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This however flicws only the fport of cloiftered dullnefs, pofleffing no 

 better refuge from unbroken apathy ; the gambols of a dormoufe catch- 

 ing at its own tail, and for the fame reafon, the rhime being abhor- 

 rent to the Roman language, (as the monkifh latin itfelf proves it to 

 have been,) it fell into difefteem and difufe, the very moment that tafte 

 and correfted judgment had flicwn that the ftrufture of the language 

 refifted the rhime, and wrcftled with it as unnatural ; while the rhime 

 as naturally formed a part of, and fliU continues to hold its place in, 

 thofe languages, which grew out of the corrupted Latin, that folicited 

 the rhime, for the fame reafon the pure Latin refufed to receive it, all 

 which languages formed themfelves pretty much about the fame time : 

 for with the lofs of Roman liberty, and the confcqucnt fall of that 

 mighty empire, fell its language, giving birth to new tongues, like thofe 

 of the confufion, that gradually fettled in diftinft dialeds. Nor was 

 it long before thefe tongues molded themfelves into rhime, as if by 

 common confent, not borrowing it of the Goths, as some have fup- 

 pofed, and adopting it, as of violence, after the manner of the monks, 

 but yielding to it, as of necejjtty, fome fooner and others later, accord- 

 ing to the degree of inverfion and the tranfpofitive turn, that each 

 language happened to take ; that is, as each refpe<ftive tongue par- 

 took more or lefs of the genius and conformation of the Latin : and 

 this is ftrongjy exemplified in the modern French, whofe conftruftion, 

 while it abounds in words formed from the Latin, refembles the Hebrew 

 more perhaps than any other language, the words following one ano- 

 ther in the fame temperate and natural order. Hence it happens, its 

 tranfpofitives being but few or none, the language not only receives 

 the rhime with eafe, but in mofl cafes requires it : for, excepting thofe 

 of Ronfard about the middle of the fixteenth century, and fome few 

 others his contemporaries of lefs note, whofe poetry has defervedly 

 been rejected for its hypallages and other affefted Latinifms, the whole 

 of the French poetry is of the firaplefl: conftruftion ; and from the 

 lime of Marot, a period that embraces nearly three hundred years, 



it 



