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Musing, moreover, on your printed sheet,
Respect suggested that it was but meet,
In rime's defence, a rime or two to write,—
Lest haply silence should be deem'd a slight:
Not with a captious, critical design,—
That, Sir, is far from any thought of mine;
But in a print of this poetic kind
You may expect a man to speak his mind;
To own the Justice of the reasons, why
You would extirpate rime,—or else reply.

'Tis your permission, then, that I invoke,
To guard the Muse from such a fatal stroke.
Her aid invok'd in any other task,
In this—'tis mine that she is pleas'd to ask;
The poet now must lend the Muse an aid
And save the right of the melodious maid.

You send me here an elegance quite new,
A plan from Horace, and well copied too,—
As far as chosen epithet and pause
Harmonious modulate the lyric clause;
As far as native scene thro' ev'ry line
Of Roman or of British bard can shine;
As far in short as ev'ry grace but one
Bedecks the theme that either writes upon,—
The Country Life: which Horace in his way,
And you in yours, so lyricly display.

That one, however, is a special Grace,
Tho' Roman Horace could not give it place.
His Latin language, fill'd with many more,
Wanted not Rime to grace its ample store.
But in our own—tho' one should dare to match
With Roman Horace British C---,—
It would be too too partial to the tongue
To say that Rime was needless in the song;
Which, tho' in pompous buskin verse declin'd,
Is quite essential to the oral kind.

Your own attempt—and if another man
Thinks he can better your Horatian plan,
Let him attempt it!—you, I say, have shewn
That lyric pause will hardly do alone,
With all the force of emphasis and choice
Of word and stop, to pre-engage the voice.
Still they who read, and they who hear it read,
Hang in suspense—if to be sung or said?
Some that I show'd it to, intent to read,
Have well begun, but could not well proceed.
Well they begun; but, as they went along,
They found their prejudice to Rime too strong;
Each other grace, when that did not appear,
Displeas'd the long-habituated ear;
All varied rests, and all descriptions pat
Could not compénsate them for want of that.

With prefatory page to introduce
The new endeavour to correct old use:
I doubt you cannot Britishly exempt
Lyrics from Rime—tho' welcome the attempt.
To old improvements one may give their due,
Yet like a genius that but hints at new,
In verse or prose to hint one now-a-days
I count a matter of no servile praise;
Tho' for the reasons that you urge in print
I cannot yield to your ingenious hint.
The leading maxim which is here embrac'd,—
To wit, that rime is certainly false taste,—
Is one, to which, if you appeal to me,
I cannot yet by any means agree.
To this, reserving all the due respect
For better information, I object.

“Rime is false taste”; and then you add beside:
“And what the learnèd ancients all avoid.”
What “learnèd ancients”? Let me ask, what “all”
Into this taste were so afraid to fall?
For, as to those of Greek and Roman stem
Avoiding rime,—why, rime avoided them!
Nature of language upon riming feet
Forbad the two antagonists to meet.
This is no more a reason to defame
Our rimes in English, than for us to blame
The several idioms which those tongues have got
And we avoid,—that is, we have them not.

“Sameness of measure constantly pursued,
And close of periods that still conclude
With the same sound, is irksome to the ear,”—
This is the reason next asserted here.
But are not measures in our Common verse
The very same which you yourself rehearse:
The soft Iambic—in your phrase—and these
The English language falls into with ease.
Give, then, to measure, whilst you take the same,
Its easy, natural, unirksome claim;
Make fair appeal, nor guiltless rime assault
For measur'd sameness of Iambic fault;
And then let ears decide this single doubt:
“Are lyrics irksome with them—or without?”

“With them,” you think, “blank metre far excels,”
And bring a plain comparison from bells.
“Rimes are extremely irksome,”—so you say,—
“As bells are irksome, rung the common way;
From which, in changes if the ringers ring,
Variety and harmony would spring.”

Now, bells, when rung in changes, if you will
May show in ringers a superior skill;
But for the music of their various change
Give me the simple tuneful octave range,—
Of steepled sounds the plain harmonious part!
The rest is all but janglement of art,—
Less apt, as hearers I have heard complain,
To please an ear, than to disturb a brain.
Of this allusion one may then admit,
And Rime not suffer, I conceive, a bit.

Why recommend, for reasons of this kind,
To men of genius, and of vacant mind,
To banish rimes in General—to decree
The British muse “from Gothic fetters free?”

These Gothic fetters all the muses seek
In all the tongues but Latin and but Greek:
Where verse excels, because they both are blest
With fetters more than any of the rest;
Can yield to more and stricter rules, in fine,
That grace and strengthen the poetic line.
Our too neglected language has too few;
Yet, as if more were in it than enow,
You banish rime,—bid vacant minds provide
To lay its chief prerogative aside;
That one peculiar beauty you decry
Which modern muses are distinguish'd by.
Poets, for their encouragement, you paint
Less subject now to quantity's restraint
Than were the ancients: “to be thus untied
Is our advantage on the modern side.”
Whereas, in all poetical respect,
This one advantage is one great defect,—
One source of ruin to the minor clan,
Who think verse good verse when they words can scan:
By this “advantage” they run hobbling on,—
Yea, men of sense sometimes, like Dr. Donne,—
With woeful proof what benefit is gain'd
By being less to quantity restrain'd.
Of all restraints the justest heretofore
Less tied the modern bards,—at present more;
More ev'ry harsher freedom they coerce,
And consequently write much better verse.
'Tis true, they don't in Greek and Latin sort
Fix by unvaried rules the long and short
Of syllables; but a judicious bard
Pays to their quantities the same regard,
In length and brevity exact and clear;
He wants no precepts, while he has an ear;
Wants no advantage, having no complaint
Of being subject to the same restraint,
Which they who are not subject to, I doubt,
For muse and metre, will suppose too stout.
What poet, then, would any rime dismiss
For such a blank advantage, Sir, as this?

You add another, not at all confin'd
To hasty dactyle of ignoble kind;—
So Dionysius and so Mason term
Poor Dactyle's measure, and so you confirm.
Severe enough! Imagine he that lists,
Wherein its ignobility consists!
What I would ask is, why of ancient folks
Impose on us their freedoms or their yokes,—
Of ancient folks, whose language and its pow'rs
Must have so oft a diff'rent turn from ours?
'Tis our own language, Sir, when understood,
That tells what freedom, what restraint, is good.
'Tis Mason's task ignobly to asperse
The British Muse, who in her dactyle verse,
Subjects and measures properly applied,
Exerts a grace to Greece and Rome denied.
Or inattentive he, or injudicious,
To blame her dactyle from his Dionysius!
Or say—of metre that you please prefer!—
What Dionysius had to do with her?
He knew her not; and 'tis a learnèd whim
To think that she knew anything of him;
Or, if she did, that she would go to seek
The rules for English, that he wrote in Greek.
Young bards that write most promisingly well,
And might in native sense and sound excel,
Are oft by ancient pedantry, at last,
Lost in the blank of tragical bombast.
Who would not wish that they might take in time
The grand preservative, the British Rime?—
Not to forbid excursion such as this
Which you present, nor takes the Muse amiss;
But, when you chain her lyrics to your laws,
Then she looks blank, and there she makes a pause;
As well she may,—if all her stock you vest
In blank Iambic, and its varied rest!
One edict further if your preface goes,
Adieu to poetry, and all is prose;
Nor Goth nor Vandal has the muse undone,
But you, alas, her rime-distasting son!
By fetters, as you call them, Goths design'd
Not to enslave, but to relieve the mind;
By due recurrence of a kindred sound
To give their verse its true harmonious bound;
Or, in their sacred or historic rimes,
Best to record the work of ancient times;
Best to instruct and edify the throng,
Or cheer their hearts with memorable song.
Tho' rough their speech, and its improvement small,
It gave them Rimes, and made amends for all.

What language, Sir, in European Sphere,
Does not this Gothic force of sound revere?
What poet is there whom this critic's haste,
Does not condemn for certainly bad taste?
Not that I plead prescription, but excuse
For not consenting to destroy its use,—
Secure of candour in you to dispense
With what occurs in honest rime's defence.
The vacant minds that come into your views,
And think to rescue, will but rob the Muse;
If what you call a fashionable chain
Is no encumbrance, as you here maintain,
But an advantage, which the muse must teach,—
A varied rest that ancients could not reach.

