X.J MELAl^CHOLY HOURS. 371 



learn to shun it ourselves, and to endeavour, if possible, 

 to arrest its progress in those around us ; and in the 

 course of these high and lofty speculations, we are in- 

 sensibly led to think humbly of ourselves, and to lift up 

 our thoughts to Him who is alone the fountain of all per- 

 fection and the source of all good. 



W. 



MELANCHOLY HOURS.— No. X. 



" La rime est une esclave, et ne doit qu'obeir." 



BoiLEAU, UArt Poetique. 



Experiments in versification have not often been suc- 

 cessful. Sir Philip Sidney, with all his genius, great it 

 undoubtedly was, could not impart grace to hexameters or 

 fluency to his sapphics. Spenser's stanza was new, but 

 his verse was familiar to the ear ; and though his rhymes 

 ^ere frequent even to satiety, he seems to have avoided 

 the awkwardness of novelty, and the difficulty of unprac- 

 tised metres. Donna had not music enough to render 

 his broken rhyming couplets sufferable, and neither his 

 wit nor his pointed satire were sufficient to rescue him 

 from that neglect which his uncouth and rugged versifi- 

 cation speedily superinduced. 



In our times, Mr South ey has given grace and melody 

 to some of the Latin and Greek measures, and Mr Bo^^les 

 has written rh3"ming heroics, wherein the sense is trans- 

 mitted from couplet to couplet, and the pauses are varied 

 with all the freedom of blank verse, without exciting any 

 sensation of ruggedness, or offending the nicest ear. But 

 these are minor efforts : the former of these exquisite 

 poets has taken a yet wider range, and in his " Thalaba, 

 the Destroyer," has spurned at all the received laws of 

 metre, and framed a fabric of verse altogether his own. 



An innovation, so bold as that of Mr Southey, was 

 sure to meet with disapprobation and ridicule. The 

 world naturally looks with suspicion on systems which 

 contradict established principles, and refuse to quadrate 



