ional_. Only the stage--losing passion,
and not being the place for reason--went mad; as with Nat Lee. However, it
retained something like a creative energy in Otway--and, moreover, Cato
was really and afflictingly a _rational_ play.--The mere musical flow of
the verse took the place of ever varying expression; and the name used as
nearly equivalent with a good verse, at least for describing that which a
verse should ordinarily be, is a _smooth_ verse. Concurrent in time and
cause was the invasion of the ten syllabled rhymed couplet, which, in
place of the old diversified measures, took possession--off the stage--of
our poetry. With all this went a transformation of the language accepted
in verse; a severing and setting apart, as if a consecrating of the
Parnassian dialect, which formerly was always caught up fresh from the lap
of nature, at the risk, no doubt, of pulling weeds amongs the flowers.

In the incidental enunciations of criticism, we may easily gather notices
of the movement this way, in the double matter of the language and the
verse. In both, it receives, as it should do, the same name and
description. It is the disengaging of REFINEMENT--its birth from the bosom
of BARBARISM--distinct as mother and daughter. Shakspeare and Milton are
the two great barbarous kings with a numerous court. If we try to give
ourselves account of this Refinement and to vindicate for it the title,
we are at a loss for names and notions. A Refinement which places the
sluts of Dryden and his contemporaries above Imogen and Miranda, and above
Eve. One hangs down the head in shame and perplexity. The history of
England affords us a key in the name of Charles II. The Court, the Town,
and Life-in-doors, are the words that resolve the mystery. The Muses that
were Powers of Fell, and Flood, and Forest, and Field, that went with man
wherever he went--in cottage and palace, in divan and in dungeon, in the
student's or the miser's chamber, on the battle-plain, and at the dance of
bacchanals--and when and wheresoever man spoke, heard their own
mother-tongue, they were beguiled and imprisoned within the pale of
artificial society and of high life. They had to learn the breeding of the
drawing-room. Their auditors, in short, were gentlemen and ladies, who
never forgot that they were such in the sudden overpowering consciousness
of their being men and women.

There was therefore not only a denaturation, but an enervation of our
poetry. There g