which are called COMMON TIME and TRIPLE

TIME.

Nevertheless as even profe, through licence for extending or curtailing the time of its fyllables, may, with all its abhorrence of regularity, be forced into coalition with mufical meafures, fơ, through the fame licence, by a more regular and systematical violence, tho never without violence, verse of one cadence may be adapted to music of the other; examples of which will be readily obvious to those in any degree familiar with modern fong. But the aptitude and tendency of verfe of either CADENCE, is to coalefce with mufic of the analogous TIME, and with that only.

Names are wanted for our poetical cadences. To use, as too often we find practifed, thofe of the antient metrical feet, iambic, trochaïc, anapeftic, is to make a grofs and most inconvenient confufion of terms. Analogy feems to indicate the appellation of COMMON, or EVEN CADENCE, for that which correfponds with the common time of mufic, and TRIPLE CADENCE for that which correfponds with triple time.

SECTION VI.

Of the Mechanifm of ENGLISH VERSE: Epic; Lyric;
Dramatic.

VERSE is distinguished from profe by order in the arrangement of founds.

Order, in a certain degree, a harmony, a fitnefs of parts to each other, is necessary to elegance in everything; the flow of founds in common discourse cannot be pleafing without it."

But any obvious regularity in the flow of founds in common difcourfe is offenfive. A rime, incidentally dropping, feldom fails to appear ridiculous: a feries of blank verfe, and ftill more a feries of rimes, would appear grofsly abfurd. The order of founds in profe, like the order of forms in a beautiful landscape, not to be decided by rule and line, requires that art should never show itfelf. But, on the contrary, the order of founds in poetry, like the forms of a beautiful building, must be so decidedly regular as to be obviously artificial.

The analogical differences of profe and poetry, and landscape and architecture, farther pursued, may farther illuftrate the fubject. Architecture, tho refting on fo different a principle, not only may

4 Προῆλθε δὲ τὸ Μέτρον εκ Θεοῦ, μέτρω τὰ τε Ουράνια καὶ ἐπίγεια κεκοσμηκότος• Αρμονία γὰς τίς ἐςι καὶ τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις καὶ ἐπιγείοις. Longin. Fragm.

be

be admitted in landscape, but may greatly adorn
it. Its regularity, to a certain point, is highly
advantageous for contraft. Beyond that, it muft
be carefully disguifed. The exactness of the paral-
lelarity of its lines must be leffened by perspective:
their continuity must be broken, by a tree croffing
them, or by throwing the building into ruin.
So in profe, parts of verfes continually may and
must be admitted: even a whole verfe often may
be ornamental but its regularity must be con-
cealed by the flow of founds preceding and fol-
lowing. The form of a verfe, even of a por-
tion of a verfe, cannot obtrude itfelf upon the
car, in the flow of profe, without offence. Equally
offenfive then in architecture is the irregular
line of a clumfy workman, which may approach
in fome degree the picturefk, and in poetry the
irregular measure of the ill-eared verfifier, of which
the common cenfure is expreffed by the word
profaïc. In verfe and in architecture art must be
evident; and, to fatisfy, it must show itself exquifite.
Roughness, indeed, well introduced, may please;
as, in a building, rufticated stone-work; yet any
difproportion, any perceptible inexactness, in up-
rights, parallels, angles, or the turn of arches, will
furely offend the eye. So, in poetry, tho there
are admired examples of rough found, yet any
obvious deficiency in that order, that fitnefs of
parts, which characterizes poetical harmony, will
furely offend the ear.

7

Order is made obvious to the eye, in a building, by the regular distribution of contrasted, yet connected forms; as pillars of equal fizes, with their equal intervals around a temple, connected by the even pavement on which they ftand, and by the fuperimpending intablature, parallel to the pavement in the simpler form of a private dwelling, by piers and windows, with a plinth below, and a cornice above; or meerly an eave will have its effect. Order is, in analogous manner, made obvious to the ear, in mufic and poetry, by the regular arrangement of contrafted founds; as time longer and shorter, or tone fharper and flatter, stronger and weaker; by which cadence is formed.

Rhythmus or cadence is the fimpleft combination, the lowest measure, by which evident order can be given to the found of either mufic or speech. All profe may be analyzed into cadences, and all verfe is formed by a regular arrangement of the fame cadences. In common fpeech, or profe, a mixture of cadences, fuch that regularity may not be obtrusive, and art, if ufed, may be hidden, is indifpenfable to the fatisfaction of the ear. In verfe, on the contrary, as we have obferved in the comparison with landscape and architecture, cadences must be difpofed with obvious regularity, a regularity that cannot efcape the ear.

But language difpofed regularly in cadence, without form or proportion beyond what cadence alone can give, would foon become wearifome and

disgusting,

difgufting." Variety, as one of the most elegant. of the antient critics has obferved, is fo neceffary to a pleafing flow of language, that the most elegant fymmetry of verfe cannot, in any lengthened feries, atone for the want of it. To combine variety with fymmetry has therefore been the great bufinefs of the inventors of both poetry and mufic. With this view was imagined the arrangement of cadences in fmall combinations, holding relation to each other, yet feparated each by fuch boundaries, and having each within itfelf fuch form, proportion, and felf-confiftency, that the ear, in perceiving the relation of each to the others, would also acknowlege each as a whole by itfelf. Such whole or integral, in poetry, forming a larger profodial measure, we call a VERSE; the kind, in the abstract, being defignated by the name verfe without the article; as we call our own ipecies, in the abstract, man, the individual a man.

In modern mufic, as the fmaller integrals, called bars, have more regularity than the cadences of modern poetry, fo the greater require generally lefs; tho perhaps not less than is allowed to that commonly called Pindaric verfe. The greater in

rather wants a

tegral, formerly termed a strain, name in modern ufe. In effect it is diftinguished by the close for fall, more or less complete, which gives it termination.

Rhythmi neque finem habent certum, neque ullum in contextu varietatem. Quinctil. Struct. Or. l. 9. c. 4.

Dion. Hal.