In This name, aided by the reader's own observation, must, I think, sufficiently explain the system of versification to which I allude. reading the poetry of the present day, it must strike the most superficial observer as being totally dif ferent in its structure from that hitherto in use amongst us. He may not, perhaps, have taken the time or the trouble to investigate the particular quality which thus distinguishes our hodiernal poetry; but will readily acknowledge it to consist in a perpetual tendency to run into prose. It is from this quality that I denominate it prose-poetry. For illustration's sake: and eloquent; still I ask, is this the the sing-song Muse, when you should But, as if this was not enough, up starts the accursed spirit of Prose poetry. What are these letters which (Approaching the prison wall) Are scrawl'd along the incxorable wall? Will the gleam let me trace them? Ah! the names page Of my sad predecessors in this place, bears His own and his beloved's name. Alas! &c. (Two Foscari, Act 3. Sc. 1.) Here it is evident that there is a great deal of false printing; let the speech be put down upon paper as we should read it, and it will run thus: What are these letters which Are scrawl'd along the inexorable wall? Will the gleam let me trace them? Ah! the names Of my sad predecessors in this place, The dates of their despair, the brief words of A grief too great for many. This stone page Holds like an epitaph their history. And the poor captive's tale is graven on His dungeon barrier, like the lover's record Upon the bark of some tall tree, which bears His own and his beloved's name. Alas! Here is a motley piece of work! First a patch of prose; then two streaks of poetry; then another patch of prose; followed by a single streak of poetry; and so on. Would not one think the writer of this had lost either his ears or his senses! The art of composing in this kind of two-handed language lies wholly in one rule of easy observance, viz. the neglecting final emphases and pauses. If the standard poetry of onr nation be examined, it will be found that, for the most part, there is a pause of greater or less duration at the end of every line, whether indicated by a stop or not. It will also be found that a sounding word generally closes each verse. And it is the due attention to make these pauses of a certain perceptible duration, and to introduce these sounding closes, which confers dignity, grandeur, and strength on the verse. In contradistinction to this, if the prevailing poetry of the day be inspected, we shall find that the lines perpetually run into one another without any pause at all, the final word of this line not being disjoined by any perceptible division of time from the first word of the succeeding; and also, that the verses frequently end with words neither emphatic nor sonorous. So that no difference whatever exists between such versification and sweet weak prose, but a certain superfluity of capital letters squandered over the page. This mode of versifying (if it can be called so) is, however, not of modern date even with us. It is the great defect of Beaumont and Fletcher's dramatic poetry, and is that quality to which their verse owes all its distinguishing feebleness. The style of Massinger is also in many places prose-poetic; differing chiefly from that so epidemic at present, by the speeches being often wholly indivisible into pentameters by any device of printing or capitals, unless lines could be divided in the middle of a word. Indeed I sometimes know not what to make of this last author's versification. I am often tempted to think that many of his speeches which are now clipt into cuttings of various lengths, should be printed in prose; yet occasionally lines of the regular measure intervene, and spoil my theory. Who, for instance, can tell whether Philip was at the top or the toe of Parnassus, when he wrote this awkward medley of verse and prose: That the majesty of English verse depends on final pauses as well as final emphatic syllables has never been observed, that I know of, by any writer on our language. Yet it is demonstrable from these two facts: first, that the most insignificant words, such as on, of, which, &c. may properly enough end our most heroic lines, if followed by a pause of perceptible duration, ex. gr. Like the Pontic sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic, and the Hellespont.-(Othello, Act 3. Sc. 2.) Secondly, that the most significant and sounding words may close our lines improperly, i. e. when not followed by a pause in recitation, ex. gr. Although a Greek, and born a foe to monarchs A slave, and hating fetters-an Ionian, (Sardanapalus, Act 1. Sc. 2.) In this passage, the word "strong" is both sounding, and capable (according as we choose to read the line) of a heavy emphasis; but by reason of its being too closely connected in recitation with "enough," the first word of the next verse, i. e. by the want of a final pause, the lines lose their majesty and become mere prose. The above remark, may possibly, to those who are deeply read in the philosophy of our tongue, appear trite and common-place; to me, however, it was wholly new, and I rather choose to be laughed at for my ignorance, than to omit making a remark which may, perhaps, be new to all. These were your father's words: "If e'er my son Follow the war, tell him it is a school Their lawless riots, they shall never merit To obey their leaders, and shun mutinies; To dare boldly In a fair cause, and for the country's safety To run upon the cannon's mouth undaunted; To bear with patience the winter's cold The Rhetoric school of Drama, on account of its