lO 



numbers." " Hac ratione non ornatui tantum, fed et verborum confu- 

 litur copi^," CDe Vir. Cant. J. In which fulnefs the language of every 

 nation, whereof we have any knowlege, delights to exprefs itfelf, be- 

 fore it lofes its charafter, and ambles into profe. If, then, the parent 

 poetry, which is only the parent language of mankind, divcrfified and 

 branched out into an infinity of channels, does court and acknowledge the 

 rhime, to that fountain, and that fountain alone, mufl; we refort for its 

 origin; though we cannot, for that very rcafon, thence deduce its pro- 

 grefs, without deducing, at the fame time, the progrefs of language with 

 it ; a fubjeft for which this effay is not defigned. And thus we may 

 conclude, that what the fountain poffeffes, the ftream inherits ; and like 

 the river of the poet, fiiall continue to flov/ as eternally as language 

 itfelf ; that univerfal voice of nature, varied by certain local habits and 

 circumftances, yet always the fame ; refembling the copious and abun- 

 dant Nile, that flender at its fource, but winding into innumerable mazes, 

 and enriched in its progrefs with tributary rivers, is ftill the Nile ; till 

 through its numerous mouths it difcharges its agglomerated waters into 

 the immenfity of ocean. 



Neither will this be found to militate againfl: the argument, that the 

 Greeks and the Romans excluded rhime from their poetry : it only proves 

 that daftyles and fpondees, with their complex varieties of long and fliort 

 feet, did not ea/i!y admit the rhime ; and that tranfpofition does not fa- 

 vor the teleutic harmony : for the fame reafon, that other languages, not 

 admitting the Greek and Roman quantities, receive the rhime with eafe, 

 and make it a part of their poetry. Yet , we fhall prefently fee, in the ex- 

 ample of Theocritus, that where the Ntmo., or nenia, provoked it, that 

 is, where nature invited, and called for it, (fuch as hath been obferved in 

 the cafe of infants that lifp the rhime, and in the la la fongs noticed by 

 Lucian, ^a?,a vxiSiy-c iwiifStyfia, F/jilopfeud.) even the Greek itfelf could fteal 

 it upon the ear. We fliall hear the Grecian nurfe mod mufically foothing 

 her little children with its harmony ; not perhaps ufing the direft 'o^oioTi^Et-™ 

 but yet the ^Oi^otmr^ro, -, which, the cadence confidered, amounts to the 

 fame thing, and produces the fame happy eifeft. 



And 



