The Feast of the Poets; with Notes, and Other Pieces in Verse

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1814 edition. Excerpt: ... of any pretensions, who shall come before them without a new stop or two to his lyre.--To come to particulars.--Let the reader take any dozen or twenty lines from Pope at a hazard, or if he pleases, from his best and most elaborate passages, and he will find that they have scarcely any other pauses than at the fourth or fifth syllable, and both with little variation of accent. Upon these the poet is eternally dropping his voice, line after line, sometimes upon only one of them for eight or ten lines together; so that when Voltaire praised him for bringing down the harsh wranglings of the English trumpet to the soft tones of the flute, he should havev added, that he made a point of stopping every instant upon one or two particular notes. See, for instance, the first twenty lines of Windsor Forest, the two first paragraphs of Eloisa to Abelard, and that gorgeous misrepresentation of the exquisite moonlight picture in Homer. The last may well be quoted: -- Dicrfonnaire Philosophique, Art. Pope.--The reader will allow me to deprecate any application of these remarks on versification to the Feast of the Poets. The unambitious ballad-measure in which it is written, has not only had a particular time and tuue annexed to it from time immemorial, so as to be led off like a kind of dance, but as the couplets are really made up of four lines thrown into two, may be allowed to appeal to it's own laws. This however is a trifle not Vvorth the settling. The chief merit which is expected in verses of this description is idiomatical easiness.. As when the moon--refulgent lamp of night, O'er Heav'ns clear azure--spreads her sacred light When not a breath--disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud--o'ercasts the solemn scene; Around her throne--the...