desperate propensity to heroic versification, cannot easily deviate into prose-poetry; yet we find a ludicrous instance of it in Congreve. Almeria says:— Not Osmyn, but Alphonso, is my dear The words The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Out sweeten'd not thy breath. Cymbeline, Act IV. Sc. 2. In his great tragedies, or where he speaks in the digna cothurno, it would be difficult to find an instance of prose-poetry, or any line, such as the fourth and fifth in the above quotation, which does not end with a pause of perceptible duration. And perhaps it would be injudicious, in the more familiar parts of Drama, never to swerve from the strict epic rule of ending each line with a tone; as the verse might then appear above the subject, as well as too artificial But it requires and monotonous. much greater skill, or much greater genius, than I fear even my Lord Byron possesses, safely to indulge the pedestrian method of metre, which I have denominated prose-poetry. For it is you, my Lord, whom I impeach as the arch-patron and propagator of this degenerate system of poetry. You have debased the language of our native Muse, by the revival, in a worse shape, of this unBritish school of versification.* Remarkable alike for your genius, your eccentricities, your nobility of birth, and external gifts of fortune, you are for nothing so distinguished as for the incalculable mischief you have brought upon the literature of your country, by the loan of your name and abilities to the purpose which Į speak of, the undermining of our energetic laws of verse, the overthe degradation, depravation, and throw of our lofty system of metre, annihilation of our national spirit of poetry. You, my Lord Byron, are the man whom I arraign before your country and the tribunal of the Before Revival, do I say? No: neither Massinger, nor Shakspeare,-no man of genius, whose blood was unpolluted by the mal aria of that pestilent clime, the Land of slaves and opera-singers, ever sullied his paper with such drivelling imbecility as this by way of verse: 'Tis he! I am taken in the toils. I quitted Hamburgh, Giulio, his steward, I came upon the frontier; the free city Alone preserved my freedom-till I left Its walls-fool that I was to quit them! But I deem'd this humble garb, &c.-Werner, Act I. Sc. 1. Before I quitted Hamburgh!-an order From Brandenburgh!-the arrest Of Kruitzner!-&c! &c!"-O the Roman majesty of prose-poetry! the os magna of the Byronian school of verse! the " energy divine" of pauseless pentameters, endless Jambics! Muses, of high treason against the majesty of our language. You are a man of genius, my Lord, and as such an honour to your country:-but, Sir, it were better for our fame that you never had been born amongst us. You have fulfilled one, at least, of a poet's duties; your works are inexhaustible, fatal sources of delight:--but you are the greatest enemy of its poetry your country ever had; you have given that a blow which I fear it will never recover. To your genius I ascribe the manifest debasement of mind which now pervades this department of our literature; from the rise of your poetic birth-star I date the decline of English poetry. This is a serious charge, my Lord; perhaps more serious than is compatible with the light tone of these letters; but it is easily substantiated. It is a most important subject too; involving no less than our future national rank in the poetic world; and I could wish some abler hand were employed in developing its circumstances, so that, if possible, your imitators and ad mirers, nay you yourself, might be deterred from the prosecution of a system at once disgraceful and in jurious. In a word, my Lord, you are the champion and professor-principal of Prose-poetry. That vile and abominable system of versification, which has utterly broken down the strength of our language, was made current, if not coined, by you. The influence of your name and the power of your practice have spread this accursed infection throughout the whole body literate; and from your own eloquent volumes down to the glib, maudlin inanities of our epheméral poetry, all our once-noble strain of verse is contaminated by the presence of this pernicious leaven. The Apollo of the British Lyre is Italianated. You come forth, my Lord, an opponent of the English school of versification. You reject our metre as harsh, rugged, and unpolished. -Why, to the voluptuary, to the proselyte of southern luxury, to the man of a vitiated taste and a depraved morality, to him who has forgotten his country, who loves a foreign and a fallen clime, better than his native, and with all its faults, a noble land, to such a man as this, it is no wonder if the British Muse appears stern, and forbidding, and severe. But, my Lord, there is a rude melody in our numbers, which cannot be equalled by the effeminate modulation of any living language; there is a harmonious simplicity in the structure of our verse, which we can enjoy, though you cannot appreciate, else you would practise it in your works; there is a sweetness and beauty of language in our own Shakspeare, which you are not capable of imitating, and which we defy you to parallel in all Italy. But supposing your theory true; granting that our island poetry were deficient in softness and euphony,―Is it for a Briton to sacrifice energy, manliness, and vigour, to languid blandiloquence and voluptuous suavity of diction? Nor will it avail to reply, that England is a "fallen clime;" that she is no more a land of liberty; no more the hardy nurse of rude but noble spirits. Is she to be restored to primeval grandeur by deserting her in her adversity? Is she