and in the surging smoke
Uplifted spurns the ground--
--Had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft. That fury stay'd;
Quench'd in a boggy syrtis, neither sea,
Nor good dry land: night founder'd on he fares,
Treading the crude consistence.

Our author has endeavoured to justify his choice of blank verse, by
shewing it less subject to restraints, and capable of greater sublimity
than rhime. But tho' this observation may hold true, with respect to
elevated and grand subjects, blank verse is by no means capable of so
great universality. In satire, in elegy, or in pastoral writing, our
language is, it seems, so feebly constituted, as to stand in need of the
aid of rhime; and as a proof of this, the reader need only look upon the
pastorals of Virgil, as translated by Trapp in blank verse, and compare
them with Dryden's in rhime. He will then discern how insipid and fiat
the pastorals of the same poet are in one kind of verification, and how
excellent and beautiful in another. Let us give one short example to
illustrate the truth of this, from the first pastoral of Virgil.

MELIBAEUS.

Beneath the covert of the spreading beech
Thou, Tityrus, repos'd, art warbling o'er,
Upon a slender reed, thy sylvan lays:
We leave our country, and sweet native fields;
We fly our country: careless in the shade,
Thou teachest, Tityrus, the sounding groves
To eccho beauteous Amaryllis' name.

TITYRUS.

O Melibaeus, 'twas a god to us
Indulged this freedom: for to me a god
He shall be ever: from my folds full oft
A tender lamb his altar shall embrue:
He gave my heifers, as thou seest, to roam;
And me permitted on my rural cane
To sport at pleasure, and enjoy my muse,

TRAPP.

MELIBAEUS.

Beneath the shade which beechen-boughs diffuse,
You, Tityrus, entertain your Silvan muse:
Round the wide world in banishment we roam,
Forc'd from our pleasing fields, and native home:
While stretch'd at ease you sing your happy loves:
And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.

TITYRUS.

These blessings, friend, a deity bestow'd:
For never can I deem him less than God.
The tender firstlings of my woolly breed
Shall on his holy altar often bleed.
He gave my kine to graze the flowry plain:
And to my pipe renew'd the rural strain.

DRYDEN.

Dr. Trapp towards the conclusion of his Preface