OO 
ow 
imagines that, to compose an ode, he 
nyust set at defiance every rule—he may 
pass from one abrupt transition to -ano- 
ther, and mdulge in every species of ir- 
revularity—provided his language be 
fofty and his sentiments uncommon, he 
may be as obscure and as unintelligible 
aus he pleases. Abrupt expressions of 
strprize, admiration or raptare—excla- 
mations of love, joy or despair—violent 
distortions of sense, and the most forced 
eonstruction of words and metre, are 
what more particularly distinguish the 
modern ode. ‘They are Bifeit used to 
cover the most barren and common-place 
senuiments, and rarely convey any distinct 
idea to the reader. The quotation from 
Boileau, founded on the supposed extra- 
vagance of Pindar, has produced the most 
ridiculous etesceet and the most absurd 
misapprehensions. We are not requiring 
here that the ode should he as regulat in 
its structure as a didactic or epic poem. 
But +t demands, as well as every other 
species of poetry, that a subject should 
be proposed as its ground-work—and 
that the subject, whether it be an address 
to some personage, or descriptive of any 
particular passion of the mind, mstead of 
being forgotten or laid aside after the first 
lines, should be continued and illustrated 
through every stanza of the ode. The 
transitions from thought to thought are, 
of course, permitted ; but they should ee 
light and delicate, and sufficiently con- 
nected with the subject to enable the 
poet to fall, with ease and propriety, into 
the same train of ideas with which he 
sets out. For tlns incoherence and dis- 
order of lyric poetry, the authority and 
example of Pindar have always been 
quoted, but, as we think, not always 
with truth or justice. We shall have 
occasion hereafter to examine this point 
more attentively ; at present we shall 
only observe, that whoever considers the 
poems of the theban bard with regard to 
the manners and customs of the age in 
which they were written, the occasions 
which gave them birth, and the places in 
which they were intended to be recited, 
will find little reason to censure Pindar 
for the want of order and regularity in 
the plans of his compositions. On the 
contrary, perhaps, he will be inclined to 
admire him for raising so many beauties 
from such trivial hints, and for kindling, 
as he sometimes does, so vreat a ee 
from a single spark, with so little matter 
to preserve it. 
This extravagance and iebedes of ideas 
ef which we complain in the modern sys- 
Lyceum of Ancient Literature—Lyric Poetry. 
[Feb..1, 
tem of ode making, will be found also to 
extend to the versification. The extreme 
Jength to which the periods are suffered 
to run—the rapidity and abruptness with 
which one measure is exchanged for ano- 
ther—the variety of long and short hnes 
which are made to correspond with each 
other in rhyme, at so enormous a dis- 
tance—increhse the disorder, by the dis- 
regard to all sense of melody. Why, in 
lyric compositions, less attention should 
he paid to beauty of sound, than in any 
other, it is difheult to imagine. The 
truth is, that no species of poetry de- 
mands it more than the ode; and the 
versification of those ades, as 15 ‘remarked 
by Blair, may be jusily ‘accounted the 
best, which renders. the harmony of the 
measure most sensible to every common 
Gane hr. 
Another custom among the ancients, 
which has also been too much followed 
in the modern ode, is that of not com- 
pleting the sense in one section, but pur- 
suing it into another. Thus among many 
other instances in Pindar, the’ three last 
Jines of the third strophe in the first 
Olymp. are-these— 
Teds evdv@ereov 8 ore mua 
Aarxvat viv ehay yEvEeroy Speovy 
Etutprov avedeov tivev yaprovy 
and he completes. the sentence in the 
antistrophe, 
Theara rape rdleogom 
And in Horace, 
Districtus ensis cui super impia 
Cervice pendet, non siculz dapes 
Dulcem elaborabunt saporem 3 
Non avium citharzeque cantus 
Somnum reducent. 
These singular intersections of a senten¢é 
are, at best, injudicious, and may surely 
be easily avuided *. 
To 
* It may not be amiss to afford the reader 
an idea of the three stanzas used by the Greeks, 
from the following passage in the last paragraph 
inthe Scholia on Hephestion.—‘* You must 
know that the ancients (in their odes, framed 
two larger stanzas, and one /ess; the first of the 
large stanzas they called Srrophe—singing iton 
their festivals at the altars of the gods, and 
dancing at thesame time. The second they 
called Antistrophe, in which they inverted the 
dance. he lesser stanza was named the 
Epode, which they sang standing still. The 
Strophe, as they say, denoted the motion of 
the higher sphere, the Antistrophe, that of 
the planets, the Epode the fixed station and 
repose of the earth.” From this passage it is 
evident that the odes were accompanied with 
dancing 3 
