From what does the great variety and melody of English verse arise?

Where may the capital pause in a line fall?

With what should it coincide?

Give an example of its falling after the 4th syllable—after the 5th -after the 6th-after the 7th.

What other pauses are there?

What rule is given concerning the full pause?

Does it apply to the semi-pause?

May there be a pause in the melody where the sense requires none?

May a musical pause come after any word indifferently?
What effect have accents?

What is the effect of placing an accent on a low word?

Can a word be accented on more than one syllable?
To what syllables is accenting confined?

What words may be accented?

What accent makes the greatest figure?
Into what two kinds is it distinguished?

Give examples of the first-of the second.
What capital defect in verse is mentioned?

From what lines should the capital pause be excluded?

Are accents confined to a certain number?

What words exclude the full pause?

How does blank verse differ from rhyme with respect to form? What is its peculiar advantage?

How does rhyme prevent this?

What rules of melody apply to blank verse?

What pause is required, and what is not?
What is the only restraint upon blank verse?
To what does inversion greatly contribute?
What does Milton's loftiness of style arise from?
In what is labored inversion unnatural?

What is observed of the melody of blank verse?

What is necessary to the melody of English hexameter?

What sort of rhyme rouses the mind, and produces a gay emotion?

Is rhyme suited to grand and lofty subjects?—why not?
To what subjects is rhyme perfectly adapted?

To what subjects is it not adapted?

CHAPTER XIX.

Comparisons.

COMPARISONS Serve two purposes: when addressed to the understanding, their purpose is to instruct; when to the heart, to please. The means which contribute to the latter, are, suggesting some unusual resemblance or contrast, setting an object in the strongest light, associating an object with others that are agreeable, elevating or depressing an object.

Objects of different senses cannot be compared together; for being separated from each other, they have no circumstance in common to admit resemblance or contrast. Objects of hearing, of taste, of smell, and of touch, may be compared; but the chief fund of comparison are objects of sight; because, in writing or speaking, things can only be compared in idea, and ideas of sight are more distinct than those of any other

sense.

When a nation, emerging out of barbarity, begins to think of the fine arts, the beauties of language cannot long lie concealed; and when discovered, they are, by the force of novelty, carried beyond moderation. In the early poems of every nation, we find metaphors and similies founded on slight and distant resemblances, which, losing their grace and their novelty, wear gradually out of repute; by the improvement of taste, none but correct metaphors and similies are admitted in polite composition. With respect to similies, take the following specimen :

Thou art like snow on the heath; thy hair like the mist of Cromla, when it curls on the rocks, and shines to the beam of the west: thy arms are like two white pillars in the hall of the mighty Fingal. FINGAL.

It has no good effect to compare things by way of simile that are of the same kind; nor to compare by contrast things of different kinds. The reason is given

in the chapter quoted above; and the reason shall be illustrated by examples. The first is a comparison built upon a resemblance so obvious as to make little or no impression.

This just rebuke inflam'd the Lycian crew,

They join, they thicken, and th' assault renew.
Unmov'd the embodied Greeks their fury dare,
And, fix'd, support the weight of all the war;
Nor could the Greeks repel the Lycian pow'rs,
Nor the bold Lycians force the Grecian tow'rs.
As on the confines of adjoining grounds,

Two stubborn swains with blows dispute their bounds;
They tug, they sweat; but neither gain nor yield,
One foot, one inch, of the contended field:

Thus obstinate to death, they fight, they fall;

Nor these can keep, nor those can win the wall.

ILIAD, xii. 505. Another, from Milton, lies open to the same objection. Speaking of the fallen angels searching for mines of gold:

A numerous brigade hasten'd: as when bands
Of pioneers with spade and pick-ax arm'd,
Forerun the royal camp to trench a field

Or cast a rampart.

The next shall be of things contrasted that are of different kinds :

Queen. What, is my Richard both in shape and mind
Transform'd and weak? Hath Bolingbroke depos'd
Thine intellect? Hath he been in thy heart!
The lion thrusteth forth his paw,

And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage
To be o'erpower'd: and wilt thou, pupil-like,
Take thy correction mildly, kiss the rod,
And fawn on rage with base humility?

RICHARD II.-ACT V. Sc. 1.

A man and a lion are of different species, and therefore are proper subjects for a simile; but there is no such resemblance between them in general, as to produce any strong effect by contrasting particular attributes or circumstances.

Comparisons must be distinguished into two kinds; one common and familiar, as where a man is compared to a lion in courage, or to a horse in speed; the other more distant and refined, where two things that have

in themselves no resemblance or opposition, are compared with respect to their effects. There is no sort of resemblance between a flower-pot and a cheerful song; and yet they may be compared with respect to their effects, the emotions they produce being similar. There is as little resemblance between fraternal concord and precious ointment; and yet observe how successfully they are compared with respect to the impressions they make.

Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon Aaron's beard, and descended to the skirts of his garment. PSALM 133.

For illustrating this sort of comparison, I add some more examples:

Delightful is thy presence, O Fingal! it is like the sun on Cromla, when the hunter mourns his absence for a season and sees him between the clouds.

Did not Ossian hear a voice? or is it the sound of days that are no more? Often, like the evening sun, comes the memory of former times on my soul.

His countenance is settled from war; and is calm as the eveningbeam, that from the cloud of the west looks on Cona's silent vale.

Sorrow, like a cloud on the sun, shades the soul of Clessammor. The music was like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mournful to the soul.

Pleasant are the words of the song, said Cuchullin, and lovely are the tales of other times. They are like the calm dew of the morning on the hill of roes, when the sun is faint on its side, and the lake is settled and blue in the vale.

These quotations are from the poems of Ossian, who abounds with comparisons of this delicate kind, and appears singularly happy in them.*

proceed to illustrate, by particular instances, the different means by which comparisons, whether of the one sort or the other, can afford pleasure; and, in the order above established, I begin with such instances as

*The nature and merit of Ossian's comparisons is fully illustrated in a dissertation on the poems of that author, by Dr. Blair, professor of rhetoric in the college of Edinburgh;-a delicious morsel of criticism.

are agreeable, by suggesting some unusual resemblance or contrast:

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in her head.

AS YOU LIKE IT.-ACT II. Sc. 1.

Gardener. Bolingbroke hath seiz'd the wasteful king.
What pity is 't that he had not so trimm'd
And dress'd his land, as we this garden dress;
And wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,
Lest, being over-proud with sap and blood,
With too much richness it confound itself."
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have liv'd to bear, and he to taste
Their fruits of duty. All superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
Which waste and idle hours have quite thrown down.
RICHARD II.-ACT III. Sc. 7.

See, how the morning opes her golden gates,
And takes her farewell of the glorious sun;
How well resembles it the prime of youth,
Trimm'd like a younker prancing to his love!

SECOND PART HENRY IV.

Brutus. O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb,
That carries anger as the flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.

JULIUS CESAR.-ACT IV. Sc. 3.

Thus they their doubtful consultations dark
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless chief:
As when, from mountain-tops, the dusky clouds
Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o'erspread
Heav'n's cheerful face, the low'ring element

Scowls o'er the darken'd landscape, snow and show'r:
If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,
Extends his ev'ning beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.

PARADISE LOST.-BOOK II.

As the bright stars and milky-way,
Show'd by the night, are hid by day;
So we in that accomplish'd mind,
Help'd by the night, new graces find,
Which by the splendor of her view,
Dazzled before, we never knew.

WALLER.