also it is in everything the opposite of the Italian. It is true that it possesses great energy, great boldness of expression, and a grammatical liberty which goes to the full extent; but deprived of sweetness and softness, it is, if I may say it, like those brittle metals whose strength is in stiffness, and which is broken when one would make them flexible. The poverty of its rhymes, denuded for the most part of accuracy of accent and of harmony in consonants, has for a long time engaged the English poets in making blank verse; and it must be admitted that, notwithstanding the defect inherent in their tongue and which consists, as I have just said, in the absolute lack of feminine finals, they have succeeded in this better than any of the poets of other nations. These lines, all imperfect in their harmony, are however, as to form, the only eumolpique verse that they could make. Shakespeare felt it and made use of it in his tragedies.
Shakespeare with the creative genius with which nature had endowed him, would have borne dramatic art to its perfection in these modern times, if circumstances had been as favourable to him as they were adverse. Emulator of Æschylus, he might have equalled and perhaps surpassed him, if he had had at his disposal a mine so rich, so brilliant
- [Footnote: fire. Besides it is never taken into account, either in the measure or in the
prosody of the lines. Thus these two lines of Dryden rhyme exactly:
"Now scarce the Trojan fleet with sails and oars
Had left behind the fair Sicilian shores. . . ."
Æneid, b. i., v. 50.
It is the same in these of Addison:
"Tune ev'ry string and ev'ry tongue,
Be thou the Muse and subject of our song. . . ."
St. Cecilia's Day, i., 10.
or these from Goldsmith:
"How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene."
The Deserted Village, i., 7.
]
