"Rhyme," he says, and says truly, "is no necessary adjunct of true
poetry." But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental operation, metre or
music is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by the music of
metre that poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and, in
languages melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and
short syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot
communicate its rules to another; where metre is scanty and
imperfect, some help is necessary. The music of the English heroic
lines strikes the ear so faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all
the syllables of every line co-operate together; this co-operation
can only be obtained by the preservation of every verse unmingled
with another as a distinct system of sounds; and this distinctness
is obtained and preserved by the artifice of rhyme. The variety of
pauses, so much boasted by the lovers of blank verse, changes the
measures of an English poet to the periods of a declaimer; and there
are only a few skilful and happy readers of Milton, who enable their
audience to perceive where the lines end or begin. "Blank verse,"
said an ingenious critic, "seems to be verse only to the eye."

Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will not often
please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared but where the subject is
able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to that
which is called the "lapidary style;" has neither the easiness of
prose, nor the melody of numbers, and therefore tires by long
continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton
alleges as precedents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in
its defence has been confuted by the ear.

But, whatever be the advantages of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself