Or these of Ovid, which, though they are far from being the most smooth in the Book, are however more harmonious than any we can produce now.
Sic ubi Fata vocant udis abjectis in Herbis,
Ad vada Mæandri, concinit albus Olor.
Though the first of these Verses makes a Whistling like the Reeds in a River, the last runs so glib, that it is ready to slip from under one before one would have it.
We acknowledge that the Latin Language is a great Help to the Running of a Verse, and if the Reader insists upon that to be the only pre-eminence which Latin Verses have over English, he is very welcome to think as he likes best. Moreover, if he is so fond of Rhyme, we can inform him of a Book which is wrote, in Latin Rhyme, and is very much at his Service: The Title of the Book is Drunken Barnaby; which, as it is wrote in a dead Language, will most likely remain an everlasting Burlesque upon the Barbarity of Rhyme.
But we may venture to go a little farther. It is not necessary for a Work to be wrote in Verse at all to entitle it to the Name of Poetry. Any Work of a fictitious Nature, and which is calculated meerly for Entertainment, has as just a Claim to be stiled Poetical Composition, as one that is wrote in the strictest and most confined Metre; Poetry taking its Name from the Matter of which it is composed, and not from the Length or Sound of its Words; and we
may observe, that such Poetry as consists of those Numbers which are least confined in their Metre, is generally the most spirited and sublime. We have an Instance of this in the Writings of Pindar, a Poet of whose Abilities, Horace gives an Account in his Ode,
Pindarum quisquis, &c.
And indeed we have no Occasion to go any farther for Examples of excellent Poetry wrote in Prose, than some of the Plays in our own Language; Ben Johnson, Congreve, and many more who wrote in Prose, are nevertheless ranked among the Poets.