I did not expect to find your lordship on the side of rhyme, remembering well with how much energy and interest I have heard you repeat passages from the "Paradise Lost," which you could not have recited as you did, unless you had been perfectly sensible of their music. It comforts me, therefore, to know that if you have an ear for rhyme, you have an ear for blank verse also.
It seems to me that I may justly complain of rhyme as an inconvenience in translation, even though I assert in the sequel that to me it has been easier to rhyme than to write without, because I always suppose a rhyming translator to ramble, and always obliged to do so. Yet I allow your lordship's version of this speech of Achilles to be very close, and closer much than mine. But I believe that, should either your lordship or I give them burnish or elevation, your lines would be found, in measure as they acquired stateliness, to have lost the merit of fidelity—in which case nothing more would be done than Pope has done already.
I cannot ask your lordship to proceed in your strictures, though I should be happy to receive more of them. Perhaps it is possible that when you retire into the country, you may now and then amuse yourself with my translation. Should your remarks reach me, I promise faithfully that they shall be all most welcome, not only as yours, but because I am sure my work will be the better for them.
With sincere and fervent wishes for your lordship's health and happiness, I remain, my lord, &c.,
W. C.
The following is Lord Thurlow's reply:—
TO WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ.
Dear Cowper,—On coming to town this morning, I was surprised particularly at receiving from you an answer to a scrawl I sent Harry, which I have forgot too much to resume now. But I think I could not mean to patronize rhyme. I have fancied that it was introduced to mark the measure in modern languages, because they are less numerous and metrical than the ancient, and the name seems to import as much. Perhaps there was melody in ancient song without straining it to musical notes, as the common Greek pronunciation is said to have had the compass of five parts of an octave. But surely that word is only figuratively applied to modern poetry. Euphony seems to be the highest term it will bear. I have fancied also, that euphony is an impression derived a good deal from habit, rather than suggested by nature; therefore in some degree accidental, and consequently conventional. Else, why can't we bear a drama with rhyme, or the French, one without it? Suppose the "Rape of the Lock," "Windsor Forest," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and many other little poems which please, stripped of the rhyme, which might easily be done, would they please us as well? It would be unfair to treat rondeaus, ballads, and odes in the same manner, because rhyme makes in some sort a part of the conceit. It was this way of thinking which made me suppose that habitual prejudice would miss the rhyme; and that neither Dryden nor Pope would have dared to give their great authors in blank verse.
I wondered to hear you say you thought rhyme easier in original compositions; but you explained it, that you could go further a-field if you were pushed for want of a rhyme. An expression preferred for the sake of the rhyme looks as if it were worth more than you allow. But, to be sure, in translation, the necessity of rhyme imposes very heavy fetters upon those who mean translation, not paraphrase. Our common heroic metre is enough; the pure iambic bearing only a sparing introduction of spondees, trochees, &c. to vary the measure.