h idleness is favoured, and imbecility assisted; but surely no man
of genius can much applaud himself for repeating a tale with which the
audience is already tired, and which could bring no honour to any but
its inventor.

There are, I think, two schemes of writing, on which the laborious wits
of the present time employ their faculties. One is the adaptation of
sense to all the rhymes which our language can supply to some word, that
makes the burden of the stanza; but this, as it has been only used in a
kind of amorous burlesque, can scarcely be censured with much acrimony.
The other is the imitation of Spenser, which, by the influence of some
men of learning and genius, seems likely to gain upon the age, and
therefore deserves to be more attentively considered.

To imitate the fictions and sentiments of Spenser can incur no reproach,
for allegory is perhaps one of the most pleasing vehicles of
instruction. But I am very far from extending the same respect to his
diction or his stanza. His style was in his own time allowed to be
vicious, so darkened with old words and peculiarities of phrase, and so
remote from common use, that Jonson boldly pronounces him _to have
written no language_. His stanza is at once difficult and unpleasing;
tiresome to the ear by its uniformity, and to the attention by its
length. It was at first formed in imitation of the Italian poets,
without due regard to the genius of our language. The Italians have
little variety of termination, and were forced to contrive such a stanza
as might admit the greatest number of similar rhymes; but our words end
with so much diversity, that it is seldom convenient for us to bring
more than two of the same sound together. If it be justly observed by
Milton, that rhyme obliges poets to express their thoughts in improper
terms, these improprieties must always be multiplied, as the difficulty
of rhyme is increased by long concatenations.

The imitators of Spenser are indeed not very rigid censors of
themselves, for they seem to conclude, that when they have disfigured
their lines with a few obsolete syllables, they have accomplished their
design, without considering that they ought not only to admit old words,
but to avoid new. The laws of imitation are broken by every word
introduced since the time of Spenser, as the character of Hector is
violated by quoting Aristotle in the play. It would, indeed, be
difficult to exclude from a long poem all modern phrases,