776 
least, not-practised that harmony of 
period which results from natural 
and unaffected case, the variety of 
pause, the mixture of simple and 
ornamented, of weaker and more 
nervous lines. He generally termi- 
nates the sense with a couplet, and 
rests his pauses on the even feet, 
most commonly on the 4th syllable, 
a practice grating to a musical ear. 
Throughout his pentameters, he has 
but one triplet, and scarcely an 
alexandrine. He seems injudiciously 
to have copied Dryden, in terminat- 
ing a verse witha trisyllable, which 
will hardly bear the accent on the 
last syllable, and in making the 
verse so formed the leading verse 
of the couplet: as 
“ Like Greece in science and in liberty.” 
The same defect, as to the music 
of his versification, appears in his 
blank verse, in which the happiest 
occasional pause is on the eighth 
syllable; but which Wartgn has 
rarely adopted. _ In his earlier lau- 
reat odes the lines are often rug- 
ged, the construétion harsh, and the 
rhymes awkwardly disposed ; faults 
which he correéted as he advanced, 
till he at length attained a very great 
degree of lyrical harmony. ‘These 
remarks on the defeéts of Warton’s 
versification, must not, however, 
be understood as extending to the 
‘¢ Suicide,” or to his several odes 
in the eight-syllable verse, which 
are uniformly sweet. Yet it has 
been objected to him that the fre- 
quent mixture of regular trochaics — 
of seven Syllables, and iambics of 
eight, is a defect; but he has 
the authority of Milton and Gray, 
aud, without reference to the inter- 
change of measures in the Greek 
lyric poetry, it may be added, that, 
in our pentameter, which is strictly 
{ 1 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1803. 
an iambic measure, we not only 
admit spondaic, but daétylic, ana- 
pestic, and trochaic teet. The 
cause of all which indulgencies may 
be found in the pleasure derivedfrom - 
variety. Alliteration recurs too fre- 
quently in Warton, which, proba- 
bly, he adopted from Spenser. His 
phraseology has been objeéted to, 
and ridiculed, by Johnson, for a 
too frequent introduction of anti- 
quated expressions ; but if a poet 
cannot find, in common use, words, 
which will fully convey the image 
of his mind; or if words in common 
use do occur, but are destitute of 
poetical beauty; in either case a 
man must look farther, and invent 
or revive others ; and he may surely 
as well revive those that are old, as 
invent new. Horace considered it 
as a natural event in the revolution 
of a Janguage, that many obsolete 
terms would be restored to use, and 
he contends for the privilege. Yet, 
perhaps, it must be allowed, that 
antiquated expressions have been 
sometimes used by our poet where 
they were neither necessary to con- 
yey his meaning, nor conducive to 
perspicuity or elegance. In his hu- 
morous poems, he is sometimes 
successful in giving to a word a 
ludicrous signification, as ‘* material 
break fast.” 
His diétion is perpetually Mil- 
tonic, but it will be found, on exa- 
mination, to be connected with 
sentiments and ideas different from 
those with which it is conneéted in 
his original, and to represent images 
of his own. On the whole, it may 
be said, that his language is select 
and poetical. His prevailing fault 
seems to be, that he sometimes aims 
too much atdeparting from common 
terms and formularies, amd forgets 
that art loses its effeét, unless con- 
cealed. 
