by Donne, Cowley, and their followers, by adopting ornaments which the
latter had neglected, perhaps because they could be attained without
much labour or abstruse learning. The metaphysical poets, in their
slip-shod pindarics, had totally despised, not only smoothness and
elegance but the common rhythm of versification. Many and long passages
may be read without perceiving the least difference between them and
barbarous jingling, ill-regulated prose; and in appearance, though the
lines be divided into unequal lengths, the eye and ear acknowledge
little difference between them and the inscription on a tomb-stone. In a
word, not only harmony of numbers, but numbers themselves, were
altogether neglected; or if an author so far respected ancient practice
as to make lines which could be scanned like verse, he had done his
part, and was perfectly indifferent, although they sounded like
prose.[12] But as melody will be always acceptable to the ear, some
poets chose this neglected road to fame, and gained a portion of public
favour, by attending to the laws of harmony, which their rivals had
discarded. Waller and Denham were the first who thus distinguished
themselves; but, as Johnson happily remarks, what was acquired by
Denham, was inherited by Waller. Something there was in the situation of
both these authors, which led them to depart from what was then the
beaten path of composition. They were men of rank, wealth, and fashion,
and had experienced all the interruptions to deep study, with which such
elevated station is naturally attended. It was in vain for Waller, a
wit, a courtier, and a politician; or for Denham, who was only
distinguished at the university as a dreaming, dissipated gambler, to
attempt to rival the metaphysical subtleties of Donne and Cowley, who
had spent serious and sequestered lives in acquiring the knowledge and
learning which they squandered in their poetry. Necessity, therefore and
perhaps a dawning of more simple taste, impelled these courtly poets to
seek another and more natural mode of pleasing. The melody of verse was