For my part, whenever chance brings within my obfervation a knot of miffes bufy at their needles, I confider myself as in the school of virtue; and though I have no extraordinary skill in plain work or embroidery, look upon their operations with as much fatisfaction as their governefs, because I regard them as providing a fecurity against the most dangerous enfnarers of the foul, by enabling themselves to exclude idleness from their solitary moments, and with idlenefs her attendant train of paffions, fancies, and chimeras, fears, forrows, and defires. Ovid and Cervantes will inform them that love has no power but over those whom he catches unemployed; and Hector, in the Iliad, when he sees Andromache overwhelmed with terrors, fends her for confolation to the loom and the diftaff. It is certain that any wild wifh or vain imagination never takes fuch firm poffeffion of the mind, as when it is found empty and unoccupied. The old peripatetick principle, that Nature abhors a vacuum, may be properly applied to the intellect, which will embrace any thing, however abfurd or criminal, rather than be wholly without an object. Perhaps every man may date the predominance of thofe defires that disturb his life and contaminate his confcience, from fome unhappy hour when too much leisure expofed him to their incurfions; for he has lived with little obfervation either on himself or others, who does not know that to be idle is to be vicious. NUMB. 86. SATURDAY, January 12, 1751. Legitimumque fonum Digitis callemus et Aure. By fingers, or by ear, we numbers scan. ON HOR. ELPHINSTON. NE of the ancients has obferved, that the burthen of government is encreafed upon princes by the virtues of their immediate predeceffors. It is, indeed, always dangerous to be placed ina ftate of unavoidable comparison with excellence, and the danger is still greater when that excellence is confecrated by death; when envy and interest ceafe to act against it, and those paffions, by which it was at first vilified and opposed, now stand in its defence, and turn their vehemence against honeft emulation. `He that fucceeds a celebrated writer, has the fame difficulties to encounter; he stands under the shade of exalted merit, and is hindered from rifing to his natural height, by the interception of thofe beams. which fhould invigorate and quicken him. He applies to that attention which is already engaged,, and unwilling to be drawn off from certain fatisfaction; or perhaps to an attention already wearied, and not to be recalled to the fame object. One of the old poets congratulates himself that he has the untrodden regions of Parnaffus before him, and that his garland will be gathered from plantations which no writer had yet culled. But the imitator treads a beaten walk, and with all his diligence can only hope to find a few flowers or branches untouched by his predeceffor, the refuse of contempt, or the omiffions of negligence. The Macedonian conqueror, when he was once invited to to hear a man that fung like a nightingale, replied with contempt, "that he had heard the nightin"gale herself;" and the fame treatment must every man expect, whose praise is that he imitates another. Yet, in the midst of these discouraging reflections, I am about to offer to my reader fome observations upon Paradife Loft, and hope, that, however I may fall below the illuftrious writer who has fo long dictated to the commonwealth of learning, my attempt may not be wholly ufelefs. There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be oppofed. Falfe tafte is always bufy to miflead thofe that are entering upon the regions. of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forfaken by the fun, will be pleased to fee a fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total darkness, though with weak and borrowed luftre. Addison, though he has confidered this poem under most of the general topicks of criticifm, has barely touched upon the verfification; not probably because he thought the art of numbers unworthy of his notice, for he knew with how minute attention the antient criticks confidered the difpofition of fyllables, and had himself given hopes of fome metrical obfervations upon the great Roman poet; but being the first who undertook to difplay the beau ties, and point out the defects of Milton, he had many objects at once before him, and paffed willingly over those which were most barren of ideas, and required labour, rather than genius. Yet verfification, or the art of modulating his numbers, is indifpenfably neceffary to a poet. Every other power by which the understanding is enlightened, or the imagination enchanted, may be exercifed in profe. But the poet has this peculiar fuperiority, that to all the powers which the perfection of every other compofition can require, he adds the faculty of joining mufick with reafon, and of acting at once upon the fenfes and the paffions. I fuppofe there are few who do not feel themselves touched by poetical melody, and who will not confefs that they are more or lefs moved by the fame thoughts, as they are conveyed by different founds, and more affected by the fame words in one order than in another. The perception of harmony is indeed conferred upon men in degrees very unequal, but there are none who do not perceive it, or to whom a regular feries of proportionate founds cannot give delight. In treating on the verfification of Milton I am defirous to be generally understood, and shall therefore ftudioufly decline the dialect of grammarians;. though, indeed, it is always difficult, and fometimes fcarcely poffible, to deliver the precepts of an art, .without the terms by which the peculiar ideas of that art are expreffed, and which had not been invented but becaufe the language already in ufe was infafficient. If therefore I fhall fometimes feem obfcure, may be imputed to this voluntary interdiction, and to a defire of avoiding that offence which is always given by unufual words. may The heroick meafure of the English language be properly confidered as pure or mixed. It is pure when the accent refts upon every fecond. fyllable through the whole line. Courage Courage uncertain dangers may abate, Here love his golden fhafts employs, here lights DRYDEN, MILTON. The accent may be obferved, in the second line of Dryden, and the fecond and fourth of Milton, to repose upon every fecond fyllable. The repetition of this found or percuffion at equal times, is the most complete harmony of which a fingle verfe is capable, and fhould therefore be exactly kept in diftichs, and generally in the last line of a paragraph, that the car may reft without any fenfe of imperfection. But, to preferve the feries of founds untranfpofed in a long compofition, is not only very difficult but tirefome and difgufting; for we are foon wearied with the perpetual recurrence of the fame cadence. Neceflity has therefore enforced the mixed measure, in which fome variation of the accents is allowed; this, though it always injures the harmony of the line confidered by itself, yet compenfates the lofs by relieving us from the continual týranny of the fame found, and makes us more fenfible of the harmony of the pure meafure. Of these mixed numbers every poet affords us innumerable inftances, and Milton feldom has two pure lines together, as will appear if any of his paragraphs be read with attention merely to the mufick. Thus |