ABSTRACT
Omitting Sir Philip Sidney, and omitting his friend, Fulke Grevillc, Lord Brookc {in whose prose there are some bursts of pathctic e1oqucncc, as thcrc is of rhctoric in his vcrsc, though too oftcn harsh and cloudy}, the first very cminent rhetorician in the English Literature is Donnc. Dr. Johnson inconsiderately classes him in company with Cowlcy, &c., under the title of Metaphysical Poets: mctaphysical they were not; Rhetorical would have been a more accurate designation. In saying that, howcver, we must rcmind our rcadcrs that wc revert to the original use of thc word Rhetoric, as laying the principal stress upon the managcment of thc thoughts, and only a secondary onc upon thc ornamcnts of stylc. Few writcrs have shown a morc cxtraordinary compass of powers than Donne; for he combincd-what no other man has evcr donc-the last sublimation of dialcctical subtlcty and addrcss with the most impassioncd majcsty. Massy diamonds composc thc very substance of his pocm on thc Metempsychosis, thoughts and descriptions which have the fcrvent and gloomy sublimity of Ezekiel or lEschylus, whilst a diamond dust of rhetorical brillianccs is strewed over the whole of his occasional verses and his prose. No criticism was ever more unhappy than that of Dr. Johnson's which denounces all this artificial display as so much perversion of taste. There cannot be a falser thought than this; for upon that principle a whole class of compositions might be vicious by conforming to its own ideal. The artifice and machinery of rhetoric furnishes in its degree as legitimate a basis for intellectual pleasure as any other; that the pleasure is of an inferior order, can no more attaint the idea or model of the composition than it can impeach the excellence of an epigram that it is not a tragedy. Every species of composition is to be tried by its own laws; and, if Dr. Johnson had urged explicitly (what was evidently moving in his thoughts) that a metrical structure, by holding forth the promise of poetry, defrauds the mind of its just expectations, he would have said what is notoriously false. Mctre is open to any form of composition, provided it will aid the expression of thc thoughts; and thc only sound objcction to it is that it has not donc so. Weak criticism, indeed, is that which condcmns a. copy of verses under the ideal of poetry, when the mere substitution of another name
