N° 88. SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1751.

Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti ;
Audebit quæcunque minus splendoris habebunt,
Aut sine pondere erunt, honore indigna ferentur,
Verba movere loco, quamvis invita recedant,
Et versentur adhuc intra penetralia Vesta.

HOR.

But he that hath a curious piece design'd
When he begins must take a censor's mind,
Severe and honest; and what words appear
Too light and trivial, or to weak to bear
The weighty fenfe, nor worth the reader's care,
Shake off; though stubborn, they are loth to move,
And though we fancy, dearly though we love.

"THERE is no reputation for genius," says Quintilian," to be gained by writing on things, "which, however necessary, have little splen"dour or shew. The height of a building at"tracts the eye, but the foundations lie with"out regard. Yet since there is not any way to "the top of science but from the lowest parts, I "shall think nothing unconnected with the art "of oratory, which he that wants cannot be an ❝orator."

Confirmed and animated by this illustrious precedent, I shall continue my inquiries into Milton's art of versification. Since, however minute the

employment may appear, of analysing lines into syllables, and whatever ridicule may be incurred by a solemn deliberation upon accents and pauses, it is certain, that without this petty knowledge no man can be a poet; and that from the proper disposition of single sounds, results the harmony that adds force to reason, and gives grace to sublimity; that shackles attention, and governs pas

sions.

That verse may be melodious and pleasing, it is necessary, not only that the words be so ranged, as that the accent may fall in its proper place, but that the syllables themselves be so chosen, as to flow smoothly into one another. This is to be effected by a proportionate mixture of vowels and consonants, and by tempering the mute consonants with liquids and semivowels. The Hebrew grammarians have observed, that it is impossible to pronounce two consonants without the intervention of a vowel, or without some emission of the breath between one and the other; this is longer and more perceptible, as the sounds of the consonants are less harmonically conjoined, and, by consequence, the flow of the verse is longer interrupted.

It is pronounced by Dryden, that a line of monosyllables is almost always harsh. This, with regard to our language, is evidently true, not because monosyllables cannot compose harmony, but because our monosyllables being of Teutonick original, or formed by contraction, commonly begin and end with consonants, as,

-Every lower faculty

Of sense, whereby they bear, see, smell, touch, taste.

The difference of harmony arising principally from the collocation of vowels and consonants, will be sufficiently conceived, by attending to the following passages.

Immortal Amarant-there grows

And flow'rs aloft, shading the fount of life,

And where the river of bliss through midst of heav'n
Rolls o'er Elysian flowers ber amber stream;
With these that never fade, the spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks inwreath'd with beams.

The same comparison that I propose to be made between the fourth and sixth verses of this passage, may be repeated between the last lines of the following quotations.

Under foot the violet,

Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich in-lay

Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone
Of costliest emblem.

Here in close recess,

With flowers, garlands and fweet-fmelling herbs,
Efpoused Eve first deck'd her nuptial bed;
And heavenly choirs the hymenean sung.

Milton, whose ear had been accustomed, not only to the musick of the ancient tongues, which, however vitiated by our pronunciation, excel all that are now in use, but to the softness of the Italian, the most mellifluous of all modern poetry, seems fully convinced of the unfitness of our language for smooth versification, and is therefore pleased with an opportunity of calling in a softer word to his assistance; for this reason, and I believe for this only, he sometimes indulges himself

in a long series of proper names, and introduces them where they add little but musick to his poem.

The richer seat

Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoil'd

Guiana, whose great city Gerion's sons
Call El Dorado.

The moon the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands.

He has indeed been more attentive to his syllables than to his accents, and does not often offend by collisions of consonants, or openings of vowels upon each other, at least not more often than other writers who have had less important or complicated subjects to take off their care from the cadence of their lines.

The great peculiarity of Milton's versification, compared with that of later poets, is the elision of one vowel before another, or the suppression of the last syllable of a word ending with a vowel, when a vowel begins the following word. As,

Knowledge

Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.

This licence, though now disused in English poetry, was practised by our old writers, and is allowed in many other languages ancient and modern; and therefore the criticks on Paradise Lost have, without much deliberation, commended Milton for continuing it. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another. We have alVOL. II. T

ready tried and rejected the hexameter of the ancients, the double close of the Italians, and the alexandrine of the French; and the elision of vowels, however graceful it may seem to other nations, may be very unsuitable to the genius of the English tongue.

There is no reason to believe, that we have negligently lost part of our vowels, and that the silent e which our ancestors added to most of our monosyllables, was once vocal. By this detruncation of our syllables, our language is overstocked with consonants, and it is more necessary to add vowels to the beginning of words than to cut them off from the end.

Milton therefore seems to have somewhat mistaken the nature of our language, of which the chief defect is ruggedness and asperity, and has left our harsh cadences yet harsher. But his elisions are not equally to be censured; in some syllables they may be allowed, and perhaps in a few may be safely imitated. The abscission of a vowel is undoubtedly vicious when it is strongly sounded, and makes, with its associate consonant, a full and audible syllable.

-What he gives,

Spiritual, may to purest spirits be found
No ingrateful food, and food like these pure
Intelligential substances require.

Fruits,Hesperian fables true,

If true, here only, and of delicious taste.

-Evening now approach'd,

For we have also our evening and our morn.