of this kind. It sometimes forces upon us too great a sense of consciousness on the part of the composer. We miss the first sprightly runnings of verse, the ease and sweetness of spontaneity. Milton, I think, also too often condenses weight into heaviness.

Thus much concerning the chief of our two most popular measures. The other, called octosyllabic, or the measure of eight syllables, offered such facilities for namby-pamby, that it had become a jest as early as the time of Shakspeare, who makes Touchstone call it the "butterwoman's rate to market," and the "very false gallop of verses." It has been advocated, in opposition to the heroic measure, upon the ground that ten syllables lead a man into epithets and other superfluities, while eight syllables compress him into a sensible and pithy gentleman. But the heroic measure laughs at it. So far from compressing, it converts one line into two, and sacrifices every thing to the quick and importunate return of the rhyme. With Dryden, compare Gay, even in the strength of Gay,

The wind was high, the window shakes;
With sudden start the miser wakes;

Along the silent room he stalks,

(A miser never "stalks;" but a rhyme was desired for "walks”)

Looks back, and trembles as he walks:
Each lock and every bolt he tries,

In every creek and corner pries;

Then opes the chest with treasure stor❜d,

And stands in rapture o'er his hoard;

("Hoard" and "treasure stor'd" are just made for one another)

But now, with sudden qualms possess'd,
He wrings his hands, he beats his breast;
By conscience stung, he wildly stares,
And thus his guilty soul declares.

And so he denounces his gold, as miser never denounced it; and sighs, because

Virtue resides on earth no more!

Coleridge saw the mistake which had been made with regard to this measure, and restored it to the beautiful freedom of which it was capable, by calling to mind the liberties allowed its old musical professors the minstrels, and dividing it by time instead of syllables;-by the beat of four into which you might get as many syllables as you could, instead of allotting eight syllables to the poor time, whatever it might have to say. He varied it further with alternate rhymes and stanzas, with rests and omissions precisely analogous to those in music, and rendered it altogether worthy to utter the manifold thoughts and feelings of himself and his lady Christabel. He even ventures, with an exquisite sense of solemn strangeness and license (for there is

witchcraft going forward), to introduce a couplet of blank verse, itself as mystically and beautifully modulated as anything in the music of Gluck or Weber.

"Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock;
Tu-whit!-Tu-whoo!

And hark, again! the crowing cock,

How drowsily he crew.

Sir Leoline, the baron rich,

Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;

From her kennel beneath the rock

She maketh answer to the clock,

Fòur for the quarters ånd twèlve for thě hoùr ;

Ever and aye, by shine and shower,

Sixteen short howls, not over loud:

Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

Is the night chilly and dùrk?

The night is chìlly, but nòt dàrk.
The thin grey cloud is spread on high,
It covers, but not hides, the sky.

The moon is behind, and at the full,

And yet she looks both small and dull.

The night is chilly, the cloud is grey;

(These are not superfluities, but mysterious returns of importunate feeling)

'Tis a month before the month of May,
And the spring comes slowly up this way.

The lovely lady, Christabel,

Whom her father loves so well,

What makes her in the wood so late,

A furlong from the castle-gate?

She had dreams all yesternight

Of her own betrothed knight;

And shè in the midnight wood will pray
For the weal of her lover that's far away.

She stole along, she nothing spoke,

The sighs she heav'd were soft and low,
And nought was green upon the oak,
But moss and rarest misletoe;
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
And in silence prayeth she.

The lady sprang up suddenly,
The lovely lady, Christabel !
It moan'd as near as near can be,
But what it is, she cannot tell.
On the other side it seems to be
Of the huge, broàd-breàsted, òld oak tree.

The night is chill, the forest bare;

Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

(This "bleak moaning" is a witch's)

There is not wind enough in the air

To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady's cheek-
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one rèd leaf, the last of its clan,
That đàn cěs is oftěn ăs dance it càng
Hànging so light and hànging so hìgh,
On the topmost twig that looks up at thě sky.

Hush, beating heart of Christabel !

Jesu Maria, shield her well!

She folded her arms beneath her cloak,

And stole to the other side of the oak.

What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,

Drest in a robe of silken white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone:
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck and arms were bare :
Her blue-vein'd feet unsandall'd were;
And wildly glitter'd, here and there,
The gems entangled in her hair.
I guess 'twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she-
Beautiful exceedingly.

The principle of Variety in Uniformity is here worked out in a style "beyond the reach of art." Every thing is diversified according to the demand of the moment, of the sounds, the sights, the emotions; the very uniformity of the outline is gently varied; and yet we feel that the whole is one and of the same character, the single and sweet unconsciousness of the heroine making all the rest seem more conscious, and ghastly, and expectant. It is thus that versification itself becomes part of the sentiment of a poem, and vindicates the pains that have been taken to show its importance. I know of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine. poetry; no poetry of a mean order accompanied with verse of the highest.

As to Rhyme, which might be thought too insignificant to mention, it is not at all so. The universal consent of modern Europe, and of the East in all ages, has made it one of the musical beauties of