of illustrating my subject, and the other of defining | it; the former admitted those ornaments only which resulted from lively imagery and figurative diction, the latter seemed rather to require the seasoning of wit and satire; this, therefore, appeared best calculated to expose false taste, and that to elucidate the true. But false taste, on this subject, had been so inimitably ridiculed by Mr. Pope, in his Epistle to Lord Burlington, that it seemed to preclude all other authors (at least it precluded me) from touching it after him; and therefore, as he had left much unsaid on that part of the art on which it was my purpose principally to enlarge, I thought the didactic method not only more open but more proper for my attempt. This matter once determined, I did not hesitate as to my choice between blank verse and rhyme; because it clearly appeared, that the Essay on Man, in which the peculiar merit of that way, in which he so greatly excelled, is most happily explained. He chose, as he says, "verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons: verse, because precepts, so written, strike more strongly, and are retained more easily: rhyme, because it expresses arguments or instructions more concisely than even prose itself.

numbers of the most varied kind were most proper to illustrate a subject whose every charm springs from variety, and which, painting nature as scorning control, should employ a versification for that end as unfettered as nature itself. Art, at the same time, in rural improvements, pervading the province of nature, unseen and unfelt, seemed to bear a striking analogy to that species of verse, the harmony of which results from measured quantity and varied cadence, without the too studied arrangement of final syllables, or regular return of consenant sounds. I was, notwithstanding, well aware, that by choosing to write in blank verse, I should not court popularity, because I perceived it wa growing much out of vogue; but this reason, a may be supposed, did not weigh much with a writ er, who meant to combat fashion in the very theme he intended to write upon; and who was also convinced that a mode of English versification, in which so many good poems, with Paradise Lost at their head, have been written, could either not long continue unfashionable; or, if it did, that fashion had so completely destroyed taste, it would not be worth any writer's while, who aimed at more than the reputation of the day, to endeavour to amuse the public.