Rhyme then triumphed, and the degenerate Latinists themselves, to court the new masters of the world, polluted their Latin metres with the rhymes too long erroneously degraded as mere “Gothic barbarisms.” Had the practice of the classical writers become a custom, we should now be “committing long and short,” and we should have missed the discovery of the new world of poetic melody, of which the Grecians and the Latins could never have imagined the existence.
[1] For a remarkable effusion of this ancient idolatry and classical superstition, see Quarterly Review, August, 1834.
The ancient poetry of the Greeks was composed for recitation. The people never read, for they had no books; they listened to their rhapsodists; and their practised ear could decide on the artificial construction of verses regulated by quantity, and not by the latent delicacy and numerosity of which modern versification is susceptible.
[2] Quadrio, “Storia e raggione d’ogni Poesia,” i. 606.
[3] Pasquier, “Les Recherches de la France,” p. 624, fo. 1533.
[4] “A Discourse of English Poetrie; together with the Author’s Judgment touching the Reformation of our English Verse,” by William Webbe, graduate, 1586, 4to.
[5] “Observations on the Art of English Poesie, by Thomas Campion, wherein is demonstratively proved, and by example confirmed, that the English tongue will receive eight several kinds of numbers proper to itself, which are all in this Book set forth, and were never before this time by any man attempted,” 1602.
