of the same error. Even Spenser himself is often at fault in his concluding lines.

The following lines from the Essay on Criticism illustrate the

These equal syllables alone require,

Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join,

And-ten-low-words-oft-creep-in-one-dull-line*.

In the next couplet, I think Dryden's name should stand in the place of Denham's. The first line has the "

which it speaks.

And praise the easy vigour of a line

easy vigour" of

Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join.

The anecdote given by Leigh Hunt of Moore's repeating with great gusto, the following lines by Dryden, remarkable for their

easy vigour," pleasantly occurs to me at this moment :

Let honour and preferment go for gold,

But glorious beauty isn't to be sold.

A comparison of a couplet of Dryden's with two of Doctor Johnson's, places the unaffected force and freedom of the former in a striking light.

Let observation with extensive view

Survey mankind from China to Peru,

Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;

Then say, &c.

Listen to Glorious John Dryden, and compare his directness with the pompous pleonasms of the author of the Rambler.

Look round the habitable world, how few

Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.

* There are, however, many very fine monosyllabic lines in English Poetry.

Hazlitt, I think, mentions that it was Wordsworth who first drew attention to these parallel passages.

The modulation of the following lines from Dryden's "Theodore and Honoria" is in admirable keeping with the subject. The pauses are very happily arranged.

While listening to the murmuring leaves he stood
More than a mile immersed within the wood;
At once the wind was laid; the whispering sound
Was dumb; a rising earthquake rocked the ground;
With deeper brown the grove was overspread,

A sudden horror seized his giddy head,

And his ears tingled and his colour fled.

Here is another passage of a similar character from the same

poet.

The fanning wind upon her bosom blows;

To meet the fanning wind her bosom rose;

The fanning wind and purling stream continue her repose.

In Dryden's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day (Alexander's Feast) there are numerous adaptations of sound to sense. The repetition of the word fallen in the following lines has a remarkably fine effect.

He

sung Darius great and good,

By too severe a fate

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen, from his high estate

And weltering in his blood.

There is a similar beauty in the ensuing.

The prince, unable to conceal his pain,

Gazed on the fair

Who caused his care,

And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again;

At length with love and wine at once oppressed
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

The variation of the time in the following passage is extremely

happy.

Now strike the golden lyre again :

A louder yet, and yet a louder strain;

Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder!

Hark, hark, the horrid sound

Has raised up his head,

As awaked from his dead,

And amazed he stares around!

Dryden seems to have particularly enjoyed the effect of representative harmony. The following verse from a song in his King Arthur has a very martial sound.

Come, if you dare, our trumpets sound ;
Come, if you dare, the foes rebound;
We come, we come, we come, we come,

Says the double, double, double, beat of the thundering drum.

This, however, is a repetition of some lines in the first of the author's two Odes for St. Cecilia's Day.

The trumpet's loud clangor

Excites us to arms,

With shrill notes of anger

And mortal alarms.

The double, double, double beat of the thundering drum

Cries hark! the foes come;

Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat.

These noisy lines are perhaps not in the best taste, and remind me of Pope's description of Sir Richard Blackmore:

What! like Sir Richard, rumbling rough and fierce,
With arms and George and Brunswick crowd the verse,
Rend with tremendous sound your ears asunder
With gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss and thunder!

In Bonnell Thornton's burlesque Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, there is the following amusing specimen of imitative harmony.

In strains more exalted the salt-box shall join,
And clattering and battering and clapping combine:
With a rap and a tap, while the hollow side sounds,
Up and down leaps the flap, and with rattling rebounds.

Though Pope's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day is generally admitted to be a failure, and to be in almost every respect greatly inferior to Dryden's Alexander's Feast, it is not utterly devoid of merit. Dr. Johnson highly commends the third stanza, in which he says "there are numbers, images, harmony and vigour, not unworthy the antagonist of Dryden." Dr. Aiken remarks of the first stanza (which I shall here quote), that it "seems to imitate happily the music it describes :"

Descend ye Nine; descend and sing;
The breathing instruments inspire;
Wake into voice each silent string,

And sweep the sounding lyre!

In a sadly pleasing strain

Let the warbling lute complain;
Let the loud trumpet sound

Till the roofs all around

The shrill echoes rebound;

While in more lengthened notes and slow,

The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.
Hark! the numbers soft and clear

Gently steal upon the ear;

Now louder, and yet louder rise,

And fill with spreading sounds the skies;
Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,
In broken air trembling, the wild music floats,

Till by degrees, remote and small,

The strains decay,

And melt away

In a dying, dying fall.

But though Dr. Johnson bestows a general approval on this poem (the least successful of all Pope's works), and though he

honours some passages with particular praise, this first stanza, he says, consists of "sounds well chosen indeed, but only sounds." I have already admitted the danger of a too minute attention to the art of representative metre, as it may lead the poet to overlook far more important considerations, and to sacrifice sense to sound. A similar danger, however, is common to all other arts. The painter as well as the poet may make too much of his accessories, and too little of his main subject. This is no reason, however, why the painter's accessories or the poet's metrical details should be treated with indifference or contempt. The music of verse seems to have a natural affinity to what may be called the music of thought, and no reader of nice ear or poetical sensibility can fail to appreciate its worth. Harmony of period and melody of style," says Shenstone, "have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect, what texts of Scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones." Beautiful thoughts and exquisite emotions" involuntarily move harmonious numbers.”

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One of Pope's best attempts at imitative harmony is his description of the labour of Sisyphus.

With many a weary step and many a groan,
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,

Thunders impetuous down and smokes along the ground.

To every reader, who has gentility enough to aspirate the h's, the second line is quite a task. He has given us another line that moves with the same difficulty.

"And when up ten steep slopes you've dragged your thighs."

Here indeed

The line too labours, and the words move slow.