as well as modern writers: a happy arrangement of dactyles and spondees was as much trouble to them, as our rhymes and hemistics are to us, and the task, no doubt, must have been laborious, fince we find the Æneid, after eleven years toil, was not even then brought to perfection. Mr. de la Motte affirms, that, at least, a tragedy put into prose will lofe no part of its ftrength or beauty. To prove this, he has himself profified the firft fcene of Mithridates, and nobody can bear to read it he does not confider, that the true merit of ' verfe is to be as natural and correct as profe: it is the furmounting this great difficulty, that gives every good judge fuch exquifite pleasure; but reduce them to prose, and there is no longer any merit or any fatisfaction in them. But our neighbours, says he, never write tragedies in rhime: true; but they are notwithstanding in verse, because harmony is agreeable to every nation. It only remains then to determine, whether our verses should be in rhime or not. Corneille and Racine wrote in rhime. If we are defirous of ftriking into a new path, it is not so much perhaps from our love of novelty, as because we find ourselves unable to keep up with these great men in the old one. The English and Italians may do without rhime, as their language has more variety, and their poetry a thoufand thousand more liberties than ours. The genius and power of every language is determined by the peculiar conftruction of its phrafes, the number of its vowels and confonants, its inverfions, its auxiliary verbs, &c. Elegance and perfpicuity are the diftinguishing characteristics of the French tongue; we allow no licence to our poetry, which is obliged, like our profe, to follow the precife order of our ideas; we are therefore under the absolute necessity of employing the repetition of the fame founds, to prevent our poetry being confounded with our profe. The following verfes are well known. Où me cacher? fuyons dans la nuit infernale. But if we read them thus, Où me cacher? fuyons dans la nuit infernale. Mais que dis-je ?, mon pere y tient l'urne funeste : Le fort, dit on, l'a mife en fes feveres mains; Minos juge aux enfers tous les pâles mortels. How poetical foever this may be, will it give us the fame pleasure when thus put out of rhime? The En glish and Italians would fay, after the Greeks and Romans, Pale mortals Minos in the shades doth judge; Or perhaps run the sense gracefully into the next verse. Add to this, that their manner of repeating verses expreffes the long or fhort fyllables, and thus preserves the harmony without the affiftance of rhime; but why should we, who have none of these advantages, part from those few, which the nature of our language has bestowed upon us? M. de la Motte compares our poets, that is to fay, Corneille, Racine and Defpreaux, to the makers of acrofticks, and to a mountebank that draws millet through the eye of a needle; and adds, that all these puerilities have no merit, but what arises from the difficulty that attends the performance of them. I acknowledge that bad verses are nothing more than this; they only differ from bad prose in the rhime, and rhime alone can never constitute the merit of the poet, nor the pleasure of the reader. It is not the dactyles and spondees of Virgil and Homer that delight us; it is the enchanting harmony, which arifes from the perfection of this very difficult measure. He who endeavours to overcome a difficulty, merely to have the merit of overcoming it, is a fool; but he that that can draw forth, even from thefe very obftacles, beauties, that will please univerfally, must be a wife and fenfible man, and indeed almost fingular. It is a very arduous task to make good pictures, good statues, good mufic, or good verfes; and the names of thofe illuftrious men, therefore, who have been able to perform this tafk, will remain, perhaps, much longer than the kingdoms where they were born. I might take this opportunity of difputing with Mr. de la Motte with relation to fome other points; but this might carry with it the air of a personal attack upon him, and lay me open to the fufpicion of malignity, which I am as far from entertaining, as I am from adopting his fentiments. I had much rather avail myself of the many fine and judicious reflections scattered over his works, than engage in the refutation of fome of them, which appeared to me more controvertible than others. I am fatisfied with endeavouring to defend an art which I love, and which he himself ought to have defended. I will only add a word (with leave of Mr. de la Faye) concerning the ode in favour of harmony, where that gentleman attacks Mr. de la Motte's fyftem in fome very fine verfes, which are answered by him in profe. In the following ftanzas Mr. de la Faye has collected almost all the arguments, which I have here made ufe of, with great force of imagination, and in charming poetry: Rules feem fevere, and yet are but the art I never met with a comparison more juft, more elegant, or better expreffed. Mr. de la Motte, who should have answered these verses by imitating them, fets himself about examining, whether the pipes are the cause of the waters rifing, or whether it is the heighth from whence it falls that determines the degree of its elevation. Befides (fays he) where • fhall we find in verfe, more than in profe, this extraordinary depth of thought, &c.' I am afraid Mr. de la Motte is mistaken, confidered in the light of a philofopher, because it is certain, that without that constraint of the water from the pipes, it would never rife at all, from whatever heighth it fell. But is he not still more mistaken as a poet? How came he not to perceive, that as the reftriction of the measure of verfes produces a harmony agreeable to the ear, fo does that narrow receptacle which confines the water produce a jet-d'eau that is pleafing |