entitled to applause who succeeds against the greatest difficulty, and
in verse that calls for the most artificial management in its
construction. But the case is not as they suppose. To rhyme, in our
language, demands no great exertion of ingenuity, but is always easy
to a person exercised in the practice. Witness the multitudes who
rhyme, but have no other poetical pretensions. Let it be considered
too, how merciful we are apt to be to unclassical and indifferent
language for the sake of rhyme, and we shall soon see that the labor
lies principally on the other side. Many ornaments of no easy purchase
are required to atone for the absence of this single recommendation.
It is not sufficient that the lines of blank verse be smooth in
themselves, they must also be harmonious in the combination. Whereas
the chief concern of the rhymist is to beware that his couplets and
his sense be commensurate, lest the regularity of his numbers should
be (too frequently at least) interrupted. A trivial difficulty this,
compared with those which attend the poet unaccompanied by his bells.
He, in order that he may be musical, must exhibit all the variations,
as he proceeds, of which ten syllables are susceptible; between the
first syllable and the last there is no place at which he must not
occasionally pause, and the place of the pause must be perpetually
shifted. To effect this variety, his attention must be given, at one
and the same time, to the pauses he has already made in the period
before him, as well as to that which he is about to make, and to those
which shall succeed it. On no lighter terms than these is it possible
that blank verse can be written which will not, in the course of a
long work, fatigue the ear past all endurance. If it be easier,
therefore, to throw five balls into the air and to catch them in
succession, than to sport in that manner with one only, then may blank
verse be more easily fabricated than rhyme. And if to these labors we
add others equally requisite, a style in general more elaborate than