sound an echo to the sense. He has read all our poets with particular attention to this delicacy of versification, and wonders at the supineness with which their works have been hitherto perused, so that no man has found the sound of a drum in this distich; "When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with fist instead of a stick ;"2 and that the wonderful lines upon honour and a bubble have hitherto passed without notice: "Honour is like the glassy bubble, Which cost philosophers such trouble; Where, one part crack'd, the whole does fly, In these verses, says Minim, we have two striking accommodations of the sound to the sense.1 It is impossible to utter the two lines emphatically without an act like that which they describe; bubble and trouble causing a momentary inflation of the cheeks by the retention of the breath which is afterwards forcibly emitted, as in the practice of blowing bubbles. But the greatest 1"'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense." Pope, Essay on Criticism, 1. 364. 2 Hudibras, i. I, II. 3 "Honour is like that glassy bubble That finds philosophers such trouble, Whose least part crack'd the whole does fly, -Ib., ii. 2, 385. 4 Minim here quotes the Rambler, No. 92:-"There is nothing in the art of versifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the sound to the sense." excellence is in the third line, which is crack'd in the middle to express a crack, and then shivers into monosyllables. Yet has this diamond laid neglected with common stones, and among the innumerable admirers of Hudibras the observation of this superlative passage has been reserved for the sagacity of Minim. No. 61. SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1759. M R. MINIM had now advanced himself to the zenith of critical reputation; when he was in the pit, every eye in the boxes was fixed upon him; when he entered his coffee-house, he was surrounded by circles of candidates, who passed their novitiate of literature under his tuition: his opinion was asked by all who had no opinion of their own, and yet loved to debate and decide; and no composition was supposed to pass in safety to posterity, till it had been secured by Minim's approbation. Minim professes great admiration of the wisdom and munificence by which the academies of the Continent were raised; and often wishes for some standard of taste, for some tribunal, to which merit may appeal from caprice, prejudice, and malignity. He has formed a plan for an academy of criticism, where every work of imagination may be read before it is printed, and which shall authoritatively direct the theatres what pieces to receive or reject, to exclude or to revive.1 Such an institution would, in Dick's opinion spread the fame of English literature over Europe, and make London the metropolis of elegance and politeness, the place to which the learned and ingenious of all countries would repair for instruction and improvement, where nothing would any longer be applauded or endured that was not conformed to the nicest rules, and finished with the highest elegance. Till some happy conjunction of the planets shall dispose our princes or ministers to make themselves immortal by such an academy, Minim contents himself to preside four nights in a week in a critical society selected by himself, where he is heard without contradiction, and whence his judgment is disseminated through the great vulgar and the small.2 When he is placed in the chair of criticism, he declares loudly for the noble simplicity of our ancestors, in opposition to the petty refinements, and ornamental luxuriance. Sometimes he is sunk in despair, and perceives false delicacy daily gaining ground, and sometimes brightens his countenance with a gleam of hope, and predicts the revival of the true sublime. He then 1 So Roscommon, Prior, Swift, and Tickell had each planned a Society or an Academy for "refining our language and fixing its standard."-Johnson's Works, v. 49; vii. 167; viii. 4, 202. 2 "Hence ye prophane; I hate ye all, Both the Great Vulgar, and the Small." -Cowley, Imitations of Horace, Odes iii. 1. fulminates his loudest censures against the monkish barbarity of rhyme1; wonders how beings that pretend to reason can be pleased with one line always ending like another; tells how unjustly and unnaturally sense is sacrificed to sound; how often the best thoughts are mangled by the necessity of confining or extending them to the dimensions of a couplet; and rejoices that genius has, in our days, shaken off the shackles which had encumbered it so long. Yet he allows that rhyme may sometimes be borne, if the lines be often broken, and the pauses judiciously diversified. 1 "Rhyme is the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance and constraint, to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them."Preface to Paradise Lost. "Rise, rise, Roscommon, see the Blenheim muse The dull constraint of monkish rhyme refuse." -Edmund Smith, quoted in Johnson's Dictionary. Dryden says that "Hannibal Caro freed himself from the shackles of modern rhyme....What rhyme adds to sweetness, it takes away from sense."-Dryden's Works, ed. 1821, xiv. 206. Warton, in his Essay on Pope, i. 192, speaks of "daring to throw off the bondage of rhyme." 2 Goldsmith, writing in this same year, 1759, differed from the great Minim. "From a desire in the critic of grafting the spirit of ancient languages upon the English have proceeded of late several disagreeable instances of pedantry. Among the number, I think, we may reckon blank We now see it used upon the most trivial occasions."-Present State of Polite Learning, ch. xi. Among the poets who had lately written in blank verse were Thomson, Watts, Dyer, Shenstone, Young, Akenside, and Lyttelton. verse. From blank verse he makes an easy transition to Milton, whom he produces as an example of the slow advance of lasting reputation. Milton is the only writer in whose books Minim can read for ever without weariness. What cause it is that exempts this pleasure from satiety he has long and diligently inquired, and believes it to consist in the perpetual variation of the numbers, by which the ear is gratified and the attention awakened.2 The lines that are commonly thought rugged and unmusical, he conceives to have been written to temper the melodious luxury of the rest, or to express things by a proper cadence: for he scarcely finds a verse that has not this favourite beauty; he declares that he could shiver in a hot-house when he reads that "the ground "Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire3; and that, when Milton bewails his blindness, the verse, "So thick a drop serene has quench'd these orbs," has, he knows not how, something that strikes him with an obscure sensation like that which he fancies would be felt from the sound of darkness, 1 Johnson differed from Minim in this. "None ever wished Paradise Lost longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure."-Johnson's Works, vii. 135. 2 Perhaps borrowed from The Rambler, No. 86. ante vol. i., p. 169. 3 The parching air, Burns frore," etc.-Paradise Lost, ii. 594. 4 "So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs." Johnson did not "verify his quotations." See Ib., iii. 25. |