—Or less than of this frame
Of Heav'n were falling, and these elements
In mutiny had from her axle torn
The stedfast earth. As last his sail-broad vans
He spreads for flight; and in the surging smoke
Uplifted spurns the ground—
—Had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft. That fury stay'd;
Quench'd in a boggy syrtis, neither sea,
Nor good dry land: night founder'd on he fares,
Treading the crude consistence.
Our author has endeavoured to justify his choice of blank verse, by shewing it less subject to restraints, and capable of greater sublimity than rhime. But tho' this observation may hold true, with respect to elevated and grand subjects, blank verse is by no means capable of so great universality. In satire, in elegy, or in pastoral writing, our language is, it seems, so feebly constituted, as to stand in need of the aid of rhime; and as a proof of this, the reader need only look upon the pastorals of Virgil, as translated by Trapp in blank verse, and compare them with Dryden's in rhime. He will then discern how insipid and fiat the pastorals of the same poet are in one kind of verification, and how excellent and beautiful in another. Let us give one short example to illustrate the truth of this, from the first pastoral of Virgil.
MELIBÆUS.
Beneath the covert of the spreading beech
Thou, Tityrus, repos'd, art warbling o'er,
Upon a slender reed, thy sylvan lays:
We leave our country, and sweet native fields;
We fly our country: careless in the shade,
Thou teachest, Tityrus, the sounding groves
To eccho beauteous Amaryllis' name.
TITYRUS.
O Melibæus, 'twas a god to us
Indulged this freedom: for to me a god
He shall be ever: from my folds full oft
A tender lamb his altar shall embrue:
He gave my heifers, as thou seest, to roam;
And me permitted on my rural cane
To sport at pleasure, and enjoy my muse,
TRAPP.
MELIBÆUS.
Beneath the shade which beechen-boughs diffuse,
You, Tityrus, entertain your Silvan muse:
Round the wide world in banishment we roam,
Forc'd from our pleasing fields, and native home:
While stretch'd at ease you sing your happy loves:
And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.