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Milton's description of the opening of hell-gates ought not here to be overlooked.

On a sudden open fly

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder

The same author has, in another performance, given an excellent specimen in this way,

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw t.

He succeeds the better here, that what he says is evidently accompanied with a design of exciting contempt, This induceth us to make allowance for his leaving the beaten road in search of epithets. In this passage of the Odyssey,

Ode on St Cecilia's day.

* Paradise Lost, B. II.

Lycidas. An imitation of a line of Virgil, Ecl. 3, Stridenți miserum stipula disperdere carmen,

Of vivacity as depending on the choice of words.

His bloody hand

Snatch'd two unhappy of my martial band;

And dash'd like dogs against the stony floor *;

the sound, but not the abruptness of the crash, is, I imagine, better imitated than in the original, which, on account of both, especially the last, was much admired by the critic of Halicarnassus. An excellent attempt in this way we have in a poem of Dyer :

The pilgrim oft

At dead of night mid his oraison hears

Aghast the voice of time, disparting towers,

Tumbling all precipitate down-dash'd,

Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon f.

But the best example to be found in our language is, in my opinion, the following lines of Mr Pope,

What! like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough and fierce,
With arms, and George, and Brunswic croud the verse,
Rend with tremendous sounds your ears asunder,
With gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder?
Then all your muse's softer art display,

Let Carolina smoothe the tuneful lay,
Lull with Amelia's liquid name the nine,

And sweetly flow thro' all the royal line ‡.

The success here is the greater that the author appears

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Ruins of Rome, Dodsley's Collection, vol. i.

Sat. I

Sect. III.

Words considered as sounds.

through the whole to deride the immoderate affectation of this over-rated beauty, with which some modern poetasters are so completely dazzled. On the whole, the specimens produced, though perhaps as good as any of the kind extant in our language, serve to evince rather how little than how much can be done in this way, and how great scope there is here for the fancy to influence the judgment.

As

BUT there are other subjects beside sound, to which language is capable of bearing some resemblance.Time and motion, for example, or whatever can admit the epithets of quick and slow, is capable in some degree of being imitated by speech. In language there are long and short syllables, one of the former being equal or nearly equal to two of the latter. these may be variously combined in a sentence, and syllables of either kind may be made more or less to predominate, the sentence may be rendered by the sound more or less expressive of celerity or tardiness. And though even here the power of speech seems to be much limited, there being but two degrees in syllables, whereas the natural degrees of quickness or slowness in motion or action may be infinitely varied, yet, on this subject, the imitative power of articulate sound seems to be greater and more distinctive than on any other. This appears to particular advantage in verse, when, without violating the rules of prosody, a greater or a less number of syllables is made to suit the time. Take the following example from Milton,

Of vivacity as depending on the choice of words.

When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecs sound

To many ǎ youth ănd mānỹ ă maid,
Dancing in the checker'd shade *.

In this passage the third line, though consisting of ten syllables, is, by means of two anapests, pronounced, without hurting the measure, in the same time with an iambic line of eight syllables, and therefore well adapted in sound to the airy diversion he is describing. At the same time it must be owned, that some languages have in this particular a remarkable superiority over others. In English, the iambic verse, which is the commonest, admits here and there the insertion of a spondee, for protracting, or of an anapest, as in the example quoted, for quickening the expression †.

Bur, in my opinion, Greek and Latin have here an advantage, at least in their heroic measure, over all modern tongues. Accordingly Homer and Virgil furnish us with some excellent specimens in this way. But that we may know what our own tongue and metre is capable of effecting, let us recur to our own po

* L'Allegro.

† Perhaps the feet employed in ancient poetry, are not in strict propriety applicable to the measures adopted by the English prosody. It is not my business at present to enter into this curious question. It suffices that I think there is a rhythmus in our verse plainly discernible by the ear, and which, as it at least bears some analogy to the Greek and Latin feet, makes this application of their names sufficiently intelligible.

Sect. III.

Words considered as sounds.

T

ets, and first of all to the celebrated translator of the Grecian bard. I have made choice of him the rather as he was perfectly sensible of this beauty in the original, which he copied, and endeavoured, as much as the materials he had to work upon would permit him, to exhibit it in his version. Let us take for an example the punishment of Sisyphus in the other world, a passage which had on this very account been much admired in Homer by all the critics both ancient and modern.

Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone resulting with a bound,

Thunders impetuous down, and smoaks along the ground ‡.

In Greek thus,

και ν ανω ωθεόκε πολύ λόφου.

Αυτός επειτα πεδονδε κυλινδείο λάας αναιδής.

OD.

In Latin verse, Vida, in his Art of Poetry, hath well exemplified this beauty, from his great master Virgil.

Ille autem membris, ac mole ignavius ingens

Incedit tardo molimine subsidendo.

Here not only the frequency of the spondees, but the difficulty of forming the elisions; above all, the spondee in the fifth foot of the second line, instead of a dactyl, greatly retard the motion. For the contrary expression of speed,

Here

Si se forte cava extulerit mala vipera terra,

Tolle moras, cape saxa manu, cape robora, pastor,
Ferte citi flammas, date tela, repellite pestem.

every thing concurs to accelerate the motion, the number of dactyls, no elision, no diphthong, no concurrence of consonants,

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