Their
employment, on the contrary, by Mr. Willis, is but one of the
innumerable instances he has given of keen sensibility in all those
matters of taste which may be classed under the general head of
fanciful embellishment.
It is also about eleven years ago, if I am not mistaken, since Mr.
Horne (of England,) the author of "Orion," one of the noblest epics in
any language, thought it necessary to preface his "Chaucer Modernized"
by a very long and evidently a very elaborate essay, of which the
greater portion was occupied in a discussion of the seemingly
anomalous foot of which we have been speaking. Mr. Horne upholds
Chaucer in its frequent use; maintains his superiority, on account
of his so frequently using it, over all English versifiers; and
indignantly repelling the common idea of those who make verse on their
fingers- that the superfluous syllable is a roughness and an error-
very chivalrously makes battle for it as a "grace." That a grace it
is, there can be no doubt; and what I complain of is, that the
author of the most happily versified long poem in existence, should
have been under the necessity of discussing this grace merely as a
grace, through forty or fifty vague pages, solely because of his
inability to show how and why it is a grace- by which showing the
question would have been settled in an instant.
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