almost every verse must be something of a pause; and it is but seldom that a sentence begins in the middle.  Though this seems to be the advantage of blank verse over rhime, yet we cannot entirely condemn the use of it, even in a heroic poem; nor absolutely reject that in speculation, which.  Mr. Dryden and Mr. Pope have enobled by their practice.  We acknowledge too, that in some particular views, what way of writing has the advantage over this.  You may pick out mere lines, which, singly considered, look mean and low, from a poem in blank verse, than from one in rhime, supposing them to be in other respects equal.  For instance, the following verses out of Milton’s Paradise Lost, b. ii.

  Of Heav’n were falling, and these elements—­
  Instinct with fire, and nitre hurried him—­

taken singly, look low and mean:  but read them in conjunction with others, and then see what a different face will be set upon them.

  —­Or less than of this frame
  Of Heav’n were falling, and these elements
  In mutiny had from her axle torn
  The stedfast earth.  As last his sail-broad vans
  He spreads for flight; and in the surging smoke
  Uplifted spurns the ground—­
  —­Had not by ill chance
  The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud
  Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
  As many miles aloft.  That fury stay’d;
  Quench’d in a boggy syrtis, neither sea,
  Nor good dry land:  night founder’d on he fares,
  Treading the crude consistence.

Our author has endeavoured to justify his choice of blank verse, by shewing it less subject to restraints, and capable of greater sublimity than rhime.  But tho’ this observation may hold true, with respect to elevated and grand subjects, blank verse is by no means capable of so great universality.  In satire, in elegy, or in pastoral writing, our language is, it seems, so feebly constituted, as to stand in need of the aid of rhime; and as a proof of this, the reader need only look upon the pastorals of Virgil, as translated by Trapp in blank verse, and compare them with Dryden’s in rhime.  He will then discern how insipid and fiat the pastorals of the same poet are in one kind of verification, and how excellent and beautiful in another.  Let us give one short example to illustrate the truth of this, from the first pastoral of Virgil.

  MELIBAEUS.

  Beneath the covert of the spreading beech
  Thou, Tityrus, repos’d, art warbling o’er,
  Upon a slender reed, thy sylvan lays: 
  We leave our country, and sweet native fields;
  We fly our country:  careless in the shade,
  Thou teachest, Tityrus, the sounding groves
  To eccho beauteous Amaryllis’ name.

  TITYRUS.

  O Melibaeus, ’twas a god to us
  Indulged this freedom:  for to me a god
  He shall be ever:  from my folds full oft
  A tender lamb his altar shall embrue: 
  He gave my heifers, as thou seest, to roam;
  And me permitted on my rural cane
  To sport at pleasure, and enjoy my muse,