Like himself, they
occupy a middle ground between poetry and prose,--they are a cross
between metaphor and simile.
[53] Discoveries.
[54] What a wretched rhymer he could be we may see in his
_alteration_ of the "Maid's Tragedy" of Beaumont and Fletcher:--
"Not long since walking in the field,
My nurse and I, we there beheld
A goodly fruit; which, tempting me,
I would have plucked: but, trembling, she,
Whoever eat those berries, cried,
In less than half an hour died!"
What intolerable seesaw! Not much of Byron's "fatal facility" in
_these_ octosyllabics!
[55] In more senses than one. His last and best portrait shows him
in his own gray hair.
[56] Essay on Dramatick Poesy.
[57] A French hendecasyllable verse runs exactly like our ballad
measure:--
A cobbler there was and he lived in a stall, ...
_La raison, pour marcher, n'a souvent qu'une voye._
(Dryden's note.)
The verse is not a hendecasyllable. "Attended watchfully to her
recitative (Mile. Duchesnois), and find that, in nine lines out of
ten, 'A cobbler there was,' &c, is the tune of the French
heroics."--_Moore's Diary_, 24th April, 1821.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121