atone for the absence of this single recommendation.
It is not sufficient that the lines of blank verse be smooth in
themselves, they must also be harmonious in the combination. Whereas
the chief concern of the rhymist is to beware that his couplets and
his sense be commensurate, lest the regularity of his numbers should
be (too frequently at least) interrupted. A trivial difficulty this,
compared with those which attend the poet unaccompanied by his bells.
He, in order that he may be musical, must exhibit all the variations,
as he proceeds, of which ten syllables are susceptible; between the
first syllable and the last there is no place at which he must not
occasionally pause, and the place of the pause must be perpetually
shifted. To effect this variety, his attention must be given, at one
and the same time, to the pauses he has already made in the period
before him, as well as to that which he is about to make, and to those
which shall succeed it. On no lighter terms than these is it possible
that blank verse can be written which will not, in the course of a
long work, fatigue the ear past all endurance. If it be easier,
therefore, to throw five balls into the air and to catch them in
succession, than to sport in that manner with one only, then may blank
verse be more easily fabricated than rhyme. And if to these labors we
add others equally requisite, a style in general more elaborate than
rhyme requires, farther removed from the vernacular idiom both in the
language itself and in the arrangement of it, we shall not long doubt
which of these two very different species of verse threatens the
composer with most expense of study and contrivance. I feel it
unpleasant to appeal to my own experience, but, having no other
voucher at hand, am constrained to it. As I affirm, so I have found. I
have dealt pretty largely in both kinds, and have frequently written
more verses in a day, with tags, than I could ever write without them.
To what has been here said (which whether it have been said by others
or not, I cannot tell, having never read any modern book on the
subject) I shall only add, that to be poetical without rhyme, is an
argument of a sound and classical constitution in any language.

A word or two on the subject of the following translation, and I have
done.

My chief boast is that I have adhered closely to my original,
convinced that every departure from him would be punished with the
forfeiture of some grace or