Some works of this description, however, have been extensively read in our refractory language; but their day is gone by. The pious sentiments of " Hervey's Meditations," recommended the fantastic style in which they were disguised, to multitudes, who persuaded themselves that they were pleased, because they supposed that, in such a case, they ought to be, with fine words, and so many of them. The interesting scenes, circumstances, and actors in "The Death of Abel," translated from the German of Gesner, in like manner, made that farrago of bad taste a favourite book for nearly half a century. The language of the original, indeed, has such compass and capabilities for every kind of composition, that poetical prose, and even prosaic verse, may be made agreeable in it; but no versions of either, into our severe and uncompromising tongue, can rise above the dead level of mediocrity. Ossian's Poems, as Macpherson's rhapsodies were called, obtained, in their turn, a sudden, factitious, and deservedly transient reputation. From whatever relics of ancient song these may have been borrowed, a question with which we have nothing to do at present,―they are composed in such "a Babylonish dialect," that it might be presumed no ear, accustomed to the melody of pure verse or the freedom of eloquent prose, could endure the incongruities of a style in which broken verse of various measures is blended with halting prose of unmanageable cadences and compound sentences, as difficult to read and as dissonant to hear as a strain of music would be in execution and effect, if every bar were set to a different time and in a dif

ferent key. Horace's description of a heterogeneous body, compiled of flesh, fish, and fowl, to make certainly not,

"Some faultless monster which the world ne'er saw

might aptly enough be applied to characterise the cacophonous rhythm, ill-jointed clauses, and dislocated feet, in all kinds of metre, of this prodigious birth of a distempered brain; in which iambics, trochees, anapæsts, dactyles, spondees, and every form of syllable, word, accent, or quantity, that can enter into English sentences, are jumbled in juxtaposition, like disrupted strata, where convulsions of nature have thrown down mountains and heaved up valleys.

Characteristics of Prose and Verse.

There is reason as well as custom in that conventional simplicity which best becomes prose, and that conventional ornament which is allowed to verse; but splendid ornament is no more essential to verse than naked simplicity is to prose. The gravest critics place tragedy in the highest rank of poetical achievements,

"Sometimes let gorgeous Tragedy,

With sceptred pall, come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,

Or the tale of Troy divine.”—Il Penseroso.

Yet the noblest, most impassioned scenes are frequently distinguished from prose only by the cadence of the verse; which, in this species of composition, is permitted to be so loose, that where the diction is

the most exquisite, the melody of the rhythm can scarcely be perceived except by the nicest ear. King Lear, driven to madness by the ingratitude and cruelty of his two elder daughters, is found by the youngest, Cordelia, asleep upon a bed, in a tent in the French camp, after having passed the night in the open air, exposed to the fury of the elements during a tremendous thunder-storm. A physician and attendants are watching over the sufferer. While the dutiful daughter is pouring out her heart in tenderness over him, recounting his wrongs, his afflictions, and the horrors of the storm, the king awakes; but we will take the scene itself. After some enquiries concerning his royal patient, the physician asks :—

"So please your majesty,

That we may wake the king? He hath slept long.

CORDELIA.

Be govern'd by your knowledge, and proceed
I' th' sway of your own will. Is he array'd?

GENTLEMAN.

Ay, madam; in the heaviness of his sleep,
We put fresh garments on him.

PHYSICIAN.

Be by, good madam, when we do awake him;
I doubt not of his temperance.

CORDELIA.

Oh, my dear Father! Restoration hang

Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms, that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made!

Had you not been their father, these white flakes
Had challenged pity of them. Was this a face
To be exposed against the warring winds?

To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder?
In the most terrible and nimble stroke

Of quick, cross lightning?

*

Mine enemy's dog,

Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire. —And wast thou fain, poor father,
To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn,
In short and musty straw? Alack! alack!
'Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once

Had not concluded all. - He wakes; speak to him.

You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave:
Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound

Upon a wheel of fire.

CORDELIA.

Sir, do you know me?

LEAR.

You are a spirit, I know; when did you die ?

CORDELIA.

Still, still far wide.

PHYSICIAN.

He's scarce awake; let him alone awhile.

LEAR.

Where have I been? Where am I? Fair day-light?
I should even die with pity,
To see another thus. I know not what to say.

I am mightily abused.

I will not swear these are my hands:

let's see, I feel this pin prick. Would I were assured Of my condition!

And hold

CORDELIA.

O look upon me, sir!
your hands in benediction o'er me:-

Nay, sir, you must not kneel.

LEAR.

Pray, do not mock me ;

I am a very foolish, fond old man,

Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you, and know this man ;
Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night:

-

Do not laugh at me,

For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia !

CORDELIA.

And so I am; I am."

It cannot be doubted that the whole of this scene is poetry of the highest proof; and yet, except in the passage referring to the storm (in which those wonderful lines descriptive of the lightning might have