lingers to hear the dispute between Sinon and Master Adam,
Virgil, type of the higher reason and the ideal poet, rebukes him, and
even angrily.

E fa ragion ch'io ti sia sempre allato
Si piu avvien che fortuna t' accoglia
Ove sien genti in simigliante piato;
Che voler cio udire e bassa voglia.

Remember, _I_ am always at thy side,
If ever fortune bring thee once again
Where there are people in dispute like this,
For wishing to hear that is vulgar wish.

Verse is another of these expedients for producing that frame of mind,
that prepossession, on the part of hearer or reader which is essential
to the purpose of the poet, who has lost much of his advantage by the
invention of printing, which obliges him to appeal to the eye rather
than the ear. The rhythm is no arbitrary and artificial contrivance. It
was suggested by an instinct natural to man. It is taught him by the
beating of his heart, by his breathing, hastened or retarded by the
emotion of the moment. Nay, it may be detected by what seems the most
monotonous of motions, the flow of water, in which, if you listen
intently, you will discover a beat as regular as that of the metronome.
With the natural presumption of all self-taught men, I thought I had
made a discovery in this secret confided to me by Beaver Brook, till
Professor Peirce told me it was always allowed for in the building of
dams. Nay, for my own part, I would venture to affirm that not only
metre but even rhyme itself was not without suggestion in outward
nature. Look at the pine, how its branches, balancing each other, ray
out from the tapering stem in stanza after stanza, how spray answers to
spray in order, strophe, and antistrophe, till the perfect tree stands
an embodied ode, Nature's triumphant vindication of proportion, number,
and harmony. Who can doubt the innate charm of rhyme who has seen the
blue river repeat the blue o'erhead; who has been ravished by the
visible consonance of the tree growing at once toward an upward and
downward heaven on the edge of the twilight cove; or who has watched
how, as the kingfisher flitted from shore to shore, his visible echo
flies under him, and completes the fleeting couplet in the visionary
vault below? At least there can be no doubt that metre, by its
systematic and regular occurrence, gradually subjugates and tunes the
senses of the hearer, as the wood of the violin arranges itself in
sympathy with the vibration of the strings, and