son why the seventh and eighth stanzas should be omitted
in that copy printed in Dodsley's Collection of Poems.

ODE TO EVENING.

The blank ode has for some time solicited admission into the English
poetry; but its efforts, hitherto, seem to have been in vain, at least
its reception has been no more than partial. It remains a question,
then, whether there is not something in the nature of blank verse less
adapted to the lyric than to the heroic measure, since, though it has
been generally received in the latter, it is yet unadopted in the
former. In order to discover this, we are to consider the different
modes of these different species of poetry. That of the heroic is
uniform; that of the lyric is various; and in these circumstances of
uniformity and variety probably lies the cause why blank verse has been
successful in the one, and unacceptable in the other. While it presented
itself only in one form, it was familiarized to the ear by custom; but
where it was obliged to assume the different shapes of the lyric muse,
it seemed still a stranger of uncouth figure, was received rather with
curiosity than pleasure, and entertained without that ease or
satisfaction which acquaintance and familiarity produce.--Moreover, the
heroic blank verse obtained a sanction of infinite importance to its
general reception, when it was adopted by one of the greatest poets the
world ever produced, and was made the vehicle of the noblest poem that
ever was written. When this poem at length extorted that applause which
ignorance and prejudice had united to withhold, the versification soon
found its imitators, and became more generally successful than even in
those countries from whence it was imported. But lyric blank verse had
met with no such advantages; for Mr. Collins, whose genius and judgment
in harmony might have given it so powerful an effect, has left us but
one specimen of it in the Ode to Evening.

In the choice of his measure he seems to have had in his eye Horace's
Ode to Pyrrha; for this ode bears the nearest resemblance to that mixed
kind of the asclepiad and pherecratic verse; and that resemblance in
some degree reconciles us to the want of rhyme, while it reminds us of
those great masters of antiquity, whose works had no need of this
whimsical jingle of sounds.

From the following passage one might be induced to think that the poet
had it in view to render his subject and his versification suitable to
each other