And that which was proved true before,
Prove false again? _Two hundred more._

_Hudibras._

Compound for sins they are _inclin'd to_,
By damning those they have _no mind to_.

_Id._

----Stor'd with deletery _med'cines_,
Which whosoever took is _dead since_.

_Id._

Sometimes it is a grace in a master like Butler to force his rhyme,
thus showing a laughing wilful power over the most stubborn materials:

Win
The women, and make them draw in
The men, as Indians with a _female_
Tame elephant inveigle _the_ male.

_Hudibras._

He made an instrument to know
If the moon shines at full or no;
That would, as soon as e'er she _shone, straight_
Whether 'twere day or night _demonstrate_;
Tell what her diameter to an _inch is_,
And prove that she's not made of _green cheese_.

_Id._

Pronounce it, by all means, _grinches_, to make the joke more wilful.
The happiest triple rhyme, perhaps, that ever was written, is in _Don
Juan_:

But oh! ye lords of ladies _intellectual_,
Inform us truly,--haven't they _hen-peck'd you all_?

The sweepingness of the assumption completes the flowing breadth of
effect.

Dryden confessed that a rhyme often gave him a thought. Probably the
happy word 'sprung' in the following passage from Ben Jonson was
suggested by it; but then the poet must have had the feeling in him.

--Let our trumpets sound,
And cleave both air and ground
With beating of our drums.
Let every lyre be strung,
Harp, lute, theorbo, _sprung_
_With touch of dainty thumbs_.

Boileau's trick for appearing to rhyme naturally was to compose the
second line of his couplet first! which gives one the crowning idea of
the 'artificial school of poetry'. Perhaps the most perfect master of
rhyme, the easiest and most abundant, was the greatest writer of
comedy that the world has seen,--Moliere.

If a young reader should ask, after all, What is the quickest way of
knowing bad poets from good, the best poets from the next best, and so
on? the answer is, the only and twofold way: first, the perusal of the
best poets with the greatest attention; and, second, the cultivation
of that love of truth and beauty which made them what they are.