CHAPTER XX. 167 illuminate all things around us, and convey to the soul most ex- alted and magnificent images and sublime sentiments ; these fur- nish us with glorious springs and mediums to raise and aggran- dize our conceptions, to warm our souls, to awaken the better passions, and to elevate them even to a divine pitch and that for devotional purposes. It is the lyric ode which has shewn to the world some of the happiest examples of this kind, and I cannot say but this part of poesy has been my favourite amusement above all others. And for this reason it is, that I have never thought the heroic poems, Greek, Latin, nor English, which have ob- tained the highest fame in the world, are sufficiently diversified, exalted or animated, for want of the interspersion of now and then an elegiac or a lyric ode. This might have been done with great and beautiful propriety, where the poet has introduced a song at a feast, or the joys of a victory, or the soliliquies of a divine satisfaction, or the pensive and despairing agonies of dis- tressing sorrow. Why should that which is called the most glo- rious,form of poesy, be bound down and confined, to such a long and endless uniformity of measures, when it should kindle or melt the soul, swell or sink it into all the various and trans- porting changes of which human nature is capable ? Cowley in his unfinished fragment of the Davideis, has shewn us this way to improvement ; and whatever blemishes may be found in other parts of that heroic essay, this beauty and glory of it ought to be preserved for imitation. I am well assured that if Homer and Virgil had happened to practise it, it would have been renowned and glorified by every critic. I am greatly mis- taken if this wise mixture of numbers would not be a further reach of perfection than they have ever attained to without it ; let it be remembered, that it is not nature and strict reason, but a weak and awful reverence for antiquity and the vogue of fal- lible men, that has established those Greek and Romanwritings as absolute and complete patterns. In several ages there have been some men of learning, who have very justly disputed this glory, and have pointed to many of their mistakes. 3. But still there isanother end of reading, poesy, and per- haps the most considerable advantage to be obtained from it by the balk of mankind, and that is, to furnish our tongues with the richest and the most polite variety of phrases and words upon all occasions of life or religion. He that writes well in verse will often find a necessity to send his thoughts in search through all . the treasure of words that express any one idea in the same language, that so he may comport with the measures, or the rhyme of the verse which he writes, or with his own most beau- tiful and vivid sentiments of the thing he describes. Now by much reading of this kind we shall insensibly acquire the habit and skill of diversifying our phrases upon all occasions, and of
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