with Dublin. But what will you say to this instance from a living poet, no less than gentle Campbell himself: Erin with repairing? which, you see, is rather worse than that of robin with sobbing in the nursery chant of Cock Robin. W. This licentious kind of rhyme is, if I mistake not, in some degree sanctioned by the orthoepist WALKER, who, in the preface to his Pronouncing Dictionary, would make it appear, that the final consonant in many of the participles ending in ing is suppressed by the politest speakers. A. I know not how that may be in ENGLAND, but with us it is considered, and justly, a mark of vulgarity. However, here is POPE himself. You see he brings Hellen and compelling into unison. W. That is an unfortunate instance, ERNEST; for you yourself have made dwelling rhyme with Ellen, in one of your odes. A. Yes, to my regret. I had the couplet thus: "And o'er the dewy heather We took our way together;" but actually being ignorant whether heather could possibly suit the locality of the poem, I was compelled to admit a barbarism that is sanctioned by usage; it being better to offend in rhyme than in reason. W. But there is a bolder innovation still, which you have made in rhymes. W. Yes, you put that name in consonance with storm. I recollect the lines: "And her large eyes grew black with threaten'd storm To Baron MAXIMILIAN MIRTENBAUM." A. I do so, because I suppose that Mirtenbaum will be pronounced by every reader as if the last syllable were written bawm; just, in fact, as you have done it this very moment. Now will you please to sound storm for me by itself? not as an IRISHMAN, nor as an ITALIAN, but as a well-bred inhabitant of LONDON, or as an AMERICAN would give it. There! Can you tell me what difference there is between this orm and awm? You cannot; for you cannot, without effort, make the difference perceptible, in a moderately quick enunciation. It is a difference rather for the eye than for the ear; and I defy a foreigner to detect any want of unison between aw and or, except they be pronounced with an effort that is intended to mark the distinction, or except an IRISHMAN, or a SCOTCHMAN, or a native of the north of ENGLAND be the speaker. That I have not used such a rhyme from necessity is evident from the fact that the name is one of mere fancy, and that I could have accommodated the gallant Baron with any other title than that significative of the plant of Venus. W. But now I think of it, you have also made Chaucer rhyme with coarser. A. That is true. And the very fact that I was not aware of having done so, shows you how very nearly perfect must be the accord. But suppose, for argument, that the rhyme be really defective; how its deformity will shrink before the greater unshapeliness of such as these which I will show you from eminent poets. BYRON has any ill in unison with spaniel, (making the latter a trisyllable,) ideal and real with steal (making steal a dissyllable, or converting the two former words into monosyllables.) W. But BYRON, one of the most irregular and incorrect of poets, can hardly be expected to deviate into order and rule in his rhymes, especially in his comic poems. A. No; but in his version of DANTE'S Francesca, which is nowise comic, except in its rudeness, we have, in the very first tercet, seas rhyming with peace, as though this were pronounced like pease, the vegetable. Let us then take up the most correct of all English poets, and the most classical. This, I need not say, is POPE. You will find that his serious as well as his lighter compositions are not free from such defects. Here, in the Essay on Criticism, is delight in consonance with wit, and again, light with the same. Then in the Essay on lii THE PRESENT VOLUME: EPIGRAM XV. Man, we have sincere with where, cowl with fool, and succeeds with spreads. GRAY too, in the Long Story, would have clothing rhyme with nothing, between which words there is clearly no accord whatever. But it were idle to pursue this subject. Have you no further consolation to extend to me? W. On what? your poerns? None. You know with you, "I am nothing if not critical." Therefore I must ask you, what necessity impels you to the publication of that fifteenth Epigram, and that other, which you call an Epitaph? A. For the first, I will answer you as I did my publishers, (that are to be,) when on three several occasions they remonstrated with me upon the insertion of that piece. I see a person in the cominunity who, from his quarrelsome disposition, has obtained an authority through the timidity or the prudence of the many, which it were a libel on humanity to say he could ever have gained by the solidity of his character or by the weight of his judgment. This man I had not only spared in the Vision of Rubeta, where so many of his betters, less deserving of a notice, were put upon the moral rack, but had even slightly commended (however injudiciously, as I soon discovered,) being induced thereto by a motive of fancied obligation which is known to you, and which at no distant day, will be explained to the public. How this forbearance, or direct kindness, has been requited, through mere bravade, I need not repeat to you, and the foot of my intended volume will testify to others. Now, besides the duty which I feel it to be mine to expose to contempt this person, if I can, I owe it to myself, that I should not be thought to make any distinction between those who do not openly bear weapons and those who thrust them occasionally in the very face of the community. W. But that you have done in other places. A. Mere by-blows. This is levelled full at him, and with all my force. Besides, would you have a poet's reason? I would not omit that epigram, as I told the Messrs. APPL- -N, alle lor concezioni mercantesche il mio ragionamento adattando, INDEPENDENCE OF THOUGHT IN THE U. STATES. liii if you would count me out a hundred dollars for every letter in it, and a thousand to boot for every line. It is my darling. Do you understand me? W. And for this vanity... Excuse me. A. Go on. Think you I am ashamed to hear my trade called by its name? What does a poct ever publish for, but vanity? for what is ambition? W. Well, and for this ambition, you would... A. Bah! no more. Poco duri, purchè m'innalzi. But, to sum up all that you and my publishers have to say on this, and other pieces like it in the volume, I tell you, that it is time that some one should assert, in this republic, the independence of opinion. Where is it to be found as yet? Where? Are there ten persons in this large city of NEW YORK that dare to say their right hand is their right, if the public press shall swear it is their left- as it is very likely to do? We are retrograding, W- ; and the liberty of the press, which should be the bulwark of freedom, has confined that freedom to a single set, which makes a tyranny as oppressive to the mind, as the despotism of monarchs is to the body. We flourish indeed in wealth and in strength; we have bread to eat and clothes to put upon our back; but we dare not think: the public press proclaims its rash and ignorant opinions, and the people tamely echo them; and the great republic stands still, or totters to its centre, according as a plentiful meal or a political disappointment may satisfy the stomach or discompose the temper of its thousand tyrants. But I am getting warm. Let me read to you what a foreigner says of us. I copied it for the very purpose of one day citing the passage. "In AMERICA, the majority "... But first, you will please to bear in mind, that "the majority" receives its opinions ready-manufactured. It is therefore to the public press that you are to apply the language of Mr. De Tocqueville. "In AMERICA, the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion. Within these barriers, an author may write whatever he pleases; but he will repent it, if he ever step beyond them. Not I should think, of the whole; and even of that much is occasional, and it occurs at considerable intervals. W. And it is on that account, as well as from the variety of the work, that I anticipate for it a greater popularity than has attended the Vision. Vincon la niquità che fuor mi serra Del bello ovile ov' io dormii agnello, W. And amen to that! for I know to what you allude. — But I have sat out the day, ERNEST, and have finished your claret. A. And what then? If that be all that drives you off, we can have lights, and there in the hearth is the other bottle, which, by the by, you have made me quite forget. W. O thank you. Do you know that I have been here two good hours? A. Yet, how short the time has seemed! at least to me. And even so brief — will appear the fame for which I labor, supposing that I should obtain it. See, my friend, the clouds have lost their lovely colors, and the whole horizon is mixing into one, the birds have long since ceased their song, the very breeze has died away, and the flowers are no longer distinguishable in shape or in tint from the commonest weeds that grow. W. Yes, but far west, ERNEST, in the world far west, the sun is yet high in heaven, perhaps has but begun his course, (1) DANTE. Par. xxv., with a few verbal alterations :- |
