In fact, such is the
metrical skill of the man, and such the perfection of his metrical
sensibility, that, on any attempt to take liberties with a passage of his,
you feel as when coming, in a forest, upon what seems a dead lion; perhaps
he may _not_ be dead, but only sleeping; nay, perhaps he may _not_ be
sleeping, but only shamming. And you have a jealousy, as to Milton, even
in the most flagrant case of almost palpable error, that, after all, there
may be a plot in it. You may be put down with shame by some man reading
the line otherwise, reading it with a different emphasis, a different
caesura, or perhaps a different suspension of the voice, so as to bring
out a new and self-justifying effect. It must be added, that, in
reviewing Milton's metre, it is quite necessary to have such books as
'Nare's English Orthoepy' (_in a late edition_), and others of that
class, lying on the table; because the accentuation of Milton's age was,
in many words, entirely different from ours. And Mr. Landor is not free
from some suspicion of inattention as to this point. Over and above his
accentual difference, the practice of our elder dramatists in the
resolution of the final _tion_ (which now is uniformly pronounced
_shon_), will be found exceedingly important to the appreciation of a
writer's verse. Contribution, which now is necessarily pronounced as a
word of four syllables, would then, in verse, have five, being read into
con-tri-bu-ce-on.
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