ceive from the exhibition, is explicable in part, (I, by no means, fay entirely) on the fame principles. If these remarks be juft, it seems to follow as a confequence, that those men who are moft deficient in the power of prompt combination, will be most poignantly affected by it, when exerted at the will of another and therefore, the charge of jealousy and envy brought against rival Wits, when difpofed to look grave at each other's jefts, may perhaps be obviated in a way lefs injurious to their character. The fame remarks fuggeft a limitation, or rather an explanation, of an affertion of Lord Chesterfield's, that "genuine wit never made any man laugh "fince the creation of the world." The obfervation, I believe, to be juft, if by genuine wit, we mean wit wholly divefted of every mixture of humour: and if by laughter, we mean that convulfive and noify agitation which is excited by the ludicrous. But there is unquestionably a smile appropriated to the flashes of wit ;-a fmile of furprise and wonder ; -not altogether unlike the effect produced on the mind and the countenance, by a feat of legerdemain when executed with uncommon fuccess. II. Of Rhyme. THE pleasure we receive from rhyme, feems alfo to arife, partly, from our furprise at the command which the Poet must have acquired over the train of his ideas, in order to be able to exprefs himself with elegance, and the appearance of cafe, under the restraint which rhyme impofes. In witty or in humorous performances, this furprise ferves to en liven that which the wit or the humour produces, and renders its effects more fenfible. How flat do the livelieft and moft ludicrous thoughts appear in blank verse? And how wonderfully is the wit of Pope heightened, by the easy and happy rhymes in which it is expressed? It must not, however, be imagined, either in the cafe of wit or of rhyme, that the pleasure arises folely from our furprise at the uncommon habits of affociation which the author discovers. In the former cafe, there must be prefented to the mind, an unexpected analogy or relation between different ideas and perhaps other circumftances must concur to render the wit perfect. If the combination has no other merit than that of bringing together two ideas which never met before, we may be furprised at its oddity, but we do not confider it as a proof of wit. On the contrary, the want of any analogy or relation between the combined ideas, leads us to fufpect, that the one did not fuggeft the other, in consequence of any habits of affociation; but that the two were brought together by ftudy, or by mere accident. All that I affirm is, that when the analogy or relation is pleafing in itself, our pleasure is heightened by our furprise at the author's habits of affociation when compared with our own. In the cafe of Rhyme, too, there is undoubtedly a certain degree of pleasure arifing from the recurrence of the fame found. We frequently observe children amufe themselves with repeating over fingle words which rhyme together: and the lower people, who derive little pleasure from poetry, excepting X 2 cepting in fo far as it affects the ear, are so pleased with the echo of the rhymes, that when they read verfes where it is not perfect, they are apt to fupply the Poet's defects, by violating the common rules of pronunciation. This pleasure, however, is heightened by our admiration at the miraculous powers which the Poet must have acquired over the train of his ideas, and over all the various modes of expreffion which the language affords, in order to convey inftruction and entertainment, without tranfgreffing the established laws of regular verfification. In fome of the lower kinds of poetry; for example, in acroftics, and in the lines which are adapted to bouts-rimés, the merit lies entirely in this command of thought and expreffion; or, in other words, in a command of ideas founded on extraordinary habits of affociation. Even fome authors of a superior clafs, occafionally fhew an inclination to display their knack at rhyming, by introducing, at the end of the first line of a couplet, fome word to which the language hardly affords a correfponding found. Swift, in his more trifling pieces, abounds with instances of this; and in Hudibras, when the author ufes his double and triple rhymes, many couplets have no merit whatever but what arifes from difficulty of execution. The pleafure we receive from rhyme in ferious compofitions, arises from a combination of different circumstances which my present fubject does not lead me to investigate particularly. I am perfuaded, * In Elegiac poetry, the recurrence of the fame found, and the uniformity in the ftructure of the verfification which this necef. fuaded, however, that it arises, in part, from our surprise at the Poet's habits of affociation, which enable him to convey his thoughts with ease and beauty, notwithstanding the narrow limits within. which his choice of expreffion is confined. One proof of this is, that if there appear any mark of constraint, either in the ideas or in the expreffion, our pleasure is proportionally diminished. The thoughts must seem to fuggeft each other, and the rhymes to be only an accidental circumftance. The fame remark may be made on the measure of the verse. When in its greatest perfection, it does not appear to be the refult of labour, but to be dictated by nature, or prompted by inspiration. In Pope's best verses, the idea is expreffed with as little inversion of style, and with as much concifeness, precifion, and propriety, as the author could have attained, had he been writing prose: without any apparent exertion on his part, the words feem fpontaneously to arrange themselves in the most musical numbers. neceffarily occafions, are peculiarly fuited to the inactivity of the mind, and to the flow and equable fucceffion of its ideas, when under the influence of tender or melancholy paffions; and accordingly, in fuch cafes, even the Latin poets, though the genius of their language be very ill fitted for compositions in rhyme, occafionally indulge themselves in fomething very nearly approaching to it : "Memnona fi mater, mater ploravit Achillem, "Ah nimis ex vero nunc tibi nomen erit." Many other inftances of the fame kind might be produced from the Elegiac verfes of Ovid and Tibullus. "While still a child, nor yet a fool to fame, This facility of verfification, it is true, may be, and probably is, in most cafes, only apparent and it is reasonable to think, that in the most perfect poetical productions, not only the choice of words, but the choice of ideas, is influenced by the rhymes. In a profe compofition, the author holds on in a direct course, according to the plan he has previously formed; but in a poem, the rhymes which occur to him are perpetually diverting him to the right hand or to the left, by suggesting ideas which do not naturally rife out of his fubject. This, I prefume, is Butler's meaning in the following couplet: "Rhymes the rudder are of verses "With which, like fhips, they fteer their courses." But although this may be the cafe in fact, the Poet muft employ all his art to conceal it: infomuch that if he finds himself under a neceffity to introduce, on account of the rhymes, a fuperfluous idea, or an awkward expreffion, he must place it in the first line of the couplet, and not in the second; for the reader, naturally prefuming that the lines were compofed in the order in which the author arranges them, is more apt to fufpect the second line to be accommodated to the first, than the first to the second. And this flight artifice is, in general, fufficient to impofe on that degree of attention with which poetry is read. Who can doubt that, in the following lines, Pope wrote the firft for the fake of the fecond? "A wit's |