POPE. 403 



That it should be beneath the dignity of princes to 

 speak in anything but rhyme can only be paralleled by 

 Mr. Puff's law that a heroine can go decorously mad 

 only in white satin. Waller, I suppose, though with so 

 loose a thinker one cannot be positive, uses "describe" 

 in its Latin sense of limitation. Fancy Othello or Lear 

 confined to this go-cart ! Phillips touches the true 

 point when he says, "And the truth is, the use of 

 measure alone, without any rime at all, would give more 

 scope and liberty both to style and fancy than can pos- 

 sibly be observed in rime." * But let us test Waller's 

 method by an example or two. His monarch made 

 reasonable, thus discourses : 



" Courage our greatest failings does supply, 

 And makes all good, or handsomely we die. 

 Life is a thing of common use ; by heaven 

 As well to insects as to monarchs given ; 

 But for the crown, 't is a more sacred thing; 

 I '11 dying lose it, or I '11 live a king. 

 Come, Diphilus, we must together walk 

 And of a matter of importance talk." [Exeunt. 



Blank verse, where the sentiment is trivial as here, 

 merely removes prose to a proper ideal distance, where 

 it is in keeping with more impassioned parts, but com- 

 monplace set to this rocking-horse jog irritates the 

 nerves. There is nothing here to remind us of the older 

 tragic style but the exeunt at the close. Its pithy 

 conciseness and the relief which it brings us from his 

 majesty's prosing give it an almost poetical savor. As- 

 patia's reflections upon suicide (or " suppressing our 

 breath," as she calls it), in the same play, will make few 

 readers regret that Shakespeare was left to his own un- 

 assisted barbarism when he wrote Hamlet's soliloquy on 

 the same topic : 



" 'T was in compassion of our woe 

 That nature first made poisons grow, 



* Preface to the Theatrum. 



