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of which fort of phrafe may be found in all the writers of that age, by 

 thofe who are curious after this fort of learning. From them and the 

 intermediate improvers of our poetry, which may be traced at large in 

 the ancient fongs and ballads collefted by feveral ingenious hands, I (hall 

 pafs on to our Spencer, who continued the ancient ftanza with its rhimes, 

 and the allegories that grew out of the proven9al fongs. The mufe of 

 Shakefpeare feems to have (truck out a new mode of verfifying for her- 

 felf, fuftained more by the vigour of fuperior genius than by any innate 

 ftrength at that time in the language; though it muft be confefled that 

 the two Earls of Howard, in the time of the lad Henry, had done 

 much to give a mafculiue turn to our poetry, while they fmoothed its af- 

 perities, and gave it a large portion of that mufic and harmony it now enjoys. 

 After Shakefpeare, Milton " broke the bondage," as he calls it. 

 But it (hould be obferved, that to attain his objeft, the Britilh Homer 

 found it necefTary to invert the order of the language, by caufing his 

 Mufe to fpeak a new dialect. Neither fliould it be forgotten, that our 

 poetic language had not at that time alfumed the regulated form that 

 Waller difcovered to be its true genius, that Dryden confirmed, and the 

 immortal Pope has harmonized with a grace and a mufic that have not 

 yet been equalled, and probably will never be furpaffed. When I read 

 Milton, I do not feel at eafe, for I am not reading my native tongue : it is 

 Greek, it is Latin, it is both, it is all three, Greek, Latin and Englifli heaped 

 together, like the mountains of his own devils. Like the earth he defcribes, his 

 poem fuftains itfelf by its own ponderofity : lefembling the clock of fome 

 ancient and venerable abbey, whofe chimes have been filenced ; but whofe 

 vaft and complicate machinery, pnderibus libratafuis, performs all its move- 

 ments in exaft time. The dignity of his fubjeft, aided by the vaftnefs of his 

 genius and learning, alone enabled him to fupport a flight, that had broken 

 the heart of an inferior poet. Of this we have a (triking proof in the mife- 

 rablc Miltonicsof Addifon, whofe mufe, however, fported gracefully enough 

 in the rhime that was natural to her. If aught could^ have infpired 

 him out of rhime, he had furely kindled his torch at a fublime palTage 

 in the Roman bard, which himfelf had felefted, as the touchftone of 



his 



