116 M.de Polier on the Pleajures of the Mind 
their compofition is the more perfect, the more 
readily they prefent themfelves to the memory. 
The Greek and Latin tongues, by means of 
their long and fhort fyllables, and the various 
meafures into which they may be reduced, form 
a kind of chaunt , melody , or noted air , which the 
memory can eafdy lay hold of, and therefore, 
the return of the fame founds, becoming ulelefs, 
would caufe nothing but a difagreeable repetition. 
Our modern languages have not the fame 
advantage, or poffefs it, at lead, in a much 
lefs degree. The blank verfe of the Englifh, 
German, and Italian, except in very few fhining 
exceptions, feems (as was quoted fome time ago, 
in a very ingenious paper prefented to this 
Society) to he verfe only to the eye , or depends 
at lead fo much on the fkilfulneis of the reader, 
as not to obtain the effeft above-mentioned, with 
by far the greated part of thofe who read them. 
Poems, where it is ufed, are not popular: the 
ideas they convey, the fentiments they mean 
to inculcate, however forcibly exprefled, do not 
eafily recur to the memory: and, I dare fay, 
that for one perfon who remembers a paffage 
from Milton, Young, or Akenfide, there are twenty 
who will quote fome from Pope, Dry den, or 
Prior. 1 
This controverfy has long been decided in 
France, where, notwithdanding the drenuous 
efforts of one of its greated poets (Manfieur de 
la 
