the very name nomai (laws) by which some of the early popular songs were distinguished. In short, the Germans, the Spaniards, and even the Swedes, had both their antient records and their antient laws in verse. A gentleman, who had seen more of savage life than any man I ever knew, assured me that all the savage nations had their songs adapted to a rude music; and that the common subjects of these songs were love and war. Hence I think we have very clearly the ori gin not only of poetry, but even of numbers or metre. Music was early found to be the most fascinating vehicle for sentiment. The poetry was composed to the music, and not the music to the words, as in modern times. Hence the absolute necessity of metre or rhyme, or something which should correspond with the musical cadence; hence the invention of all the different antient metres; and hence we may lay it down as a maxim that metre of some kind is essential to poetry... The origin of poetry will explain to us the nature of the style which is appropriated to it, and indeed all its peculiar qualities. It was before men had learned to reason, that they ap plied themselves to poetry. There was therefore nothing for them to address but the senses and the passions. Music itself might almost be termed a sensual enjoyment; when with music therefore was combined all the information that men were capable of receiving in that stage of society, the heroic actions, or miraculous achievements of their ancestors, the entertainment must have been delightful. Still the expression must be such as to excite and engage the passions. The superstition always attached to so early a stage in the history of man, will also account for that alliance with the wonderful, the supernatural, which poetry has always claimed and hence the origin' of poetical machinery. The very poverty of language at this early period, aided by the vividness of an imagination that had none of the polished haunts of men to dwell in, and nothing but the solitude of woods and groves in which to rove, would naturally lead to a language and expression highly figurative and metaphorical. Hence you have all the ingredients and characteristics of poetry; and hence it may be defined "a metrical composition chiefly addressed to the passions, occasionally enriched by machinery, or at least by the introduction of the supernatural, and expressed in highly figurative language.' This definition, however, though the best that I am able to offer in a general way, is still very - imperfect, for it does not embrace what is almost the spirit and essence of poetry. Since it is so difficult therefore to form a definition, let us seek for an etymology? A poem is the production of the imagination or fancy: hence it was originally termed poema (a creation) and the writers were called poietai (makers). Not that every thing contained in a poem was supposed to be a new invention, for that could not be true, and particularly of descriptive poems; but the composition as a whole might be regarded more strictly as an effort of the invention than the detail of facts or arguments, than the records of history, or the reasonings of the logician. I have defined a poem to be a metrical com. position; but I am not going to send you back to your grammar, to descant on the quantities of syllables, to give rules to know a dactyl, a spondee, an iambic, &c. These you have already learned in your prosody. But there is one distinction between the antient and modern languages, which it becomes necessary to point out. Harmony is an essential part of poetry; but the harmony of antient and modern verse depends upon very different principles. The antient languages were distinguished by what is called quantity; the same combinations of letters always formed either long or short syllables; and by a certain arrangement of these the most perfect harmony could be produced. Modern languages, on the contrary, are defective with respect to the quantity of syllables, the same syllable being sometimes long and sometimes short. Some critics indeed have denied that we have any quantity at all, and say we have only accent, that is, a certain stress laid upon a particular syllable, as attribute, conjécture, compláin, &c. In this however I do not coincide: for a perusal of our best prose writers will convince any one with a good ear that we have quantity, and that on the tasteful and musical admixture of long and short syllables much of the harmony of those writers depends; as I endeavoured to prove in a former letter. Whatever may be said of our iambics too, it must be allowed that we, as well as the French, have a dactyl measure, and Dr. Watts, as I recollect, has composed in it some short pieces without rhyme. Yet I must confess that, in the bulk of our poetry, and in our heroic verse in particular, more attention is given to accent than to quantity. From these defects in our numbers, and to afford us that regular return of the same sound, which seems to constitute the music of verse, modern poets have called in the aid of rhyme; without which, whether it arises from habit or from principle, very little modern poetry can please, or satisfy the ear. Our English verse then is regulated rather by the number of syllables than of feet, for you will find in what we call our iambic verse, very little attention is paid to the quantity of the syllables, and even some degree of negligence in this respect seems often to add to its beauty and variety; and it depends for its harmony on the rhyme, and on the pause, which divides the line into two hemistichs or half verses, and seems to give the reader time to breathe, as "Awake my St. John-leave all meaner things |