This sort of writing called the Rondeau is what I never knew practised in our nation, and, I verily believe, it was not in use with the Greeks or Romans, neither Macrobius nor Hyginus taking the least notice of it. 'Tis to be observed, that the vulgar spelling and pronouncing it round O, is a manifest corruption, and by no means to be allowed of by critics. Some may mistakenly imagine that it was a sort of Rondeau which the Gallic soldiers sung in Cæsar's triumph * From this Song of the Gallic Soldiers, I will take occasion to observe, that we have several sorts of measures commonly used in our English versification, which exactly correspond to many that are used by the Greeks and Romans; of which the following are a specimen : What we call an Alexandrine verse in English, is perfectly like a pure Iambic verse in Greek or Latin; Deep in the gloō | mỹ Cave | the pen | sivě sāge | reclin'd Πέπυσ | μένη | μὲν ως ] άπει | κάσαι | παρεῖ | 1 - Săbi | nă qua | lis aūt | pĕrūs | tă sō | lībūs | Our verse of four feet consists of four Iambics, like the following diameter Iambic verse in Horace : Remote from cĩ | ties līv❜d | ǎ swāin | Solūtus omni fœ | norē | In which measure also many hymns for the Church were written, by those elegant Latin Poets that adorned Italy at the time of the revival of literature; as the following of Ant. Flaminus; Jam noctis umbras Lucifer, Almæ diei nuntius, Terra poloque dimovet One of the most harmonious measures in our language, bears a most minute resemblance to the Greek Trochaic measure; as will appear by reading the following passages of Gray and Euripides together; and compared also with the words; Gallias Cæsar subegit over Gaul-Gallias Cæsar subegit, etc. as it is recorded by Suetonius in Julio, and so derive its original from the ancient Gauls to the modern French: but this is erroneous; the words there not being ranged according to the laws of the Rondeau, as laid Where each ōld pŏ | ētĭc | mountain | The only difference is that the insertion of rhyme in the English measure breaks the one line into two; but the metre remains, notwithstanding, intrinsically the same. We have also Anacreontic measures-consisting of three pure Iambics, and one semiped Ŏ softly gli | ding num | bers That woō | to gēn | tlě slūm | bers— Θέλω | λεγεῖν | Ατρεϊ | δας Θέλω | δε Καδ | μον α | δειν And that exquisite Ode in Shakspeare sung by Ariel, Where the Bee sucks | thēre suŭck | I, On a | Bat's back | I do | fly, precisely corresponds with the metre of the following lines in Horace, We have also Anapæstic verses in our metre And the King | sĕiz'd ǎ flām | beau with zeal | to děstrōy | A line that contains four Anapæsts, making twelve syllables and four feet. We are always to remember that our feet are regulated by accent, not by quantity. you will say, that the down by Clement Marot. If song of the soldiers might be only the rude beginning of this kind of poem, and so consequently imperfect, neither Heinsius nor I can be of that opinion; and so I conclude, that we know nothing of the matter. But, Sir, I ask your pardon for all this buffoonery, which I could not address to any one so well as to you, since I have found by experience, you most easily forgive my impertinencies. 'Tis only to show you that I am mindful of you at all times, that I write at all times; and as nothing I can say can be worth your reading, so I may as well throw out what comes uppermost, as study to be dull. I am, etc. LETTER XV. FROM MR. CROMWELL. July 15, 1710. AT last I have prevailed over a lazy humour to transcribe this elegy: I have changed the situation of some of the Latin verses, and made some interpolations, but I hope they are not absurd, and foreign to my author's sense and manner: but they are referred to your censure, as a debt: whom I esteem no less a critic than a poet: I expect to be treated with the same rigour as I have practised to Mr. Dryden and you. Hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim. I desire the favour of your opinion why Priam, in his speech to Pyrrhus in the second Æneid, says this to him, At non ille, satum quo te mentiris, Achilles. He would intimate (I fancy by Pyrrhus's answer) only his degeneracy: but then these following lines of the version (I suppose from Homer's history) seem absurd in the mouth of Priam, viz. He cheer'd my sorrows, and for sums of gold I am, Your, etc. LETTER XVI. July 20, 1710. I GIVE you thanks for the version you sent me of Ovid's elegy. It is very much an image of that author's writing, who has an agreeableness that charms us without correctness, like a mistress, whose faults we see, but love her with them all. You have very judiciously altered his method in some places, and I can find nothing which I dare insist upon as an error: what I have written in the margins being merely guesses at a little improvement, rather than criticisms. I assure you I do not expect you should subscribe to my private notions, but when you shall judge them agreeable to reason and good sense. What I have done is not as a critic, but as a friend; I know too well how many qualities are requisite to make the one, and that I want almost all I can reckon up; but I am sure I do not want inclination, nor, I hope, capacity, to be the other. Nor shall I take it at all amiss, that another dissents from my opinion: 'tis no more than I have often done from my own; and indeed, the more a man advances in understanding, he becomes the more every day a critic upon himself, and finds something or other still to blame in his former notions and opinions. I could be glad to know if you have translated the 11th elegy of lib. ii. Ad amicam navigantem. The 8th of book iii. or the 11th of book iii. which are above all others my particular favourites, especially the last of these. As to the passage of which you ask my opinion in the second Æneid, it is either so plain as to require no solution; or else (which is very probable) you see farther into it than I can. Priam would say, that "Achilles (whom surely you only feign to be your father, since your actions are so different from his) did not use me thus inhumanly. He blushed at his murder of Hector, when he saw my sorrows for him; and restored his dead body to me to be buried." To this the answer of Pyrrhus seems to be agreeable enough. "Go then to the shades, and tell Achilles how I degenerate from him:" granting the truth of what Priam had said of the difference between them. Indeed Mr. Dryden's mentioning here what Virgil more judiciously passes in silence, the circumstance of Achilles's selling for money the body of Hector, * This behaviour of Achilles could not escape an acute critic, but one too fond of carping at the ancients. "Forgive me (says Achilles), my dear Patroclus, for restoring the body of Hector to |