By your account of Rime one would suppose
That the same sound all periods must close.
This may be irksome,—but 'tis not the case;
For varied rime affords a varied grace.
No need of sameness to recur so oft,
As does the pause of your Iambic soft;
Which tho' you ring no artful changes thro'
(The bells for lyric measures are too few);
Tho' justly quite and pausingly belyr'd,—
The rime is wanting and the ear is tir'd,
Tho' tied to quantity,—as if it saw
No dispensation for so just a law.

Your Country Life will suffer no neglect
But that of Rime; yet what is the effect?
Why, that without it all the arts beside
Cannot resist the torrent of the tide.
Descriptive beauties that with Horace vie
In British lyrics, want the British tie;
All are dispers'd without this tie across,
And ev'ry scatter'd beauty mourns its loss,—
A loss which, if you think it worth your care,
A skill like yours can easily repair.
(Distaste of rime if you can once get o'er,
And then retract, to “certify” no more,)
Can leave to plays and fictions blank sublime,
And take your Virgil's glowing warmth and rime.

If still averse, consider, Sir, how hard
From rime it is to wean a riming bard;
The danger too that partly you foretell
Of an affected pomp and painful swell,—
Too plain at present, and too likely lot
Of future blank attempters;—but, if not,
Who will assist the poor Goth-fetter'd muse,
If you yourself cry rescue—and refuse?
Who will support your sentiment, if true,
Or give a fairer sample than you do?
Or true or false, whatever one may say,
Fairly proposed, it ought to have fair play.
One thing, in fine, we both of us may think:
“Let rime, if reason be against it, sink.
But, if on reason rime bestows a grace,
Flourish the verse that gives them both a place!”

Thus, Sir, with freedom and without disguise,
I speak my simple notions as they rise,—
Less willing to object against your plan,
Than to receive conviction, if I can.
But where a friend requires, I think it just
To play the critic and fulfil the trust;
And then, for fear of being prepossest,
I leave the judgment to my friend's own breast.

P.S.—

Since this, as yours, induced me on the book
Of ancient Horace to bestow a look,—
Led like a packhorse by preceding chimes,
To tread the tract, the beaten tract, of rimes,—
I pick'd up such as lay upon the road,
To fit the gen'ral topics of his Ode,
To please the sense, while in her riming cue,
Not with intent to vie with him or you;
For you may find much greater fault in this,
Than I in yours.—However, here it is.

And here, the Muse, retiring, bid me note,
The rural Epode ends that Horace wrote.
This, Sir, to me, I must confess, was new,
Strange at first thought, but upon second true.
“Non me Lucrina juverint conchylia,”
Looks of his muse so like another filia,
That, if you turn to Horace, you may find
Sufficient reasons to be of my mind.
Another verse, tho' both for measure twins,
On “fenerator Alfius” begins.
“Beatus ille” had completed quite,
The rural day's description with its night;
Too late, too botching on a fair survey,
The forc'd and stiff transition to—“Non me”;
Where Horace paints an usurer grown warm
About his own, and not another's form.
His “oves, boves, vernae, lares,” all
Bespeak the landlord at his country hall,
Struck with a sudden sense of homely bliss,
That avarice soon taught him to dismiss.

Another topic and another style
Begins your own: “Great Britain, plenteous isle!”
Just imitator, fairly you forbore
To force coherence with what went before;
“My fleecy care,” as rightly you explain,
“My wearied oxen,” and “my vassal train,”
Give a distinctive hint, from whence to date
The speech relating to the miser's fate.

More likely, then, that to a diff'rent song
“Beatus ille” and “Non me” belong.
In one, the poet on description bent,
The country life exhausted his intent:
A fair sufficient and well finish'd theme,
Take it without the “fenerator” seam.
Another subjeet was the money'd squire,
When gentle satire touch'd the poet's lyre,
Play'd off a speech more suitably concise
To a short fruitless interval of vice.

And yet, in length (for here, one may forebode
Objection) equal to the following Ode;
Same measure too, or, if insisted on,
Some other reasons why the Ode is one.
They best account for the mistake, who threw
Into one Ode what Horace meant for two.
Brief,—to the miser his “Non me” award,
His own “Beatus ille” to the bard!