Also, to the celebrated couplet of Dryden's, when the lyre of Timotheus changes from rude and martial to delightful sounds. "Softly sweet in Lydian measures, Soon he sooth'd the soul to pleasures." I know not lines in which the letter s is more liberally used, and they were chosen by Dryden to express the most agreeable sensations. Those who desire to have a just perception of poetic excellence, must, with manly spirit, look for general harmony, superior to sickly niceties about verbal arrangement. They must have no squeamishness about the letter s, since no consonant has more power of painting to the ear-instance from the Penseroso of Milton, a wintry morning of Spring, "Usher'd with a shower still, When the gust has blown its fill.” In that first line it is the repetition of the letters, which enables it so exactly to represent, by sound, a silent shower, as it descends. I am not afraid to assert, that there is a similar instance of sound echoing sense in my poem Louisa, thus "And tossing the green sea-weed o'er and o'er, When a calm sea advances on the sands, we always hear a sound spelt thus, ush-ush—ush. Garrick, whose ear was indisputable, certainly, since he composed the Jubilee himself, and was to speak it, took care that it contained no verse whose dissonance must unavoidably grate the ear of people of taste-yet has it this line, " "Tis Shakespeare!--Shakespeare!-Shakespeare!" Harsh as it is, I dont believe it was disgustingly so from his lip-and a poet is always to suppose his verses will be read well. No reader that knows not how to cover these little asperities, and melt them, by judicious intonation, into the general harmony, will ever give the power and proper effect to the most musical couplets. Every poetic writer will exclaim "O save my lines from being read by those, A good poet, committing himself to the skill of his reciter, will not scruple to use sounds in themselves unmusical, but in which more is gained on the side of vigour and representation, than is lost on that of harmony. I knew a gentleman who, God help him, could not endure the hadst, didst, and shouldst, inevitable upon the majestic plainness of addressing in the second person singular; and a duty indispensable to every poet who writes gravely. I asked my man of refinement if he chose the speech of Satan to Beelzebub should be smoothed into such civil, and courtly sounds, thus, "If you be he, but O! how fallen, how chang'd!" He replied 66 Why, no, in the solemnity of that address I grant the you a worse evil than the harsh st, which it banishes." "Well Sir, let us see if you think such banishment an advantage in a passage which is not solemn; instead of "Return fair Eve! Whom flyest thou?-him thou fly'st of him thou art; "Return fair Eve, Whom fly you? him you fly, of him you are; But no-he was constrained to acknowledge that even there the change rendered the passage ludicrous. I then exhorted him, as I exhort you, to cease complaining of unavoidable circumstances in Nature, in science, and in art. Do not, be cause the elbow of a slender young woman is not a pretty thing, quarrel with a light and beautiful nymph, because she has elbows. Aн, Madam, it is a too-confiding benevolence which induces you to suppose there must have been some good, even in such a being as that on whom Elizabeth's ill fate wasted her youth, her affections, and her virtues; something on which softened remembrance might dwell, as palliatives to the faults which ruined himself, and deprived him of the means to support his wife and children. But no! callousness and outrage, united with the vices of sottishness, unchastity, and extravagance, to rob the grave of its power, to screen from her recollection the miseries of their union. She wept, indeed, beneath the first intelligence of an event, startling, however inevitably welcome. She wept, from the consciousness of his being the father of her children but it would be weakness in the extreme, if these are not the last tears she will ever shed for him. I had, indeed, great pleasure in finding dear Mrs Port cheerfully alive to every agreeable impression, and disposed to throw all the lustre of partial regard over things which had, perhaps, essentially but little claim to the value which she appeared to set upon them. I do not, however, include in that number Mr Saville's obliging exertions to animate the evening we all passed together at Matlock, with the united charms of poetry and music. He alone, of all the warbling tribe, breathes at once, in his songs, the harmonic and the poetic spirit; and this, from powers which mere musical science, ability, and taste, however perfect in their kind, cannot give, without a combination of genius, sensibility, and knowledge, which are of higher extraction than that of the tinkling strings. The rulers of our cathedral are a little be-demoned, or much be-deaned, which is nearly the same thing. They are demolishing our pretty choir at a vast expence, and to the long exclusion of the finest choir-service in the kingdom. They have shut her gates against her celebrated minstrels; turning them adrift to lose, or, at least, injure their voices by the rust of inaction. Yes, 66 they are pulling down the carved work with axes |