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272 ORTHOMETRY. |
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more than the usual number of long syllables. Dr. Johnson is rather severe upon this and other instances of a similar character: he says, "The desire of discovering frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense has produced, in my opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties." And then he adds, "When Pope had enjoyed for thirty years the praise of Camilla's lightness of foot, he tried another experiment upon sense and sound, and produced this memorable triplet:
' Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march, and energy divine.'
Here are the swiftness of the rapid pace, and the march of slow-paced majesty exhibited by the same poet in the same sequence of syllables, except that the exact prosodist will find the line of sivijt-ness by one time longer than that of tardiness."* What he here criticises in Pope, he praises unÂgrudgingly in a passage from Cowley :
He who defers his work from day to day,
Does on a river's bank expecting stay
Till the whole stream that stopp'd shall be qr>ne,
Which runs, and as it runs, for ever shall run on.
He declares the last line to be "an example of representative versification which perhaps no other English line can equal."
Enough has perhaps been said to show that the actual correspondence between sense and sound, |
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• Johnson's " Life of Pope." |
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