and dispense with rhyme, saving in the chorus, or where a sentence shall require a couplet." He says too, that he thinks it wrong to mix uncertainly feminine rhymes with masculine;* which, ever since he was warned of that deformity by a kind friend, he had always so avoided, as that there are not above two couplets in that kind in all his poem of the Civil Wars; that he "held feminine rhymes to be fittest for ditties, and either to be certain, or set by themselves." The opinions of Daniel are more particularly noticed here, because his versification is equal to the best of his times.

Another poet, who valued himself upon his skill in numbers, viz. Cowley, may be joined with these authors; not indeed for any formal work upon the subject, but for certain notes made by him upon his own verses. The purport of those notes is to inform his readers that the verses are intended and framed to represent the things described by their imitative harmony. In his preface he expresses himself thus respecting the odes which he calls pindaric: "The numbers are various and irregular, and sometimes (especially some of the long ones) seem harsh and uncouth, if the just measures and cadences be not observed in the pronunciation. So that almost all their sweetness and numerosity

*The terms masculine and feminine, as applied to verse, are taken from the French, and signify-the first, rhymes of one syllable-the other, of two, which we now call double rhymes; and of which this character of King John, from the First Book of his Civil Wars, is an example:

A tyrant loath'd, a homicide convented,
Poison'd he dies, disgraced, and unlamented.

By rhymes uncertainly mixed, he means introduced irregularly; not recurring in the stanzas at set distances, which he calls certain.

(which is to be found, if I mistake not, in the roughest, if rightly repeated) lies in a manner wholly at the mercy of the reader. I have briefly described the nature of these verses in the ode entitled The Resurrection; and though the liberty of them may incline a man to believe them easy to be composed, yet the undertaker will find it otherwise.

*

In 1679, Samuel Woodford, D.D., published a Paraphrase on the Canticles, and Hymns; and in the preface made certain observations on the structure of English verse, which are mentioned, not so much for anything remarkable in his criticism, as for his high commendation, at the period, of Milton's Paradise Lost; though he would rather "it had been composed in rhyme"!

About the same time another work came out, comprising some principles of versification, together with an assistance towards making English verse. The title was the English Parnassus, or a Help to English Poesie; containing a collection of all the rhyming monosyllables, the choicest epithets and phrases, with some general forms upon all occa

* The passage in the Ode on the Resurrection, to which he refers, is this:

Stop. stop, my Muse, allay thy vigorous heat,

Kindled at a hint so great;

Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in,

Which does to rage begin,

And this steep hill would gallop up with violent course:

'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse,

Fierce and unbroken yet,

Impatient of the spur or bit:

Now prances stately, and anon flies o'er the place;

Disdains the servile law of any settled pace;

Conscious and proud of his own natural force:
'Twill no unskilful touch endure,

But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.

U

sions, subjects and themes, alphabetically digested; together with a short institution to English Poesie, by way of preface. The author was Joshua Poole, M.A., of Clare Hall, Cambridge; but it was a posthumous publication. The preface is subscribed J. D.; it contains no matter worthy of particular notice; and for the book itself, it is sufficiently detailed by the title.

This work appears to have been the foundation of another, built on the same plan, hut considerably enlarged. The author was Edward Bysshe, who, in 1702, published an Art of English Poetry. The part relating to prosody is contained in three chapters, under these heads: "Of the structure of English verses.-Of rhyme.-Of the several sorts of poems and compositions in verse." His manner of treating these topics is plain, but neither methodical nor comprehensive; it presents, however, some useful information, and though perhaps no versifier of the present day may seek from this author "Rules for making English Verse" (for so he entitles this portion of his volume), it continued for above half a century to be a popular book. It also provided a further help to verse-makers, by a plentiful magazine, or Dictionary of Rhymes. The bulk of his performance was made up of a "Collection of the most natural, agreeable, and noble Thoughts, &c. that are to be found in the best English poets"; but if the execution of this part be compared with the promise of its title, he will be found to deserve little commendation. The number of poets from whom he professes to have formed.

his selection, are forty-three. Of these, more than a third part are either men of no name, as Stonestreet, Stafford, Harvey, or of no distinguished reputation in poetry, as Walsh, Tate, Stepney, Dennis, and others. Then the selection is made so unequally, that three of his number, viz. Cowley, Butler's Hudibras, and Dryden, have furnished him with at least three-fifths of the whole. Indeed he appears to have had very little knowledge of our poets, even of those who lived and wrote but fourscore years before himself. Ellis, in his Specimens of the Early English Poets, has given extracts. from upwards of forty authors in the reigns of Charles the First and Second, not one of whom is mentioned in Bysshe's catalogue. Here is another proof of the same: he affirms that "we have no entire works composed in verses of twelve syllables;" he must therefore have been unacquainted with Drayton.

Not long after Glover's Leonidas appeared, Dr. Pemberton, a great friend of the author, published Observations on Poetry, especially epic, occasioned by the late poem on Leonidas, 1738. The versification of that poem is very regular: and the design of the observations, in part, is to justify and extol that regularity; which, in an instance or two, is done without foundation. The sixth section of the Observations is upon the principles of verse; and here his singular notions, and the severe rules he would establish, might startle and discourage a young poet. He disallows all licence, all irregularity. He asserts that no irregular composition

of feet is by any means necessary towards that variety which is required in the longest work. With the same rigour he pronounces upon the last syllables of verses: and commends Glover for closing his lines with a firm and stable syllable, which, he says, is necessary to support the dignity of the verse, and which Milton designedly neglected. The lines he means are, in Glover, such as these:

Rehearse, O Muse, the deeds and glorious death
Of that fam'd Spartan, who withstood the power.

Leon. b. I.

And of the contrary sort, in Milton, such as this:

Here swallow'd up in endless misery.

Paradise Lost, b. 1.

A close of the line, which, had he thought it negligent, or wanting dignity, he would not have admitted so frequently, much less three times together, as in this instance:

And all who since, baptized or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban,

Damasco, or Morocco, or Trebisond.

Paradise Lost, b. 1.

The foregoing censure on Milton may warrant the mention here (though not exactly in chronological order) of Tyrwhitt's Essay on the Versification of Chaucer, which contains much learned research into the nature and origin of our poetical measures; but which, in regard to the structure of our verse, advances some positions that are very questionable, to say the least of them; as in this passage: "on the tenth or rhyming syllable, a