than Music or Architecture, except in a few instances, in which, like Music, it is employed to imitate sound or motion. In the description of particular sounds, words may occasionally be found which besides their usual power of exciting ideas, have, in their harshness or softness, some resemblance to the sounds described; and words requiring a quick or a slow pronunciation, may in some degree resemble motion. But this kind of beauty is, after all, extremely rare, and in many of the instances in which it is believed to exist, an impartial examination will lead to the discovery, that the effect produced, and attributed to the sound of the words, is in a great measure, if not altogether, owing to some association hitherto unobserved. The sentiments of Johnson on this subject so entirely accord with my own, that in such observations as may be farther necessary, I cannot do better than employ his language.

"The resemblance of poetic numbers to the subject which they mention or describe, may be considered as general or particular, as consisting in the flow and structure of a whole passage taken together, or as comprised in the sound of some emphatical and descriptive words, or in the cadence and harmony of single verses.

"The general resemblance of the sound to the sense, is to be found in every language which admits of poetry, in every author whose fancy enables him to impress images strongly on his mind, and whose choice and variety of language readily supply him with just representations. To such a writer it is natural to

change his measure with his subject, even without any effort of the understanding, or intervention of the judgment. To revolve jollity and mirth, necessarily tunes the voice of a poet to gay and sprightly notes, as it fires his eye with vivacity; and reflections on gloomy situations and disastrous events, will sadden his numbers as it will cloud his countenance. But in such passages, there is only the similitude of pleasure to pleasure, and of grief to grief, without any immediate application of particular images. The same flow of joyous versification will celebrate the jollity of marriage, and the exultation of triumph; and the same languor of melody will suit the complaint of an absent lover, and the lamentations of a conquered king.

"There is nothing in the art of versifying so much exposed to the power of imagination, as the accommodation of the sound to the sense, or the representation of particular images by the flow of the verse in which they are expressed. Almost every person,

whose attention has been directed to the subject, has innumerable passages in which he, and perhaps he alone discovers such resemblances. It is scarcely to be doubted that on many occasions, we make the music which we imagine ourselves to hear; that we modulate the poem by our own disposition,

and ascribe We may

to the numbers the effects of the sense. observe in life, that it is not easy to deliver a pleasant message in an unpleasing manner, and that we readily associate beauty or deformity with those whom for any reason we love or hate. Yet it would be too daring to declare, that all the celebrated adaptations of harmony are chimerical; that Milton, for instance, did not attempt to exemplify the harmony which he mentions in the following lines;

"Fountains! and ye that warble as ye flow,

Melodious murmurs! warbling tune his praise.'

"Numerous passages of Milton may be found replete with harmony; but it is obvious he did not consider any particular choice, or arrangement of words, as necessary to produce this effect; and, in general, when we meet with instances of uncommonly harmonious construction, they are to be in a greater degree attributed to chance, than to any determination that they should be so; for in describing objects precisely simi

lar, we find a considerable disparity in the language. The following quotations are both descriptive of angelic beauty.

"And now a stripling cherub he appears,

Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb
Suitable grace diffused; so well he feigned;
Under a coronet his flowing hair

In curls on either cheek play'd; wings he wore
Of many a coloured plume sprinkled with gold.'

"The fourth and the two last lines of this description, are remarkably defective in harmony, and therefore by no means correspondent with that symmetrical elegance and easy grace, which they are intended to exhibit. The failure however, is fully compensated by the representation of Raphael, which equally delights the ear and the imagination.

"A seraph wing'd; six wings he wore to shade
His lineaments divine, the pair that clad

Each shoulder broad came mantling o'er his breast
With regal ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold
And colours dipt in heaven; the third his feet
Shadowed from either heel with feather'd mail,
Sky-tinctured grain! like Maia's son he stood
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance fill'd
The circuit wide.

“The celebrated lines of Pope, in which he not only teaches that the sound should resemble the thing signified, but is said to give the best illustration of his own rule, shew perhaps the utmost that, in this respect, can be accomplished in English. Yet even these are certainly indebted for part of their effect to the manner in which they are read.

" "Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound should seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours and the words move slow;

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er the unbending corn and skims along the main.' "›

Of Inversion.

SOME languages in regard to the arrangement that usually obtains in them, have been denominated natural, and others transpositive; that is, in some, the words naturally follow each other in a sentence, as the ideas arise in the mind; in others they appear to be arranged artfully or capriciously, so that words really connected in thought, are placed at a considerable distance from each other. The ancient lan