MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. -443 prose, or some lines in verse, if harsh sounding words were put when the softer are required, if syllables of a short accent were placed in the room of long, if the emphatical words or pauses were disposed in improper places ? The most skilful and melodi- ous reader, with his utmost labour and art of pronunciation, can never entertain a judicious auditory agreeably, if the writer bas not done his part in this respect. And though these matters are of far less importance in poesy, than the propriety, grandeur, beauty, and force of the ideas, and the elegant dispositionof them, yet the late Duke of B. in his famous Essay on Poetry, supposes them to be of some necessity to make good verse. " Number and rhyme, and that harmonious sound " Which never does the ear with harshness wound, t° Are necessary, tho' but vulgar arts." This theme would furnish sufficient matter for many pages; but upon occasion of a question put to me a few days ago upon this subject, I shall here take notice only of those vicious caden- ces in ' erse, which arise from long or short syllables ill - placed, or from colons, commas and periods ill-disposed, as far as my amusements in poesy have given me any knowledge of this kind. It has been an old and just observation, that English verse generally ¡consists of iambic feet : An iambic font has two sylla- bles, whereof the first is short, and the latter long. An English verse of the heroic kind, consists of five such feet; so that in reading it, the accent is usually laid upon the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth syllables. Mr. Dryden, who was counted the best versifier of tite last age, is generally very true to this iambic measure, and observes it perhaps with too constant a regularity. So in his Virgil, iae describes two serpents in ten lines, with scarce one foot of any other kind, or the alteration of a single syllable. " Two serpents rank'd abreast, the seas divide, " And smoothly sweep along the swelling tide. " Their flaming crest above the waves they show, i0 Their bellies seem to burn the seas below : " Their speckled tails advance to steer their course, " And on the sounding shore the flowing billows force, " And now the strand, and now the plain they held, " Their ardent eyes with bloody streaks were fill'd ; " Their nimble tongues they brandish'd as they came, " And lick'd their hissing jaws, that spatter'd flame." Though all these ten lines glide oti so smoothly, and seem to caress the ear, yet perhaps this is too long an uniformity to be truly grateful, unless we excuse it by supposing the poet to bui- tatethe smoothness of the serpents, swift, easy and uniform mo- tion over the sea and land, without the least stop or interruptiou. In the lines of heroic measure, there are some parts of the line which will admit a spondee, that is, a foot made of two long rf2.
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