ose. The merchant, as described in Chaucer,
went on his way "sounding always the increase of his winning." Every
prose-writer has more or less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who,
when deprived of the regular mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle
of modulation left in their writings.

An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same manner. It is but fair that
the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail itself of
the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence of syllables,
that have been displayed in the invention and collocation of images. It is
allowed that rhyme assists the memory; and a man of wit and shrewdness has
been heard to say, that the only four good lines of poetry are the
well-known ones which tell the number of days in the months of the year.

"Thirty days hath September," etc.

But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken the
fancy? and there are other things worth having at our fingers' ends,
besides the contents of the almanac.--Pope's versification is tiresome,
from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare's blank verse is
the perfection of dramatic dialogue.

All is not poetry that passes for such: nor does verse make the whole
difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does not cease to be poetry
in a literal translation; and Addison's Campaign has been very properly
denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from poetry, as
treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, and irksome
matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the imagination, or
else of such difficult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do
not admit of the wayward or violent movements either of the imagination or
the passions.

I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as possible
without absolutely being so, namely, the Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson
Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer and Dryden have translated
some of the last into English rhyme, but the essence and the power of
poetry was there before. That which lifts the spirit above the earth,
which draws the soul out of itself with indescribable longings, is poetry
in kind, and generally fit to become so in name, by being "married to
immortal verse." If it is of the essence of poetry to strike and fix the
imagination, whether we will or no, to make the eye of childhood glisten
with the starting tear, to be never thought of a