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which he had in view, was, I doubt not, a species of excellence which had been long before most happily characterized by the judicious and amiable GARVE, whose works are so justly: beloved and esteemed by the Germans, in his remarks on GELLERT (see Sammlung Einiger Abhandlungen von Christian Garve) from which the following is literally translated.

"The

talent, that is required in order to make excellent verses, is perhaps greater than the philosopher, is ready to admit, or would find it in his power to acquire the talent to seek only the apt expression of the thought, and yet to find at the same time with it the rhyme and the metre. Gellert possessed this happy gift, if ever any one of our poets possessed it; and nothing perhaps contributed more to the great and universal impression which his fables made on their first publication, or conduces more to their continued popularity. It was a strange. and curious phenomenon, and such as in Germany had been previously unheard of, to read verses in which every thing was expressed, just as one would wish to talk, and yet all dignified, attractive, and interesting; and all at the same time perfectly correct as to the measure of the syllables and the rhyme. It is certain, that poetry when it has attained this excellence makes a far greater impression than prose. So much so indeed, that even the gratification which the

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very rhymes afford, becomes then no longer a contemptible or trifling gratification."

However novel this phenomenon may have been in Germany at the time of Gellert, it is by no means new, nor yet of recent existence in our language. Spite of the licentiousness with which Spencer occasionally compels the orthography of his words into a subservience to his rhymes, the whole Fairy Queen is an almost continued instance of this beauty. Waller's song "Go, lovely Rose, &c." is doubtless familiar to most of my readers; but if I had happened to have had by me the Poems of COTTON, more but far less deservedly celebrated as the author of the Virgil travestied, I should have indulged myself, and I think have gratified many who are not acquainted with his serious works, by selecting some admirable specimens of this style. There are not a few poems in that volume, replete with every excellence of thought, image, and passion, which we expect or desire in the poetry of the milder muse; and yet so worded, that the reader sees no one reason either in the selection or the order of the words, why he might not have said the very same in an appropriate conversation, and cannot conceive how indeed he could have expressed such thoughts otherwise, without loss or injury to his meaning.

But in truth our language is, and from the first dawn of poetry ever has been, particularly rich in compositions distinguished by this excellence. The final e, which is now mute, in Chaucer's age was either sounded or dropt indifferently. We ourselves still use either beloved or belov'd according as the rhyme, or measure, or the purpose of more or less solemnity may require. Let the reader then only adopt the pronunciation of the poet and of the court, at which he lived, both with respect to the final e and to the accentuation of the last syllable: I would then venture to ask, what even in the colloquial language of elegant and unaffected women (who are the peculiar mistresses of "pure English and undefiled,") what could we hear more natural, or seemingly more unstudied, than the following stanzas from Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide.

"And after this forth to the gate he went,
Ther as Creseide out rode a full gode paas:
And up and doun there made he many a wente,
And to himselfe ful oft he said, Alas!
Fro hennis rode my blisse and my solas:
As wouldè blisful God now for his joie,
I might her sene agen come in to Troie !
And to the yondir hill I gan her guide,
Alas! and there I toke of her my leave:
And yond I saw her to her fathir ride;

For sorrow of which mine hearte shall to-cleve;
And hithir home I came when it was eve;
And here I dwel; out-cast from allè joie,
And shall, til I maie sene her efte in Troie.

G G

"And of himselfe imaginid he ofte

To ben defaitid, pale and waxen lesse

Than he was wonte, and that men saidin softe,
What may
it be? who can the sothè guess,
Why Troilus hath al this heviness?

And al this n' as but his melancholie,
That he had of himselfe suche fantasie.

Another time imaginin he would

That every wight, that past him by the wey
Had of him routhe, and that they saien should,
I am right sorry, Troilus will die!

And thus he drove a daie yet forth or twey
As ye have herde suche life gan he to lede
As he that stode betwixin hope and drede :
For which him likid in his songis shewe
Th' eucheson of his wo as he best might,
And made a songe of wordis but a fewe,
Somwhat his woefull herté for to light,
And when he was from every mann'is sight
With softé voice he of his lady dere,
That absent was, gan sing as ye may hear:

This song when he thus songin had, full soon
He fell agen into his sighis olde :
And every night, as was his wonte to done,
He stodè the bright moonè to beholde
And all his sorrowe to the moone he tolde,
And said I wis, when thou art hornid newe,
I shall be glad, if al the world be trewe !"

Another exquisite master of this species of style, where the scholar and the poet supplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman the expressions and the arrangement, is George Herbert. As from the nature of the subject, and the too frequent quaintness of the thoughts, his "Temple; or Sacred Poems and

Private Ejaculations" are comparatively but little known, I shall extract two poems. The first is a Sonnet, equally admirable for the weight, number, and expression of the thoughts, and for the simple dignity of the language. (Unless indeed a fastidious taste should object to the latter half of the sixth line.) The second is a poem of greater length, which I have chosen not only for the present purpose, but likewise as a striking example and illustration of an assertion hazarded in a former page of these sketches: namely, that the characteristic fault of our elder poets is the reverse of that, which distinguishes too many of our more recent versifiers; the one conveying the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language; the other in the most fantastic language conveying the most trivial thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words; the former an enigma of thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd passage in Drayton's IDEAS:

SONNET IX.

As other men, so I myself do muse,
Why in this sort I wrest invention so ;
And why these giddy metaphors I use,
Leaving the path the greater part do go?
I will resolve you: I am lunatic!

The other recalls a still odder passage in the "SYNAGOGUE: or the Shadow of the Temple,"

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