472 on Englijh poetry, — bjank verse. Aug. 21, 

 The foregoing disquisition ill not I hope be en- 

 tirely uselefs to you ; for if it fliall imprefs your mind 

 •with the full conviction that verse and poetry are 

 distinct things, it may save you a great deal of unne- 

 cefsary reading ; and perhaps writing too, in your 

 progrefs through life. How many men who waste 

 their time in idly writing verses, that they call, and 

 believe to be poems, might be diverted from this un- 

 satisfactory pursuit to others of a more useful ten- 

 dency, could they be satisfied, with an ancient bard, 

 whose verses I cannot quote, because the book is not 

 to be found here at present, that " Poetry wants 

 more than •uerst," to entitle it to that name ; and 

 were persuaded that nothing is such uselefs lumber 

 in the literary world as voluminous productions in 

 verse, destitute of the spirit of genuine poesy. 



Milton introduced a new species of verse into the 

 Englifti language which he called blank yerse. Indeed 

 Shakespeare before him had employed the same in 

 his dramatic compositions ; but Milton, I think, was 

 the first that brought it into use in poems of another 

 sort. In this verse an equal attention to rhythmus is 

 required as in rhime ; and as the sense is lefs roar- 

 red by the artificial recurrence of certain syllables, 

 it gives a fuller and bolder flow to the melody 

 of sounds, and variation of cadences ; so as to ad- 

 mit of exprefsing the pafsions and affections of the 

 mind with greater energy. Some critics indeed af- 

 fect to deny that this can be called verse at all ; 

 while I, on the contrary, consider this as the only 

 species of verse which in our language is suited to 



