structed mankind, by their didactick and moral poems; fuch as Hefiod, Horace, Boileau, Dryden, Pope, and many others of that character. But there have been many more, particularly in our own country, who, mistaking a strong inclination for genius, have unhappily paid their court to the mufes: but, fenfible at length of their own mediocrity of talents, have thought it neceffary to make apologies for indulging fo idle a propenfity; yet, by a strange infatuation, perfevere in a practice which they affect to condemn. Indeed, from what I have, even from my childhood, experienced in myself and obferved in others; in the most illiterate as well as those of the most improved understandings; this propensity seems so general, that I am almost inclined to pronounce man "a rhyming, as well as a reafoning animal." The rude efforts of the untaught multitude tend to prove, and the occafional effufions of more enlightened minds, to confirm, the justness of this definition. The chief difference between a man of sense, and a coxcomb, in this respect, seems to confift in the extent of their indulgence in this frivolous occupation. A man whofe imagination prevails over his judgment, is apt to make rhyming his ferious employment; while a fenfible man makes it the amusement only of a leisure hour, and never fuffers it to interfere with his more important pursuits. Yet, Yet, though we justly ridicule a mere rhymer, we may be thankful that we have been preserved from a contagion, with which more or less, as I observed, some of the wifeft men in all ages have been infected: philosophers, statesmen, lawyers, and divines, have occafionally felt fymptoms of this epidemical disease. We need not have recourse to the remoter periods of Greece or Rome, to the examples of Solon, Plato, and even the wife Socrates: to thofe of Scipio, Lelius, and Cicero: in a later æra, the amiable Pliny the conful; who, befides his high office, had fo many more useful accomplishments to value himself upon, fpeaks with much felf-complacency of a volume of hendecafyllables, which he had published, and which fome Greeks, then refiding at Rome, had set to mufick: though, if he has given us a fair specimen of them, they were as bad as Tully's well-known jingle: "O! fortunatam natam, me Confule Romam!* "How happy happened Rome to be, *Though Tully has been ridiculed for that (probably) extempore line; fome people have thought, that, if he had cultivated his tafte for poetry, he would have made no bad figure in that branch. His poem on his countryman C. Marius was much admired by Atticus and other good judges. A middling orator might probably make a tolerable poet; but he had better exercise his lungs as an auctioneer, than in spouting his own heroics. But our own country and more modern times, will furnish us with fufficient inftances of the fascinating charms of metre. Amongst the illiterate we may reckon John Bunyan; who, not contented with having produced his univerfally admired, original work of the Pilgrim's Progress, has exhibited his talent at rhyming, in a preface of five pages: "Some faid, John, print it; others faid not so! In the fame rank of literature, though of much fuperior poetical abilities, our own times fupply us with examples without number. But in the most highly cultivated understandings, this barren weed has occasionally sprung up in the midst of more valuable productions. Not to mention our Bolingbrokes, our Pulteneys, our Chesterfields, and Nugents, and many others;* there is hardly a great man now living, but has in his youth, and perhaps in the zenith of his power and importance, sported with the Mufes. Archbishops and bishops, See Dodley's Mifcellanies, paffim. bishops, statesmen and lawyers; who have figured in the ministry, or prefided in the courts of judicature; many of whom, if it were decent or neceffary, I could readily enumerate.* These reflections were fuggefted by reading the late philofophical Dr. Berkenhout's letters to his fon; in which, after fome fevere reflections on our publick schools and univerfities, (which however, by the way, the good Doctor fhews to be undeferved) and in the midst of a moft ferious lecture on his fon's moral and religious conduct, the Doctor concludes with inviting him to dinner, in a long epiftle in rhyme, with the alliteration in which the reader will be diverted: "Tot Trumpington tramping, to dine with the Doctor, "Which fure you may do, without fear of the Proctor, &c. But * Sir W. Bl-kftone, notwithstanding the "Lawyer's farewell to his Mufe," (fee Dodfley's Mif.) could not forbear now and then fome little dalliance with the enchanting nymph, when his admirable Commentaries had established his fame, and fecured him universal applause. + The Doctor lived in Mr. Anftey's house at Trumpington, near Cambridge; whom he compliments as the author of “ The Bath Guide;" but forgets that his poetical is not the only valuable part of that gentleman's character, But I do not produce these respeЯable examples, as an adequate excufe for my own offences in the fame kind: nor is it a fufficient plea, that because a right reverend, or a right honourable perfonage, has in his youth written a few good verses, I fhould, in my old age, be fcribbling fo many bad ones. The only useful inference which I can draw from the premises, is to caution young people from indulging fo unprofitable a pursuit; as an habit of rhyming, like any other habit, as drunkenness or fornication for instance, increases by indulgence; and though it may not bring us to the pillory, it will first or last, it is to be feared, bring us to fhame. Indeed, if as Swift obferves this tendency to rhyming be a morbid fecretion from the brain, it may be as dangerous to check the humour too suddenly, as to stop up a defluxion or cold in the head by violent medicines; but let us at least attend to what Epectitus fays of those that tell their dreams; which is applicable to those who write verses: "Never tell thy dreams, fays that philofopher; for though thou mayst take a pleasure in telling them, another will take no pleasure in hearing them!” "Nec lufiffe pudet, fed non incidere ludum." HoR. ΑΝΟΝΥΜ. |