1777), to the famous Ulrica, Queen of Sweden, and sister to the more famous Frederic of Prussia. It was to her that Voltaire presumed to present the celebrated verses (or Madrigal), which have been thought in part to have contributed to the quarrel between him and her royal brother; verses much more familiar probably than any thing ever addressed by the sentimental and persecuted Tasso to Leonora of Este, the sister of his cruel and unrelenting master, though pretended patron and protector, Alfonso :

"Souvent un air de verité

Se mêle au plus grossier mensonge.
L'autre jour, dans l'erreur d'un songe,

Au rang des rois j'etais monté.

Je vous aimais alors, et j'osais vous le dire,
Les Dieux à mon reveil ne m'ont pas tout ôté:
-Je n'ai perdu que mon empire."

Attempted in English:

"Not seldom something real seems
To mingle with our vainest dreams.
Last night, asleep, on fancy's wing,
Soaring, I thought myself a king.
I loved you then, and dared impart
Unawed, the passion of my heart.
When I awoke, the gods benign
Resumed not all I dreamt was mine.

-My throne I willingly resign."

This incidental quotation, being one of the most

striking instances of Voltaire's unequalled "curious felicity," in what the French call " vers de societé," may serve as an example of those "rimes mêlées" just touched upon in an earlier part of this note.*

The versification of the modern Greeks, and which has been now established for many centuries, is accentual, or founded on accent instead of quantity. It is, I believe, almost always accompanied with rhyme, as the verse of the English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and German, most commonly is. The heroic, or that sort in most general use with the Greeks, as our decasyllable Iambic are with us, hendecasyllables with the Italians, and hexametrical Alexandrines with the French, is formed of fifteen syllables, or two hemistichs, the first of eight, the second of seven syllables, with the regular pause or cæsura, between them. The following specimen makes the two first lines of a sort of elegy, written on the occasion of the death of Prince Mourouges, chief dragoman of the Porte, who was beheaded at Constantinople in 1798.

σε Τὶ τὸ δράμα τάχα λουΐο ;—Τὶς ἡ Τραγικὴ σκηνή; Ποία ἔκλειψις ἐφάνη—εἰς τὴν σφαιρὰν την κοινῇ ;” + Accented rhyming verses of this sort, when first introduced at Constantinople, which was perhaps their cradle, from their becoming the most fashionable in that city, (Пos), were called Пolino, for which, in the

* Supra, p. 126.

The author of this elegy, Calfoglou, passes for one of the best Fanariot poets.

literal sense of the word, the equivalent in Latin would be "civiles," or "urbani," and in English perhaps "genteel;"-certainly not "political," notwithstanding Mr. Horne Tooke's ingenious system.

(This last note, of such disproportionate length, is an extract from an Essay I have in part composed on the different modes of versification in several of the modern languages.)

INDEX.

ABELARD, note 15, p. 111.

Abstract qualities, naked attributes of mind, or meta-
physical entities, unfit machinery in poetry, p. 24, 25,
26.

Academia degli Arcadi, p. 30, 33.

Della Crusca, note 72, p. 146 * 0.

Accented syllables in English verse are analogous to long
syllables in Greek and Latin, note 95, st. xciv. p.
158-163.

Achilles, note 51, p. 134.

Adage, vide Proverb.

Adam, note 45, p. 131. * .

Addison, p. x. note 20, p. 117, 118.

Eschylus personifies strength and force, p. 25.
Agamemnon cured of love by a nut of Brazil, st. liii.
Alard, Alardo, companion to Richard and Astolfo, st.
xxiv.; a sort of grave splenetic Mentor to Astolfo,
ib. and st. xxxvi. lvii.

Alexandrine dodesyllabic accented iambics in English
and German, note 95, p. 160. In French, ib. p. 172;
but not governed by any regular arrangement of ac-