sion; and this is the reason why the alexandrine so admirably suits it, the spirit of both being a sustained enthusiasm. In proportion as this enthusiasm is less, or the feeling to be conveyed is one of hurry in the midst of aggregation, the alexandrine is perhaps generally dropped. The continuity implied by the triplet, is one of four kinds it is either an impatience of stopping, arising out of an eagerness to include; or it is the march of triumphant power; or it "builds the lofty rhyme" for some staider shew of it; or lastly, it is the indulgence of a sense of luxury and beauty, a prolongation of delight. Dryden has fine specimens of all. Of the impatience of stopping :-a description of agitation of nerves:

"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 rock'd the ground:
With deeper brown the grove was overspread,

A sudden horror seized his giddy head,

And his ears tinkled, and his colour fled."

Theodore and Honoria.

Of the sense of power :

"If joys hereafter must be purchased here,
With loss of all that mortals hold so dear,

Then welcome infamy and public shame,
And last, a long farewell to worldly fame!
'Tis said with ease; but oh, how hardly tried
By haughty souls to human honour tied !

Oh, sharp convulsive pangs of agonizing pride!" J

Hind and Panther.

Of elevation and proportion:

"Our builders were with want of genius curst;

The second temple was not like the first;

Till the best Vitruvius, come at length,
you,

Our beauties equal, but excel our strength:

Firm Doric pillars found your solid base,

The fair Corinthian crowns the higher space;

Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace."

Epistle to Congreve.

Of continuity of enjoyment:

"The fanning wind upon her bosom blows,

To meet the fanning wind the bosom rose;

The fanning wind and purling stream continue her repose."

Cymon and Iphigenia.

This last verse, which is two syllables longer than an alexandrine, and is happily introduced in this place, is peculiar to Dryden, and was taken by him from the lyric poets of his day. So was the alexandrine itself, and the triplet.

If Dryden had had sentiment, he would have been as great a poet natural, as he was artificial. The want, it must be owned, is no trifle! It is idle, however, to wish the addition of these cubits to human stature. Let us be content with the greatness his genius gave him, and with our power to look up to it.

Pope denounced alexandrines in a celebrated couplet, in which he seems to confound length of line with slowness of motion; two very distinct things, as Mr. Lamb has shown in one of his masterly essays.

"A needless alexandrine ends the song,

Which like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along."

And yet, in his no less celebrated eulogy upon the versification of Dryden, he has attempted an imitation of his master's style, in which he has introduced both alexandrine and triplet.

"Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full majestic line,

The long resounding march, and energy divine."

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How comes it then, that he rejected both from his own poetry? The reason was, that he acted by a judicious instinct. He felt, that variety and energy were not what his muse would deal in, but beauties of

a different sort; and he wisely confined himself to what he could do best. It is true, it seems strange that he should exalt Dryden's variety at the expense of Waller's smoothness. It looks like dispraising himself. But then he felt that he had more in him than Waller; and that if he had not Dryden's variety, neither had he his carelessness, but carried the rhyming heroic to what he thought a perfection superior to both, and justly purchased by the sacrifice of Dryden's inequality. Inferior indeed as Pope's versification is to Dryden's, upon every principle both of power and music, nobody can deny that it admirably suits the nicer point of his genius, and the subjects on which it was exercised. Dryden had a tranchant sword, which demanded stoutness in the sheath. Pope's weapon was a lancet enclosed in pearl.*

Let it not be thought (as it has too often been unthinkingly asserted), that remarks of this kind are

* We may see the difference exemplified in a couplet from their respective translations of Homer, neither of them, it must be confessed, worthy of the great broad hand of the old Greek: but the two passages, especially the words marked in italics, are singularly characteristic of the writers. It is in the scene of the quarrel with Agamemnon, where Achilles, with his sword half out of the sheath,

meant to disparage our great master of poetic wit; to whose genius I should think it a foppery to express even my homage, were it not for the sake of guarding against the imputation of a more preposterous immodesty. But, in endeavouring to ascertain critically what is best in general composition, one is sometimes obliged to notice what is not so good, except in specific instances.

I confess I like the very bracket that marks out the triplet to the reader's eye, and prepares him for the music of it. It has a look like the bridge of a lute.

suddenly feels the hair of his head seized by his admonitress, Minerva, and with moody submission, dashes the blade back again.

"He said, observant of the blue-eyed maid,

Then in the sheath return'd the shining blade."

"Surly faith" is too homely and familiar; but the word plung'd is excellent, and comes precisely at the point of the verse where the sound of it is strongest and most analogous. It is the action itself. Pope's is that of an officer on parade.