B L A 



504 



B L A 



ten live pernsal of all who arc designed for that branch of tlio 

 public gen-ice. In J821 lu- suffered se\erely fr.>m un attuck 

 otprurign lenilit, from the harassing irritation of which he 

 could only obtain relief by the use of opium ; and as the 

 disease never completely left him, he acquired a habit of 

 consuming a quantity of that potent drug, equal to what any 

 of the opium-eaters of the East can lake. In 1826 he was 

 elected a member of the Institute of France. His zeal for 

 the improvement of the naval medical service continued 

 unabated to the last years of his life, and in 1829, with 

 the sanction of the Lords of the Admiralty, he founded a 

 prize-medal for the best journal kept by the surgeons of 

 his Majesty's navy. In 1830, on the accession of Kinir 

 William IV., he was nominated by his former royal ship- 

 mate first physician to his Majesty. His last appearance 

 before the public was as the author of a pamphlet, entitled 

 n'urning to the British Public against the alarming ap- 

 proach of the Indian Cholera, 1831. His later years were 

 spent in retirement from professional labours, and in the 

 revision of his Select Dissertations, the second edition of 

 which he lived to see published. He died on the 'Jfith of 

 June, 1834, in the 85th year of his age. As he was always 

 greatly esteemed and respected by the medical officers of 

 She navy, he was assiduously attended during his last 

 illness by a distinguished surgeon belonging to that branch 

 of the public service, who had served under him, Mr. Cope- 

 land Hutchinson, from whose biographical sketch of Sir 

 Gilbert Blane many of the above statements are taken. 



The career of Sir Gilbert Blane was long, and marked 

 throughout by zeal for the mitigation of the evils attendant 

 upon war and a sea life, as well as the relief of the sufferings 

 of his fellow-creatures in every condition. Animated In 

 higher motives than that of obtaining the favour of fashion- 

 able circles, he neglected the little arts which recommend 

 many to the attention of the great, and may fairly be consi- 

 dered to have gained the station which he obtained by the 

 diligent cultivation and exertion of his solid talents. Few 

 members of his profession, whether exercising it in the 

 public service or in private life, have stronger claims on the 

 lasting gratitude of the country. 



BLANK VERSE, verse without rhyme, or the conso- 

 nance of final syllables. Of this species is all the verse of 

 the antient Greeks and Romans that has come down to us. 

 But during the middle ages, rhyme, however it originated, 

 came to be employed as a common ornament of poetical 

 composition, both in Latin and in the vernacular tongues of 

 most of the modern nations of Europe. In the fifteenth 

 century, when a recurrence to classical models became the 

 fashion, attempts were made in various languages to reject 

 rhyme, as a relic of barbarism. Thus, Homer's ' Odyssey' 

 was translated into Spanish blank verse by Gonsalvo Perez, 

 tile secretary of state to the Emperor Charles V., and after- 

 wards to Philip II. Warton, in his ' History of English 

 Poetry,' observes also that Felice Figliucci, in his admirable 

 Italian commentary on the ethics of Aristotle, entitled 

 * Filosofia Morale sopra i libri dell' Ethica d' Aristotile,' not 

 only declaims against the barbarity of rhyme, and strongly 

 recommends a total rejection of this Gothic ornament to his 

 countrymen, but enforces his precept by his own example, 

 and translates all Aristotle's quotations from Homer and 

 Euripides into verse without rhyme. Figliucci's commen- 

 'tary was published in 1551. Warton afterwards observes 

 1 In the year 1528 Trissino published his " Italia Lilx-rata 

 di Goti," or " Italy Delivered from the Goths," an heroic 

 poem professedly written in imitation of the "Iliad," with- 

 out cither rhyme or the usual machineries of the Gothic ro- 

 mance. Trissino's design was to destroy the tfrsa rima of 

 Dnitp. We do not however find, whether it be from the 

 facility with which the Italian tongue falls into rhyme, or 

 that the best and established Italian poets wrote in the 

 stanza, that these effort* to restore blank verse produced 

 any lasting effects in the progress of the Italian poetry.' 

 Tin- statement is allowed to stand unconnected in the last 

 edition of Warton; but in fact Trissino's poem was not 

 published till it appeared in three volumes, the first printed 

 at Home in 1547, and tlio second and third at Venice in 

 1548. (See DC Hnrc. BibKograpMe /.</ 1 iirtire, iii. 678, 

 679.) The ' Italia Liberata' is stated by the biographers of 

 Trissino to have been begun in 1.125. Another work in 

 blank verse by the same writer, however, his tra-." dv nl 1 

 'Sofonisba,' celebrated an the first regular trap-dy v. -Inch 

 appeared in the Italian language, was printed in 1.V2I. 

