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few arguments in favour of the irregular ode. In the firft place, 

 it has the fandion of claflic authority to recommend it ; the 

 antients, our great, and indeed inimitable maflers in poetry, 

 they, who impofed every neceffary curb on the wayward imagi- 

 nation, and were not often guilty of wild or jejune writing, the 

 illuftrious antients loved and pradifed this fpecies of compo- 

 fition. The moft celebrated and fublime of Pindar's works were 

 irregular odes, I mean his Dithyrambics ; on thefe, though they 

 have unfortunately periflied in the wreck of time, his reputation 

 as a poet was moft effentially founded. We have the fuffrage 

 of as good a critic as he was a poet, both as to their merit and 

 their bold irregularity : 



Seu per audaces nova Dithyrambos 

 Verba devolvit, Numerifque fertur 

 Lege folutis. 



Horace. 



The antient grammarians and critics recognize the polymetra 

 and pammetra of the antients, in which verfes of all different 

 meafures were employed, without any uniform order or con- 

 nexion. Claudian, Terentianus Maurus, and Martianus Ca- 

 pellus, have all written lyric poems, each of which takes in a 

 variety of different ftanzas ; that of Claudian was written on the 

 marriage of the Emperor Honorius. If we are to believe an 

 ingenious French critic *, the fecular ode of Horace was an ir- 

 regular one, or to fpeak more corredly, a multiform lyric, em- 

 bracing a free variety of different ftanzas. Whether the con- 



Sanadon. 



jedure 



