LIKE SOME FAIR PINE O'ER-LOOKING ALL THE IGNOBLER WOOD.

"And,

SOME FROM THE ROCKS CAST THEMSELVES DOWN HEADLONG.

"And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing
is, that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as
that, out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may
be represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind
themselves to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught
I can find. The Latins (qui musas colunt severiores) sometimes did
it; and their prince, Virgil, always: in whom the examples are
innumerable, and taken notice of by all judicious men, so that it is
superfluous to collect them."


I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the
representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate
only sound and motion. A "boundless" verse, a "headlong" verse, and
a verse of "brass" or of "strong brass," seem to comprise very
incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the
sound of the line expressing "loose care," I cannot discover; nor
why the "pine" is "taller" in an Alexandrine than in ten syllables.

But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example
of representative versification, which perhaps no other English line
can equal: