pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and the
daughter of a god are not represented much to their advantage by a hare
and dog. The simile of the Alps has no useless parts, yet affords a
striking picture by itself; it makes the foregoing position better
understood, and enables it to take faster hold on the attention; it
assists the apprehension, and elevates the fancy.

Let me, likewise, dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph, in which
it is directed that "the sound should seem an echo to the sense;" a
precept which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond any other English
poet.

This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering
frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my
opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can furnish
this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly, and
the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words
framed to exhibit the noises which they express, as _thump, rattle,
growl, hiss_. These, however, are but few, and the poet cannot make them
more, nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned. The
time of pronunciation was, in the dactylick measures of the learned
languages, capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be
accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion
were, perhaps, expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention
of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy; but our
language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in
their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely
from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation
between a _soft_ line and a _soft_ couch, or between _hard_ syllables
and _hard_ fortune.

Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified; and yet it may be
suspected that even in such resemblances the mind often governs the ear,
and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of the most
successful attempts has been to describe the labour of Sisyphus:

With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.

Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll
violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense:

While many a merry tale, and many a s