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cies of rhymes; viz. such as are ad missible into verse, but are not of the best quality. These form a most extensive class; they are found in the works of all our poets, and into some of them they enter very largely. They are admissible; but they generally labour under some defect: either they want the proper correspondence of sound, or they are made of little insignificant words, or they are stale and hackneyed. Examples will be given of all these.

According to what has been already said of rhyme, it is evident that a word may fail of making an exact one, in three parts; first, in the letters which go before the vowel; second, in the vowel itself; third, in the letters (if any) that follow it. By failing in the first part, viz. by making no difference before the

vowel, the rhyme will be inadmissible, because it will be identical, or worse: a failure in either of the other parts may yet leave a rhyme which is passable, though defective. And as it is this particular defect, more than any other inaccuracy, which marks the rhymes of our poetry, it will not be unfit to enlarge upon this head; and, at the same time, to show what an extensive choice of rhymes our language is capable of supplying.

The vowel sounds in English, the long and short being divided, and the diphthongs included, amount to sixteen; we have, besides these, nineteen consonants; not, indeed, represented in the alphabet by as many characters, but making nineteen different sounds in combination with a vowel.

The long vowel sounds are:-a, as in psalm, of which the short is, a, as in Sam.

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There are then five vowels, each having two sounds; three vowels and three diphthongs, with one sound each, making in all sixteen.

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Now to make a round computation upon these letters: sixteen vowels being capable of forming syllables with nineteen consonants, each with each gives above three hundred for the sum; and this without including the syllables that might be made, if the vowel were followed by more than one consonant, or by none; which would increase the number to more than double. So that every writer, who sits down to compose in rhyme, has at least six hundred to take from; yet, notwithstanding this ample field for choice and variety, there will not be found one, among all our poets, who, within the compass of thirty rhymes, does not usually make some repetition; who cer

tainly does make it, upon an average taken of the whole of his works in rhyme.

To prove this assertion, which, perhaps, may surprise some readers, we will exhibit a specific account of such repetitions, and also of imperfect rhymes, taken from a considerable number of poets, the most celebrated, indeed, from Dryden to the present age. These we have pitched upon for two reasons; one, to obviate what otherwise might be objected, that such faults do not occur in our best versifiers; the other, to prevent young writers from being misled by examples of such high and deserved authority.

The table subjoined shows the

are in the margin, taken from the first sixty rhymes of the pieces there specified.

number of repeated rhymes, and of
those which are imperfect, in the
works of the authors, whose names
Pieces, Translations.
Dryden......Translation of Homer's Iliad, B. 1.
Pope.... .Do......

Authors.

Dryden.. ...Do....... Virgil's Æneid, B. 1..
Pitt.........Do.......

Rhymes repeated. Rhymes imperfect.
.18..
.24..

Rowe........Do.......Lucan's Pharsalia, B. 1.
Lewis. ......Do.......Statius's Theb. B. 1..
Fawkes..
......Do.......Apollon. Rhod. B. 1..
Grainger ....Do....... Tibullus, Eleg. 2d and 3d.
Francis.. .Do....... Horace, Epist. to Augustus..

.....

....

.24.

.18.

Hoole. .......Do,...... Tasso's Jerusal. Delivered, B. 1...22.
Mickle... ..Do....... Camoens's Lusiad. B. 1.....

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6

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14

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T. Warton...Oxford Verses to Pitt and to the Queen, do..16..
Beattie....... .Hares, do.......

Cowper ...Retirement, do....................
Sir W. Jones. Laura, do....

This selection has been made from pieces written in couplets, because, in such pieces, the rhymes being unconnected with other rhymes or lines, the versifier is less restricted in his choice than he would be if composing in any kind of stanza. The repetitions are, nevertheless, very frequent. In stating the imperfections, the smallest have been taken into account. They are, generally, a difference in the vowel sound; which, in most cases, is less offensive to the ear than a difference in the consonants. The imperfect rhymes in the extract from Pope's original piece are these: gross, moss; view, do; desert, heart; charron, buffoon; revere, star; impell'd, field; breast, east; retreat, great; and one identical, known, none.

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From a review of the abstract given above, it will appear that, in the points under consideration, our modern versifiers, to speak of them generally, have improved upon those of a century ago, with an exception to Swift alone; who, as a correct rhymer, has never been excelled by any.

The introduction of little insignificant words to make rhyme, is a neglect which is not often chargeable on our modern poets: it was very common before the beginning of the last century; nor do such rhymes appear to have been considered then as any imperfection. The instances are numerous:

Who with his word commanded all to be,
And all obey'd him, for that word was he:
Only he spoke, and every thing that is
From out the womb of fertile Nothing ris'.
Cowley.

