Rhyme, he says, and fays truly, is no neceffary adjunct of true poetry. But perhaps, of poetry as a mental operation, metre or mufick is no neceffary adjunct it is however by the mufick of metre that poetry has been difcri minated in all languages; and in languages melodiously conftructed with a due proportion of long and short fyllables, metre is fufficient. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another: where metre is scanty and imperfect, fome help is neceffary. The mufick of the English heroick line ftrikes, the ear fo faintly that it is easily loft, unless all the fyllables of every line co-operate together this co-operation can be only obtained by the preservation of every verfe unmingled with another, as a diftinct fyftem of founds; and this distinctnefs is obtained and preserved by the artifice of rhyme. The variety of paufes, fo much boafted by the lovers of blank verfe, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin. Blank

verfe, faid an ingenious critick, feems to be verfe only to the eye.

Poetry may fubfift without rhyme, but English poetry will not often please; nor can rhyme ever be fafely fpared but where the subject is able to fupport itfelf. Blank verfe makes fome approach to that which is called the lapidary ftyle; has neither the eafinefs of profe, nor the melody of numbers, and there fore tires by long continuance. Of the Ita lian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, not one is popular; what reafon could urge in its defence, has been confuted by the ear,

But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wifh his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated. He that thinks himself capable of aftonishing, may write blank verfe; but thofe that hope only to please, must condefcend to rhyme.

The highest praife of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be faid to have

contrived the ftructure of an epick poem, and therefore owes reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations must be indebted for the art of poetical narration, for the texture of the fable, the variation of incidents, the interpofition of dialogue, and all the ftratagems that furprise and enchain attention. But, of all the borrowers from Homer, Milton is perhaps the leaft indebted. He was naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and difdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refufe admiffion to the thoughts or images of his predeceffors, but he did not feek them. From his contemporaries he neither courted nor received fupport; there is in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praife, nor folicitation of fupport. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in blindness, but difficulties vanifhed at his touch. ; he was born for whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems, only be cause it is not the firft.

BUTLER.

BUT LE R.

F the great author of Hudibras there is

a life prefixed to the later editions of his poem, by an unknown writer, and therefore of difputable authority; and fome account is incidentally given by Wood, who confeffes the uncertainty of his own narrative; more however than they knew cannot now be learned, and nothing remains but to compare and copy them.

SAMUEL BUTLER was born in the parish of Strenfham in Worcestershire, according to his biographer, in 1612. This account Dr. Nash finds confirmed by the regifter. He was christened Feb. 14.

His father's condition is variously reprefented. Wood mentions him as competently wealthy; but Mr. Longueville, the fon of Butler's principal friend, fays he was an honeft farmer with fome small estate, who made a shift to educate his fon at the grammar school of Worcester, under Mr. Henry Bright, from whofe care he removed for a fhort time to Cambridge; but, for a want of money, was never made a member of any college. Wood leaves us rather doubtful whether he went to Cambridge or Oxford; but at laft makes him pafs fix or feven years at Cambridge, without knowing in what hall or college: yet it can hardly be imagined that he lived fo long in either univerfity, but as belonging to one houfe or another; and it is ftill lefs likely that he could have fo long inhabited a place of learning with fo little diftinction as to leave his refidence uncertain. Dr. Nash has difcovered that his father was owner of a house and a little land, worth about eight pounds a year, ftill called Butler's

tenement.

ཟ་

Wood has his information from his brother, whofe narrative placed him at Cambridge,