more inappropriately; such as display, survey. Then we have greens in abundance.

We wish that some one had the patience and curiosity to ascertain the number of times these words occur! For, poor things, they seem to have been kept like a family drudge, to do the service of all or any who happened not to be at hand. We have already quoted lines, for another purpose, in which scenes and greens occur as rhymes; and here

are more:

"To paint anew the flowery sylvan scenes,

To crown the forests with immortal greens,"

"Call forth the greens, and wake the rising flowers."

How is one to wake flowers that are already rising, unless they get up in their sleep?

"Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,

Shades every flower, and darkens every green.”

Here we have "gloomy," "saddens," "darkness," all in the space of a couplet. And this, too, is called "close writing," we suppose !

And now for a display.

"New graces yearly like thy works display,

Soft without weakness, without glaring gay."
"Beneath the shade a spreading beech displays
Hylas and Ægon sung their rural lays."

"Here waving groves a chequered scene display,
And part admit, and part exclude the day."

And, next, for a survey of other couplets.

"The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay."
"There at one passage oft you might survey,
A lie and truth contending for the way."
"Stretched on the lawn his second hope survey,
At once the chaser, and at once the prey."

"Methinks already I your tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say."

How would a lad, who had written such lines, have fared, had he fallen into the hands of some old master Bowyer? Helicon and the Pump! But enough of such instances.

Much has been said of the melody of Pope's verse; and, if the term be taken in its most limited sense, as implying the smoothness of single lines, we will not question it. But what can be more wearisomely monotonous (to say nothing of the closes of every line) than the ceaselessly regular return of the cæsural pause? We remember meeting somewhere with examples of this from Pope, in which lines were drawn by the side of the cæsura through long passages, and almost without a bend. But is there not a melody better than this, and with more of rhythm and varying flow? Surely, he had never prayed, or had prayed in vain, —

"Lend me your song, ye nightingales! O, pour

The mazy-running soul of melody
Into my varied verse."

As to "linked harmonies," he was incapable of perceiving them in music, — much less could his spirit utter them in verse. Bowles has said of his Pastorals, what he might have applied to his other poems, "Warton does not seem sufficiently to discriminate between the softness of individual lines, . . . and the general harmony of poetic numbers." And again,-in too limited a way, however, "His nice precision of every line prevented, in a few instances, a more musical flow of modulated passages." We may well apply to his versification his own lines,

"In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not the exactness of peculiar parts;
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,

But the joint force and full result of all."

It is not this mechanical meting out of the lines alone which wearies you. The effect is increased by the overfrequently inverted form in which the lines are made to terminate in verbs, for the sake of rhyme.

"Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force the sun but on a part to shine,
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes."

""T is not enough your counsel still be true;

Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do."

A sufficiently clumsy inversion this last, yet in some degree emulated by the following:

"With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always listening to himself appears."

"Made for his use all creatures if he call,

Say what their use, had he the powers of all."

"(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,

But in low numbers short excursions tries:

Content, if hence the unlearned their wants may view,
The learned reflect on what before they knew."

Another defect in his versification is the nearness to each other of couplets terminating in the same rhyme. Yet, notwithstanding this fault and that of the very frequent endings in verbs, his rhymes are, after all, allowed by Mr. Hazlitt to be frequently imperfect, and rather to the eye than for the ear.

"Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his Elic, nay, Pindaric art,

But still I love the language of his heart.
Yet surely, surely, they were famous men !
What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben?
In all debates where critics bear a part,

Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art,

Of Shakspeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit:

How Beaumont's judgement checked what Fletcher writ."

"F. See libels, Satires, here you have it, - read.
P. Libels and Satires! lawless things indeed!
But grave Epistles, bringing vice to light,
Such as a King might read, a Bishop write,

Such as Sir Robert would approve

F. Indeed?

The case is altered, — you may then proceed."

"Where towering oaks their growing honours rear,
And future navies on thy shores appear,

Not Neptune's self from all her streams receives

A wealthier tribute than to thine he gives.
No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear,

No lake so gentle, and no spring so clear."

In this latter extract we have again an instance of the terminations in verbs.

"Think what an equipage thou hast in air,
And view with scorn two pages and a chair.

As now your own, our beings were of old,

And once inclosed in Woman's beauteous mould;
Thence, by soft transition, we repair

From earthly vehicles to these of air."

"And I not strip the gilding off a knave,

Unplaced, unpensioned, no man's heir, or slave?

I will, or perish in the generous cause:

Hear this, and tremble, you who 'scape the laws.
Yes, while I live, no rich or noble knave

Shall walk the world, in credit to his grave."

It will be observed that the fault reaches to the repetition of the very words. We might go on multiplying instances, to the surprise of any who have not taken particular notice of this defect; for no poet has sinned oftener in this way. Should any one doubt it, let him examine more strictly the poems that do not come under the head of the satirical.

This repetition may occur over-frequently in some writers, from their relucting at the labour of correction. But Pope, it is boasted, was the most patient and painstaking of men at this work. It is apparent how much this frequent falling of similar sounds upon the ear must add to the wearisomeness of the general monotony.

While on the subject of rhymes, we may as well set down some instances of identical rhymes which we chanced upon.

"Why not with equal ease

Confess as well your folly, as disease?"

"Who sent the thief that stole the cash away,
And punished him that put it in his way."

"The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside."

"But this bold lord with manly strength endued,
She with one finger and a thumb subdued."

Pope himself would hardly have been inclined to plead some of the older English poets in justification of a practice which, if we mistake not, had nearly ceased in his own day; and which, however in conformity to French and Italian usage, is not agreeable in our own language to an English

ear.

In speaking of his inverted form of bringing in his verbs, we would not be understood as laying the inverted structure of sentences under the sweeping condemnation which many pass upon it. For, undoubtedly, it is often the natural utterance of impassioned and lofty thought, and where it is so it adds force and grandeur. But where it is evident that its frequent occurrence is simply for the rhyme's sake, and in poetry, too, as unimpassioned and as far from sublimity as Pope's, its only effect is to weary us with its sameness and offend us with its artificiality.

In his Moral Essays, we meet with much exaggeration, and with perpetually recurring antithesis, that in its effect may be often called a form of exaggeration, and which young minds are apt to run into, but from which the matured mind should have freed itself so far as to use it sparingly.

"While the gaunt mastiff, growling at the gate,
Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat,"

is an instance which, however witty some may think it, is inconsistent with the general spirit of a passage that is among Pope's best descriptions.

"But on some lucky day, (as when they found

A lost bank-bill, or heard their son was drowned)."