A frequent rhyme in Waller is the word so, which has been noted and censured by Dr. Johnson:

Thy skilful hand contributes to our woe,
And whets those arrows which confound

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I leave the ladder, and its omen too.Why all these wars to win the book, if we Must not interpret for ourselves, but she? Hind and Panther, Part 2. They occur more frequently in his prologues and epilogues; but examples enough have been given; for they are not introduced for the purpose of censure, but only to show what, in the present day, ought to be avoided.

Another defect in this part of versification is the employment of such rhymes as are become hackneyed by overmuch use. What these rhymes are, is described and exemplified-by Pope he calls them "the sure returns of still-expected rhymes;" as in this couplet:

Where'er you find the cooling western breeze,

In the next line it whispers through the trees.-Essay on Criticism.*

There are some rhymes (and also some ends of verses) so hackneyed, that we might, at the first recital of them, do in the same manner as Demetrius Phalereus informs us the Athenians did sometimes, towards those orators who composed their speeches in studied and artificial periods.

The hearers were disgusted (says he), and being well aware how the sentence would end, they would often forestal the speaker, and utter it aloud." t

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In his prologues and epilogues, which are about forty, these two words rhyme above a dozen times. In the same pieces the term play occurs as naturally as stage, and is made as serviceable as a rhyme; for rhymes as any in the language. its termination in ay affords as many

Pope's Prologue to Cato is another instance in point. It consists of twenty-three couplets, in which we find these rhymes: stage, age; stage, rage; fate, state; draws, was; cause, laws; laws,

cause.

great, state;

It may happen that a writer shall that it appears hackneyed in his paruse a word to make rhyme so often

ticular works. This was remarked of Pope in his repeated rhyming with the term kings. A repetition of the same kind, much more frequent and censurable, may be seen in the poems of Churchill. These were all satirical; and, therefore, the author had continual occasion to speak of man. To rhyme with this he seldom had any word but plan; and these two are paired together at least fifty times in his verses.

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Her fate is whisper'd by the gentle breeze,
And told in sighs to all the trembling trees.

In some still evening, when the whispering breeze

Pants on the leaves, and dies upon the trees.-Fourth Pastoral.

The dying gales that pant upon the trees,

The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze.-Eloisa to Abelard.

+ Treatise de Elocut. sect. 15.

nants preceding the vowel: that is, consonants not of the same class, like these, b, p; d, t; c, g; f, v; s, z; which would rhyme in bit, pit; den, ten; come, gum; fan, van; seal, zeal, Such rhymes differ, indeed, in the sound preceding the vowel, and therefore, strictly taken, are regular; but the difference is so slight that they are not to be commended.*

The want of sufficient difference is likewise perceptible in such rhymes as bled, bed; pray, pay; where the second consonant is dropped, and both words begin with the same letter: but the rhymes, bled, led; pray, ray; are perfectly good, because the consonants with which they begin are different.

3. Such as are made by syllables that are long, and full-sounding, in preference to their opposites; among which last are the terminations of polysyllabic words. We refer to the

lines last quoted for an example; the second couplet of which, though the rhymes are regular and good, is yet inferior to the other, in that it has not such a long and full-sounding termination as is given by the diphthongs.

The observations of Mitford on this topic of good rhymes are wellworthy of attention. The substance of them, extracted from his Treatise on the Harmony of Language, will be found below. We are not to expect that such good and approved rhymes as have been here described should constitute the major part in any composition. The difficulty of rhyming well, and the propriety of sacrificing what is ornamental (as rhyme) to what is more important, may always plead for as much indulgence as can be granted, without a gross violation of its necessary rules. C.

* In the words sound and resound, the difference of the s is very plainly to be heard; yet our writers of the present day avoid taking them together, and prefer rebound for a rhyme to the first; though it seldom expresses their sense so well. But Dryden more than once rhymes with the words serve and deserve, where the same letter, with the same dif ference, occurs:

Theirs is the toil, and he, who well has served
His country, has his country's wealth deserved.

Sigismunda and Guiscardo.

Dr. Johnson, in one of his poems, has used a very uncommon rhyme a
Such bribes the rapid Greek o'er Asia whirl'd,
For such the steady Roman shook the world.

Vanity of Human Wishes.

One of these words is aspirated and the other not; so that here is a difference; and, therefore, both these couplets are to be acknowledged for legitimate rhymes: but they make the nearest approaches to identity that can be allowed, or, indeed, that can be uttered.

