foot or the third. Perhaps alfo the transfer of the accent in the fecond foot may be more freely permitted to dramatic than epic verfe. Milton has evidently had fome partiality for an extension of this licence, in imitation of the Italians, with whom the aberration of the accent in the first and fecond foot of the fame verfe is even more common than in either of them alone; infomuch that Taffo, who is reckoned among their more fcrupulously harmonious poets, has begun his moft admired work, The Jerufalem Delivered, with fuch a verfe : Cánto l'arme pietó¡sfe e il càspitáno. We find inftances of it in the Paradise Lost : Soon had his crew Open'd into the hill | a fpacious wound. Thou thy foes Júitly | haft in | derílfion, and | fecúre P. L. I. 690. but proportionally more in the Samfon, Irrecoverably dárk, | tótal | eclipse— P. L. v. 737 SI. 126. That invincible Sámfon, fár | renówned 341. To do juftice to the two former of these three laft cited lines, the firft fyllable must be made long by the diftinct pronunciation of the doubled confonant r. I know fuch lines are among thofe which have brought upon Milton, from fome, whose whofe judgement I refpect, the charge of writing inharmonious verfe. So far I think them lefs fuited to the character of our language, that, for epic verfe, the imitation of them is not to be recommended. K SECTION VII. Of the Hiftory of English Verfification. THE hiftory of all learning, and of every art, cannot but be an interesting portion of the history of mankind. After, therefore, having obferved what is the mechanism of the various forms of English verfe now in common ufe, it may be amufing, and, to a fpeculative mind, perhaps somewhat more than amufing, to trace the hiftory of English verfification backward into antiquity. Modern learning, among the various speeches of Europe, being comprized moftly in three, the Italian, French, and English, in all of which, not without fome concert, it has been derived from the Latin and Greek, thofe three, for that connection, however otherwife widely differing, may be confidered as fifter tongues. Of these the Italian, taking them in their generally allowed claffical ftate, is confiderably the elder. The revived English claffical literature is of later birth by near two centuries; and the French, by near one century, younger ftill. But tho the period of English literature of the modern idiom begins fo much later than the Italian, yet an English poet of no mean pretenfion, Chaucer, was little pofterior to the earliest Italian claffics; and tho * the the French literature, of that dialect which, through political weight and not intrinfic merit, has overborne all others of France, is of a birth fo much later ftill, yet, as far as the Provencial and Languedocian poets may be admitted as predeceffors of the French claffics, French literature may boast an origin perhaps even earlier than the Italian. The tracing of English verfification upward into antiquity has been much facilitated by fome late publications. Bishop Percy's relics of antient English poetry, with his intermingled differtations, advantageously prepared the way, and feem to have proved an incentive to farther labors in the fame mine, among which Mr. Thomas Warton's history of English poetry, and Mr. Ellis's fpecimens of early English poets with interspersed historical sketches, are confpicuous. What appears to me yet wanting is a collection like Mr. Ellis's, with the order reverfed; inftead of beginning with an unintelligible idiom, and following the language downward, beginning with the first material variation from modern speech, and tracing it upward. Thus, with the illuftration which fuch a writer as Mr. Ellis would of courfe be led to give, the reader would be conducted amusingly, and almost unwittingly, to a familiarity with the growing differences; so that, on arriving at length at the celebrated Anglo-Saxon war-fong, with which his present work begins, fo highly K 2 highly interesting now to a few, but repelling, by its unintelligibility, to moft readers, who therefore fly to the tranflations, almost all would be ready to form acquaintance with the original in the energetic language of our early forefathers. Tracing English poetry thus, of merit well to claim the title of claffical, to fo remote a fource, we should go beyond the earliest known excellence of Italian and Provencial poetry. English literature has by fome been reckoned at its fummit in queen Ann's reign. But the forms of verfification have everywhere had their origin long before the perfection of literature. . Our principal and most valuable lyric measures are found, as we fhall foon more particularly obferve, among the first extant examples of our present language. Our five-footed epic verfe, derived apparently from the Italian, was familiar with Chaucer, and feems to have been occafionally introduced among lyric measures before him. It remained for later poets to exert their ingenuity only in combinations of measures. Thefe, in the long course of years between Chaucer and Dryden, became fo numerous that it might feem fancy were exhaufted, and yet we find room remained for novelty, and of no mean merit. The fyftem of ftanzas for the kind of ode, called Pindaric, in imitation of the Greek ftrophe, antiftrophe and epode, has been brought into vogue by the late poets Mason and Gray. To |