miliarising you with the perusal of the best models, I shall also spare you the tediousness of any preliminary discussions of the theoretical kind concerning the abstract nature of poetry in general, and its several species. Opportunities will be offered, as we proceed, of making some remarks on these points, with the advantage of immediate illustration by examples; the sole mode in which they can be rendered interesting. It is enough if you set out with the persua sion, that there is something in the measured succession of sounds called verse, which has in all nations and languages been found agreeable to the ear, and a means of impressing the sense of words upon the mind with peculiar force and sweetness. To assist you in acquiring an ear for the melody of verse, will therefore be the first object of my directions: but I reserve my practical commencement for a second letter; and in the meantime remain,

Yours very affectionately,

J. A.

[6]

LETTER II.

MY DEAR PUPIL,

As it is my wish as soon as possible to habituate your ear to the melody of versification, I shall totally disregard the chronological order in which the productions of English poetry have made their appearance, and at once introduce you to those perfect examples of the art, which necessarily imply many previous attempts. The poet, therefore, whom I shall first recommend to your notice is the correct and harmonious POPE, the master of the modern school of English versifiers; and I shall initiate you by the perusal of those of his works which will least occupy your attention on any other account than the music of their strains.

His "Pastorals" were a production of his early youth, formed upon models left us by the ancients, and aspiring to little more

than the praise of elegant imitation. In many respects they show the immature age of the writer, but not in their versification, which possesses a degree of excellence scarcely surpassed by himself in his mature performances. The measure is of the kind termed heroic, as being principally employed upon grave and elevated topics. In its most regular form, it consists of ten syllables, alternately short and long, constituting what in Greek and Latin poetry are called Iambic feet. You will perceive that the voice in general lays a light stress upon every other syllable, which produces a sort of undulating motion in the whole, resembling the flow of waves. This is a very simple melody, yet, when well managed, is sufficiently agreeable. I question not that you will immediately feel the sweetness of verses like these:

Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs along!
The birds shall cease to tune their evening song,
The winds to breathe, the waving woods to move,
And streams to murmur, ere I cease to love.

These Pastorals contain a great many

pretty lines, a general elegance and splen dour of diction, but very little original imagery. It is remarkable that a young poet, brought up in a rural retreat, should have viewed nature so little with his own eyes. But he was a very early student of poetry, and imitation took place in him of observation. He had, however, the good taste to make a selection of the most pleasing images; and the objects he paints, though common, are represented with truth and beauty. The bright touches of a poetical pencil are conspicuous in the following lines:

Where dancing sun-beams on the waters play'd,
And verdant alders form'd a quiv'ring shade.

Here, you see, superadded to the melody of numbers, that choice of appropriate circumstances which gives life and animation to description, and which is one of the essential qualities of poetry, though it also belongs to good writing in general.

The last of these pieces, the sacred eclogue of "Messiah," will doubtless strike

you as written in a more lofty strain than the rest. In fact, it deserts the scenery and sentiment proper to pastoral, and borrows its imagery and language from the sublime conceptions of the Hebrew bards. It was, indeed, a noble foretaste of what the young poet was destined to be, and showed that grandeur was not less his characteristic than elegance. It has been objected to Pope's versification, that he too uniformly concludes a sentence, or at least a clause, within the limits of a couplet, so that the stop regularly falls upon the second rhyming word. It is perhaps right that this should be the common structure of rhymed heroics, since it gives the clearest perception of the measure; yet to break it occasionally and with judgment, relieves the ear from a tiresome monotony. Of this a happy example is afforded in the following passage of the Messiah:

But lost, dissolv'd in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze
O'erflow thy courts,