+"According to our preceding definitions, euphony and cacophony, in language, mean sound, pleasing and unpleasing. English speech has rarely any material caco phony in the middle of words, but in terminations it too certainly abounds. A welleared poet will avoid cacophony in rhymes, and in the conspicuous parts, especially the last syllable, of any verse. Pope has had general credit for what are called rich rhymes; though his higher respect, justly directed to that powerful closeness of phrase, in which he singularly excels, has led him to admit some rhymes rather cacophonous, The word king is certainly not euphonous, nor of dignified sound: the vowel is short and close, and the following consonant, one consonant expressed by two characters, the most cacophonous in our pronunciation. Whether it was for the dignity of the idea conveyed, or for the opposite quality of the sound, that Pope chose it for the first rhyme of his Essay on Man, with cacophony doubled by an added s, appears doubtful. He has, indeed, not scrupled the termination in ing, for the first rhyme of his translation of the Iliad but the example is not to be recommended. Terminations in a long vowel, or a liquid consonant preceded by a long vowel, will be most euphonous. The termination in a liquid consonant preceded by a short vowel, though less rich, will make a pleasant variety. That of a mute preceded by a long vowel will be wholly unobjectionable, rich without any cacophony, if a vowel begin the following word, as in the first verse of Paradise Lost. These, however, would, in our language, be limits too narrow for the poet and the ear practised in our versification will take no offence at the conclusion of the second line of Paradise Lost, where a long vowel is followed by two consonants within the same syllable, and two consonants begin the next verse. The judicious poet, however, will be sparing of such accumulation of consonants," Sect. 16, second edition,

M. TULLII CICERONIS DE RE PUBLICA QUÆ SUPERSUNT.
EDENTE ANGELO MAIO, VATICANÆ BIBLIOTHECÆ PRÆFECTO."

WHEN the rapid disappearance of manuscripts, containing the most admired productions of classical antiquity, had excited the alarm of a few scholars in Europe, none of them was sought for with more avidity and less success than the Dialogues of Cicero on a Commonwealth. That a treasure which had escaped the diligent researches of Petrarch in the fourteenth, and of Poggio in the fifteenth century, should at this distance of time be recovered, even in part, is an occurrence equally fortunate and extraordinary.

Some of our readers may not, perhaps, be aware of a practice which in the middle ages contributed, among other causes, to deprive the literary world of its most valuable possessions. This was the custom of erasing what had been already written on parchments, in order to make them fit for use a second time. To materials thus prepared the name of palimpsest was given in the age of Cicero himself. In the instance before us, a parchment, on which the Dialogues on a Commonwealth had been inscribed, according to the editor's conjecture, as early perhaps as the second century, was employed as a palimpsest for Saint Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms. The

first letters, however, in defiance of the washing or scraping which they underwent, were not so far effaced but that they still remain, for the most part, legible; and had not the parchment been, in other respects, roughly handled, so as to accommodate it to its new purpose, without any regard to the old one, by placing the sheets in a different order, folding them in other creases, and cutting down the margins, the labours of the decypherer and editor would have been much lessened. As it is, he tells us that it sometimes takes a good hour to make out a line, or even a single word; and that it is necessary to wait for a fine day, in order that the scrutiny may be pursued with the advantage of a full sunlight. To add to these difficulties, a great portion of this manuscript of Augustine's Commentary, and consequently of the Dialogues over which it was written, has been lost. That which remains of them being, as the editor supposes, a fourth part; or, if we include the fragments which he has collected from other writers, a third part of the whole, ought to be received with gratitude, both as a precious boon in hand, and a happy omen of what hereafter may be expected from similar sources.

* Impressum Roma; denuo impressum Londini; impensis J. Mawman, 1823. +From the two Greek words záku nordy, wiped, or rubbed, over again.

We learn from the preface that this palimpsest was brought, with other manuscripts, from the monastery at Bobbio, to the Vatican, and, as the editor supposes, about the beginning of the seventeenth century; at the time when Cardinal Frederic Borromeo purchased at a great expense several manuscripts from the same religious house for the Ambrosian library at Milan. From these latter, in the year 1814, the editor, who was then attached to the Ambrosian library, as he is now superintendent of the Vatican, published “M. Tullii Ciceronis Sex Orationum Fragmenta inedita, cum Commentariis antiquis item ineditis. Invenit, recensuit, notis illustravit, Angelus Maius, Bibliothecæ Ambrosianæ, a Linguis Orientalibus." This has been re-published by Mr. Mawman, with a few additional remarks by C. J. B. (Dr. Blomfield, the learned editor of Eschylus). The fragments have scarcely enough in them to engage the attention of any except scholars. The most curious thing in the book is a sentence from a speech, by C. Gracchus, at p. 77. The editor's rapture when he discovered these relics was so hearty, that we cannot read his description of it without partaking his feelings. See p. 12 of his Preface. The Benedictine Monastery of Bobbio, in Liguria, amongst the Apennines, was founded by Saint Columbanus, in 612. In the tenth century, Gerbert, who was afterwards Pope Silvester the Second, and whose uncommon learning caused him to be taken for a conjuror, was made Abbot. Muratori (Antiq. Ital. Med. Ev. T. 3, Dissert. 43, p. 818) has given a catalogue of the library, supposed to be drawn up about that date. There is now preparing, a catalogue of all the Bobbio manuscripts scattered over Italy. "Porro Bobiensium codicuin, quotquot ubilibet in Italia sunt, exoptatum catalogum a clarissimo viro Amedeo Peyrono propediem expectare licet."-Preface to the Republ. p. 25.

APRII, 1823.

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