to be freed by forgetting her? Is her spirit to be re-ennobled by matriculating the lascivious tales of the south, by pandering to the sensual appetite of the age, and by debasing her poetry, the moral philosophy of the people, to a mere soft sliding vehicle of dissolute principles? No, you answer; but her case is hopeless; her decline has set in, and it is impossible to stay it. True, my Lord; and because you cannot remedy the disease that consumes her, you inflame it; because you cannot save her from ultimate destruction, you stab her through the heart? This is nobly done, and will make a noble epitaph for your memory. A renegade from your country, you cultivate a continental distaste for the simple energy of her language. A denizen of another clime, you endeavour to corrupt our poetry with the effeminate manner of a voluptuous latitude. Alas! my Lord, our language was but too much inclined to degeneracy already; our poetry was fast verging to that condition of smooth imbecility which characterises the last ages of the empire of the Muses. It is, perhaps, the tendency of a luxurious nation to decline into effeminacy; of a highlycultivated language to refine itself to insipidity. But it was your part, my Lord, to have resisted this deca dence, both of morals and language, instead of accelerating it. Our other writers, either through indolence, impotence, or a shameful connivance with the depraved temper of the times, were prone enough to exhibit the gaudy finery they had personally or by proxy gathered from Ind; to substitute the dazzling gewgaws, and splendid phantasmagoria of the tinsel'd -East, for our native truth of thought; to exchange our natural simplicity of phrase, for the gorgeous, eye-striking, Asiatic glitter of diction. But you, my Lord, are doubly delinquent; you not only adopt this orientalism of imagery, but you reduce the manly flow of our national verse to the lazy current of prose-poetry; instead of the firm and stately tread of num bers, in which we alone, of all the moderns, emulated the ancients, you have introduced the feeble, volu minous, spent eloquence, whose taint you imbibed from the air of degenerate Italy. And it would have been matter enough for regret, to see your own vigorous mind thus effeminated; your inborn sense of what is sweet and beautiful and gracious, rebated; your natural relish for true melody of verse corrupted and depraved. We should have had in this alone sufficient to deplore; but when we behold the universal host of our poets plunge headlong into the same abyss, anger and indignation against the Lucifer who misled them are mingled with our shame and our sor-row. It is true, that by luxury, and overgrown wealth, the public mind was unnerved, the national soul was enfeebled; I therefore cannot with justice attribute the total effeminacy of our common poetry to your influence alone; the genius of the times should relieve you of one half the disgraceful burthen. But if we are on the brink of our national decline, is this any reason that you, my Lord, should, just at this critical moment, like a satellite of the demon of Corruption, set your shoulders to the back of the tottering crowd, and push us down the hill of perdition? What! you say, is prose-poetry (as you call it) so potent a stream as to sweep down a nation in that way? Perhaps not; that last clause of mine alludes, I confess, rather to the matter than the manner of your works: but I do as sert, that the system of prose-poetry dissolves and relaxes the public mind; that it softens, enervates, and brings down the bold spirit of the north to the level of southern effeminacy. Speaking more to the purpose of this letter, however, I say that you, my Lord Lucifer, have not only gone astray yourself, but have led the whole train of poetical seraphim after you. Seraphim! ay, and mere mortals too. Look at the daily issue of the press, and behold your handywork: the scribbling rhymester, the newspaper poet, the maudlin Sappho, the namby-pamby versifier, the languid fine gentleman, and the smug lordling, every fool and every fribble, contributes his or her little mawkish stream to the overflowing ocean of prose-poetry. Such a consummation was naturally to have been expected: the predominance of fools in every nation is always so great, human nature is so prone to descend, and vo luble nonsense is so pat to the popu lar ear, whilst thought-full poetry is so oppressive to the general brain, that we wanted but a tilt from the professor of prose-poetry, and down! down we went the slope of degeneracy, till we came to the very bottom of Parnassus. The nation followed its poets, as complacently as wild-geese follow their leaders. This is wherefore I arraign you, my Lord; this is what I mean by calling you the enemy of our poetic literature. You have had talent enough to consecrate a false system of versification, to deprave our ear, and to de base our numbers. You have had skill sufficient to dilute our native poetry into a kind of melting melli fluence; too sweet not to be agree able; too apt for the age, not to become prevalent; too corruptive in its nature, not to destroy what it pervades. Thus does your genius work our disgrace; by its influence, you have debauched our poetry. you not written with such unlucky felicity in this degenerate style of verse, you would have had neither imitators nor admirers; and though our annals had wanted the glory of your present name, we should still have lived in the hope of seeing other and more British poets arise. Had For my own part, my Lord, I should perhaps never have troubled my readers or myself with this matter, had you not most impiously and |