w his judgement, in extremes:
So over violent, or over civil,
_That every man with him was god or devil._
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
_Nothing went unrewarded, but desert._
Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late,
_He had his jest, and they had his estate._

Inversion itself was often turned into a grace in these poets, and may
be in others, by the power of being superior to it; using it only with
a classical air, and as a help lying next to them, instead of a
salvation which they are obliged to seek. In jesting passages also it
sometimes gave the rhyme a turn agreeably wilful, or an appearance of
choosing what lay in its way; as if a man should pick up a stone to
throw at another's head, where a less confident foot would have
stumbled over it. Such is Dryden's use of the word _might_--the mere
sign of a tense--in his pretended ridicule of the monkish practice of
rising to sing psalms in the night.

And much they griev'd to see so nigh their hall
The bird that warn'd St. Peter of his fall;
That he should raise his mitred crest on high,
And clap his wings and call his family
To sacred rites; and vex th' ethereal powers
With midnight matins at uncivil hours;
Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest
_Just in the sweetness of their morning rest._

(What a line full of 'another doze' is that!)

_Beast of a bird!_ supinely, when he _might_
Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light!
What if his dull forefathers used that cry?
Could he not let a bad example die?

I the more gladly quote instances like those of Dryden, to illustrate
the points in question, because they are specimens of the very highest
kind of writing in the heroic couplet upon subjects not heroical. As
to prosaicalness in general, it is sometimes indulged in by young
writers on the plea of its being natural; but this is a mere
confusion of triviality with propriety, and is usually the result of
indolence.

_Unsuperfluousness_ is rather a matter of style in general, than of
the sound and order of words: and yet versification is so much
strengthened by it, and so much weakened by its opposite, that it
could not but come within the category of its requisites. When
superfluousness of words is not occasioned by overflowing animal
spirits, as in Beaumont and Fletcher, or by the very genius of luxury,
as in Spenser (in which cases it is enrichment as well