seems, been demanded. TODD.. r Ver. 440, &c. Mr. Knight's exhibition of this kind, (B. v. 404-413.) is certainly one of the least tunable passages, although taken (he reminds us) from one of the most admired books of the poem; as it is also one of the few passages, concerning which no" admirer of the irregular variety of Miltonick pauses" will be disposed to slight the critick's friendly hint of scansion.-For what purpose our American brethren adopted this method of writing blank verse as prose in the following instance, I am unable to say; but it may amuse the reader to be informed of a work entitled, Psalterium Americanum: The Psalms in blank verse, yet printed as prose. 12mo. Boston, 1718. See the dedication of his Juvenal. u Not prefixed to all the editions of the Poem. See the notes on this apology in the present edition. THE VERSE. THE measure is English heroick verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rime being no necessary adjunct, or true ornament, of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause, therefore, some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works: as have also long since our best English tragedies: as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another; not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned Ancients, both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect", |