This condemnations was not universal. Of
Dryden, he wrote (_Works_, vii. 249):--'He made rhyming tragedies, till,
by the prevalence of manifest propriety, he seems to have grown ashamed
of making them any longer.' His own _Irene_ is in blank verse; though
Macaulay justly remarks of it:--'He had not the slightest notion of what
blank verse should be.' (Macaulay's _Writings and Speeches_, ed. 1871,
p. 380.) Of Thomson's _Seasons_, he says (_Works_, vii. 377):--'His is one
of the works in which blank verse seems properly used.' Of Young's
_Night Thoughts_:--'This is one of the few poems in which blank verse
could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage.' _Ib_. p. 460. Of
Milton himself, he writes:--'Whatever be the advantages of rhyme, I
cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I
cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he
is to be admired rather than imitated.' _Ib_. vii. 142. How much he felt
the power of Milton's blank verse is shewn by his _Rambler_, No. 90,
where, after stating that 'the noblest and most majestick pauses which
our versification admits are upon the fourth and sixth syllables,' he
adds:--' Some passages [in Milton] which conclude at this stop [the
sixth syllable] I could never read without some strong emotions of
delight or admiration.
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