et
every passage in his poetry is Miltonic,--more than anything else. On
the other hand, his imitators _Miltonize_, yet produce nothing worthy of
Milton, the important characteristic of whose writings my father well
expressed, when he said 'The reader of Milton must be always on his
duty: _he is surrounded with sense_.' A man must have his sense to
imitate him worthily. How we look through his words at the Deluge, as he
floods it upon us in Book xi. l. 738-53!--The Attic bees produce honey
so flavoured with the thyme of Hymettus that it is scarcely eatable,
though to smell the herb itself in a breezy walk upon that celebrated
Mount would be an exceeding pleasure; thus certain epic poems are
overpoweringly flavoured with herbs of Milton, while yet the fragrant
balm and fresh breeze of his poetry is not to be found in them. S.C.

W---- and myself expressed our surprise: and my friend gave his
definition and notion of harmonious verse, that it consisted, (the
English iambic blank verse above all,) in the apt arrangement of pauses
and cadences, and the sweep of whole paragraphs,

----'with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,'

and not in the even flow, much less in the prominence or antithetic
vigour, of single lines, which were indeed injurious to the total
effect, except where they were introduced for some specific purpose.
Klopstock assented, and said that he meant to confine Glover's
superiority to single lines.[227]

[227] The 'abrupt and laconic structure' of Glover's periods appears at
the very commencement of _Leonidas_, which has something military in its
movement, but rather the stiff gait of the drilled soldier than the
proud march of the martial hero.

The virtuous Spartan who resign'd his life
To save his country at th' Oetaen straits,
Thermopylae, when all the peopled east
In arms with Xerxes filled the Grecian plains,
O Muse record! The Hellespont they passed
O'erpowering Thrace. The dreadful tidings swift
To Corinth flew. Her Isthmus was the seat
Of Grecian council. Orpheus thence returns
To Lacedaemon. In assembly full, &c.

Glover's best passages are of a soft character. This is a pleasing
_Homerism_:

Lycis dies,
For boist'rous war ill-chosen. He was skill'd
To tune the lulling flute, and melt the heart;
Or with his pipe's awak'ning strains allure
The lovely dames of L