Such productions often betray great labour and exactness, but fhew no genius: for thofe, who fit down to write by rule, and follow "dry re❝ceipts how poems should be made," may compose their pieces without the least affiftance from the imagination; as an apothecary's prentice, though unable to cure any disease, can make up medicines from the physician's prescription, with no more knowledge of phyfic than the names of the drugs. Thus the Mufe, that ought to fly, and "afcend the brightest heaven of invention," walks in leading-strings, or is fupported by a go-cart.

AMONG the many poetical tricks of this fort, none have been more fuccessfully practised, or had more advocates and admirers, than a certain fantaftical conceit, called ALLITERATION which is nothing more than beginning two, three, or perhaps every word in a line with the fame letter. This method of running divifions upon the alphabet, and preffing particular letters into the fervice, has been accounted one of the firft excellencies in verfification, and has, indeed, received the fanction of fome of our beft poets: but wherein the beauty of it confifts, is fomething difficult to discover; fince Quarles or Withers might practise it with as much adroitness as Dryden or Spenfer. It is one of thofe modern arts

1

in poetry, which require no fancy, judgment, or learning in the execution: for an author may huddle the fame letters on each other again and again, as mechanically as the printer selects his types, and ranges them in whatsoever order he pleases.

THIS partial attachment to particular letters is a kind of contraft to the famous Odyiley of Tryphiodorus, where every letter in the alphabet was in it's turn excluded; and the Alliterator must be as bufily employed to introduce his favourite vowel or confonant, as the Greek poet to shut out the letter he had profcribed. Nothing is esteemed a greater beauty in poetry, than an happy choice of epithets; but Alliteration reduces all the elegancies of expreffion to a very narrow compass. Epithets are culled, indeed, with great exactness; but the closest relation they are intended to bear to the word to which they are joined, is that the initials are the fame. Thus the fields must be flowry, beauty must be beaming, ladies must be lovely; and in the fame manner must the " waves wind "their watry way," the "bluftring blafts blow," andlocks all loofely lay," not for the fake of the poetry, but the elegance of the Alliteration. This beauty has alfo taken poffeffion of many of our tragedies; and I have feen ladies wooed and heroes

It must be acknowledged, that there is fomething very mechanical in the whole conftruction of the numbers in moft of our modern poetry. Sound is more attended to than sense, and the words are expected to express more than the sentiment. There are fet rules to make verfes run off glibly, or drawl flowly on; and I have read many a poem with scarce one tolerable thought in it, that has contained all these excellencies of verfification: for which reafon I must confefs myself no friend to those critics, who analyse words and fyllables, and discover latent beauties in every letter, when the author intended that the whole fhould be taken together. Poetry should seem at least to flow freely from the imagination, and not to be squeezed from the droppings of the brain. If we would endeavour to acquire a full idea of what we mean to describe, we should then of course express ourselves with force, elegance, and perfpicuity; and this native strength of expreffion would have more true energy than elaborate phrases, and a quaint and ftudied combination of words and letters. Fine numbers are undoubtedly one of the chief beauties in poetry; but to make the found echo to the fenfe, we fhould make the fenfe our chief object. This appears to me to have been the manly practice of the Ancients, and of our own Shakespeare, Milton,

Milton, &c. who breathed the true fpirit of poetry, without having recourse to little tricks and mean artifices, which only ferve to disgrace it. A good writer, who would be above trifling even with a thought, would never perfue words, and play with letters, but leave such a childish employment for the fmall fry of rhymers, who amuse themselves with anagrams and crambo. The true poet trufts to his natural ear and strong conception, and knows that, the verfification is adapted to the fentiment, without culling particular letters, and ftringing them on his lines; as he is fure that his verses are just measure, without scanning them on his fingers.

66

THERE are almoft daily published certain Lilliputian volumes, entitled Pretty Books for Children. A friend of mine, who confiders the little rhymers of the age as only " children of a larger "growth," that amuse themselves with rhymes instead of rattles, propofes to publish a small pocket volume for the use of our poetafters. It will be a Treatife on the Art of Poetry adapted to the meanest capacities, for which fubfcriptions will be taken, and fpecimens may be feen, at George's and the Bedford coffee-houses. It will contain full directions how to modulate the numbers on every occafion, and will inftruct the young

fcribbler

fcribbler in all the modern arts of verfification. He will here meet with infallible rules, how to foften a line and lull us to fleep with liquids and dipthongs; to roughen the verse and make it roar again with reiteration of the letter R ; to set it hiffing with femi-vowels; to make it pant and breathe short with an hundred heavy afpirates; or clog it up with the thickest double consonants and monofyllables: with a particular table of Alliteration, containing the choiceft epithets, disposed into alphabetical order; so that any substantive may be readily paired with a word beginning with the fame letter, which (though a mere expletive) shall seem to carry more force and sentiment in it, than any other of a more relative meaning, but more diftant found. The whole to be illuftrated with examples from the modern poets. This elaborate work will be published about the middle of the winter, under the title of The Rhymer's Play-thing, or Poetafter's Horn-Book; fince there is nothing neceffary to form such a poet, except teaching him his letters.

T

NUMB.