 the catalogue at the end of Riccoboni's Histoire du T/, 



Italifn.) It was first represented at Rome ;.i 1515. In 

 15IC the tragedy of ' Rosinnnda.' al>o in blank \erse, by 

 Tris.in.i's fiiend, Rueellai, was rented at F...icnce r 



ICfl of Pope l.co X., and was printed at S., i.na in 

 In a work entitled an ' lli-t-n. .,1 Mem .:r on Italian 

 Tragedy,' by Joseph Cooper Walker ( Itu. I.otid. 179'J), there 

 is a short paper on the origin of blanl. I 



language. (Appendix, No. 3, pp. XX. xxiii.), in which the 

 author observe- that Trissino, though the first Italian writer 

 who used blank verse in long works, and accordingly i. 

 ni-ed both by his contemporaries and hi.s countn 

 generally as the first who introduced it into their p dry, is 

 not, strictly speaking, to be considered as its inventor. Not 

 to speak of the occasional specimens of blank \i rse which 

 are to be found interspersed in the works of Boccaccio and bis 

 contemporaries, there is a blank verse poem, called the 

 'Canticodel Sole,' written by St. Francis, the founder U" 

 the Franciscans, in the beginning of the thirteenth century. 

 This poem, however, it seems, was thought to be in ; 

 till its metrical character was detected by the critic ( 'n seini- 

 heni in his 'Istoria della Volgar Poesia,' a work published 

 towards the end of the seventeenth century. 



In the French language, in like manner, various writers 

 have one after another attempted to write Averse without 

 rhyme. Amon" those who are said to have composed in this 

 fashion are Jodelle and De Bail', who were two of the cele- 

 brated Pleiad of poets that adorned the age of Francis I. and 

 Charles IX. (Sec Pasquier, Recherches sur /a 1'ranre, liv. 

 vii. chap. xii. ; and Baillet, Jugemens dcs S -u >.;/>, tmn. iv 

 pp. 9-1 and 124, edit, of 1725.) Afterwards Nicholas Kapin, 

 who lived in the reign of Henry IV., repeated the 

 attempt, and, in the opinion of the Cardinal du Perron, with 

 more success than De Baif. (Sec Baillet, torn, iv p. 15.1.) 

 Still more recently French blank verse was written by De 

 la Motte le Vayer, in the age of Louis XIV. None of these 

 attempts however have had the effect of reconciling the 

 French ear to this mode of composition, and it is probable 

 that there is something adverse to it in the genius of the 

 language. 



The first English blank verse ever written appears to 

 have been the Translation of the First and Fourth I' 

 of the /Eneid, by Lord Surrey, which was printed in 1657 

 under the title of ' The Fourth Boke of Virgill, intreeting 

 of the Loue betwene ALncas and Dido; translated inio 

 Englishe, and drawen into straunge metre.' Lond. without 

 date, 4to. 1557, along with the second Book; but which 

 must have been written at least ten years before, for 

 Surrey was executed in 15-17. Surrey most probably bor- 

 rowed the idea of this innovation from the Italians : but Dr. 

 Nott is of opinion that he could not have seen Trissino'.s 

 poem, already mentioned, as it was not printed till after his 

 death, though written many years before. Ascham, in his 

 ' Schoolmaster,' expressly commemorates this translation of 

 Surrey's as the first attempt to write English veise without 

 rhyme. 'The noble Lord Thomas, Earl of Surrey,' he 

 ' first of all Englishmen, in translating the fourth book of 

 Virgil, and Gonzalvo Perez, that excellent learned man, and 

 secretary to King Philip of Spain, in translating the VI) ISM 

 of Homer out of Greek into Spanish, have both by good 

 judgment avoided the fault of rhyming.' ' The spying,' he 

 adils, 'of this fault now is not the curiosity of Engli-h eyes, 

 but even the good judgment also of the best that write in 

 these days in Italy.' The first who imitated Surrey in tin- 

 new kind of verse which he had introduced was, according 

 to Warton, Nicholas Grimoald, or Grimaldc, some of 

 poetical compositions were first printed in the same volume 

 MI which Surrey's translation from Virgil appealed. 'To 

 the style of blank verse exhibited by Surrey ,' says Warton, 

 'he added new strength, elegance, and modulation. In 1 1n- 

 disposition and conduct of his cadences, he often approaches 

 to the legitimate structure of the improved blank verse.' 

 The next thirty years may be said to have naturali/cd the 

 new mode of versification in the language. The first thea- 

 trical piece which appeared in blank verse was Lord (sack- 

 ville's tragedy of ' Gorboduc,,' otherwise called the tragedy of 

 ' Fcrrcx and Porrcx,' which was acted m tin- hall of 

 the Inner Temple in 1561, though not printed till 1565. 

 Then followed George Gascoipi> ! of'Joi 



which was acted at Gray's Inn in l.'iGC. In 157C the same 

 author published a poem in blank verse, entitled ' Steel 

 Glass.' In l.'iT'i appealed George Pecle's blank verse tru- 

 gndy of ' David and Bethsabe.' In 1588 was published 

 Askc's poem, in the same form of versification, entitled 



