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LETTER LVIII.

GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ.

Lichfield, March 25, 1787.

YOUR objection to the little discords which are, in some degree, inevitable to every language, and which, blending with the concords, rather increase than lessen the general harmony; your pettish quarrel with the letter s, which has very picturesque powers of sound; these, and other prejudices of the same sickly complexion, are unfortunate for your poetic pleasures, and render you, who are a man of genius and knowledge, a bad critic.

Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, &c.—even Pope, who is allowed to have carried the delicacy of harmonic refinement as far as it can safely go,these poets have, in their best passages, a number of lines which contain similar discords to those with which you quarrel in this verse of Dryden's,

"Fed on the lawns, and in the forests rang'd."

It is agreed that the ne plus ultra of verbal melody, exists in the Eloisa to Abelard; yet, con

taining lines like these, your coy ear will doubtless scarce endure it.

"What means this tumult in a vestal's veins ?"

"No weeping orphan saw its father's stores."
"Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight."
"No silver saints by dying misers given."

And,

"If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings."

Also, in Gray,

"And you that from the stately heights
Of Windsor's brow."

Your unclassical aversion to the letter s, for the Latin has it abundantly as our own language, must, I conclude, deaden your ear to the music of this line of Gray,

"Fields, that cool Ilissus laves."

And to these lines of Milton,

And,

"Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore."

"On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks."

Also, to the celebrated couplet of Dryden's, when the lyre of Timotheus changes from rude and martial to delightful sounds.

"Softly sweet in Lydian measures,
Soon he sooth'd the soul to pleasures."

I know not lines in which the letter s is more liberally used, and they were chosen by Dryden to express the most agreeable sensations.

Those who desire to have a just perception of poetic excellence, must, with manly spirit, look for general harmony, superior to sickly niceties about verbal arrangement. They must have no squeamishness about the letter s, since no consonant has more power of painting to the ear-instance from the Penseroso of Milton, a wintry morning of Spring,

"Usher'd with a shower still,

When the gust has blown its fill.”

In that first line it is the repetition of the letter s, which enables it so exactly to represent, by sound, a silent shower, as it descends. I am not afraid to assert, that there is a similar instance of sound echoing sense in my poem Louisa, thus

VOL. I.

"And tossing the green sea-weed o'er and o'er,
Creeps the hush'd billow on the shelly shore."

When a calm sea advances on the sands, we always hear a sound spelt thus, ush—ush—ush.

Garrick, whose ear was indisputable, certainly, since he composed the Jubilee himself, and was to speak it, took care that it contained no verse whose dissonance must unavoidably grate the ear of people of taste-yet has it this line,

" "Tis Shakespeare!-Shakespeare !-Shakespeare!”

Harsh as it is, I dont believe it was disgustingly so from his lip-and a poet is always to suppose his verses will be read well. No reader that knows not how to cover these little asperities, and melt them, by judicious intonation, into the general harmony, will ever give the power and proper effect to the most musical couplets. Every poetic writer will exclaim

"O save my lines from being read by those,
Whose rapid accent makes verse senseless prose?"

A good poet, committing himself to the skill of his reciter, will not scruple to use sounds in themselves unmusical, but in which more is gained on

the side of vigour and representation, than is lost. on that of harmony.

I knew a gentleman who, God help him, could not endure the hadst, didst, and shouldst, inevitable upon the majestic plainness of addressing in the second person singular; and a duty indispensable to every poet who writes gravely. I asked my man of refinement if he chose the speech of Satan to Beelzebub should be smoothed into such civil, and courtly sounds, thus, "If you be he, but O! how fallen, how chang'd!" He repliedWhy, no, in the solemnity of that address I grant the

you a worse evil than the harsh st, which it banishes." "Well Sir, let us see if you think such banishment an advantage in a passage which is not solemn; instead of

"Return fair Eve!

Whom flyest thou?-him thou fly'st of him thou art;
Part of my soul I seek thee."

"Return fair Eve,

Whom fly you? him you fly, of him you are;
Part of my soul I seek you."

But no-he was constrained to acknowledge that even there the change rendered the passage ludicrous. I then exhorted him, as I exhort you, to cease complaining of unavoidable circumstances in Nature, in science, and in art. Do not, be

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