He that hangs or beats out’s brains,
The devil’s in him if he feigns.
Beats out’s brains, for ‘beats out his brains’. Of heaviness, Davenant’s Gondibert is a formidable specimen, almost throughout:
With sìlence (òrder’s help, and màrk of càre)
They chìde thàt nòise which hèedless yòuth affèct;
Stìll coùrse for ùse, for heàlth thèy clèanness wèar,
And sàve in wèll-fìx’d àrms, all nìceness chèck’d.
Thèy thoùght, thòse that, unàrm’d, expòs’d fràil lìfe,
But nàked nàture vàliantly betrày’d;
Whò wàs, thoùgh nàked, sàfe, till prìde màde strìfe,
But màde defènce must ùse, nòw dànger’s màde.
And so he goes digging and lumbering on, like a heavy preacher thumping the pulpit in italics, and spoiling many ingenious reflections.
Weakness in versification is want of accent and emphasis. It generally accompanies prosaicalness, and is the consequence of weak thoughts, and of the affectation of a certain well-bred enthusiasm. The writings of the late Mr. Hayley were remarkable for it; and it abounds among the lyrical imitators of Cowley, and the whole of what is called our French school of poetry, when it aspired above its wit and ‘sense’. It sometimes breaks down in a horrible, hopeless manner, as if giving way at the first step. The following ludicrous passage in Congreve, intended to be particularly fine, contains an instance:
And lo! Silence himself is here;
Methinks I see the midnight god appear.
In all his downy pomp array’d,
Behold the reverend shade.
An ancient sigh he sits upon!!!
Whose memory of sound is long since gone,
And purposely annihilated for his throne!!!
Ode on the singing of Mrs. Arabella Hunt.
See also the would-be enthusiasm of Addison about music:
For ever consecrate the day
To music and Cecilia;
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below,
Music can noble HINTS impart!!!
It is observable that the unpoetic masters of ridicule are apt to make the most ridiculous mistakes, when they come to affect a strain higher than the one they are accustomed to. But no wonder. Their habits neutralize the enthusiasm it requires.
Sweetness, though not identical with smoothness, any more than feeling is with sound, always includes it; and smoothness is a thing so little to be regarded for its own sake, and indeed so worthless in poetry but for some taste of sweetness, that I have not thought necessary to mention it by itself; though such an all-in-all in versification was it regarded not a hundred years back, that Thomas Warton himself, an idolater of Spenser, ventured to wish the following line in the Faerie Queene,