ou? For the measure is as often supplied there, as it is in Rhyme: the
latter half of the hemistich as commonly made up, or a second line
subjoined as a reply to the former; which any one leaf in JOHNSON's Plays
will sufficiently make clear to you.

"You will often find in the Greek Tragedians, and in SENECA; that when a
Scene grows up into the warmth of Repartees, which is the close fighting
of it, the latter part of the trimeter is supplied by him who answers:
and yet it was never observed as a fault in them, by any of the Ancient
or Modern critics. The case is the same in our verse, as it was in
theirs: Rhyme to us, being in lieu of Quantity to them. But if no
latitude is to be allowed a Poet; you take from him, not only his license
of _quidlibet audendi_: but you tie him up in a straighter compass than
you would a Philosopher.

"This is, indeed, _Musas colere severiores_. You would have him follow
Nature, but he must follow her on foot. You have dismounted him from his
_Pegasus_!

"But you tell us 'this supplying the last half of a verse, or adjoining a
whole second to the former, looks more like the Design of two, than the
Answer of one [pp. 498, 559].' Suppose we acknowledge it. How comes this
Confederacy to be more displeasing to you, than a dance which is well
contrived? You see there, the united Design of many persons to make up
one Figure. After they have separated themselves in many petty divisions;
they rejoin, one by one, into the gross. The Confederacy is plain amongst
them; for Chance could never produce anything so beautiful, and yet there
is nothing in it that shocks your sight.

"I acknowledge that the hand of Art appears in Repartee, as, of
necessity, it must in all kind[s] of Verse. But there is, also, the quick
and poignant brevity of it (which is a high Imitation of Nature, in those
sudden gusts of passion) to mingle with it: and this joined with the
cadency and sweetness of the Rhyme, leaves nothing in the Soul of the
Hearer to desire. 'Tis an Art which _appears_; but it _appears_ only like
the shadowings of painture [_painting_], which, being to cause the
rounding of it, cannot be absent: but while that is considered, they are
lost. So while we attend to the other beauties of the Matter, the care
and labour of the Rhyme is carried from us; or, at least, drowned in its
own sweetness, as bees are some times buried in their honey.

"When a Poet has found the Repartee; the last perfection he can