< Page:Johnson - Rambler 2.djvu
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

N° 88.

THE RAMBLER.

199

Fruits,——Hesperian fables true,
 If true, here only, and of delicious taste.

⁠ ———Evening now approach'd,
 For we have also our evening and our morn.

⁠ Of guests he makes them slaves,
 Inhospitably, and kills their infant males.

⁠ And vital Virtue infus'd, and vital warmth
 Throughout the fluid mass. ———

⁠ God made thee of choice his own, and of his own
  To serve him.

I believe every reader will agree, that in all those passages, though not equally in all, the musick is injured, and in some the meaning obscured. There are other lines in which the vowel is cut off, but it is so faintly pronounced in common speech, that the loss of it in poetry is scarcely perceived; and therefore such compliance with the measure may be allowed.

⁠ Nature breeds
 Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
 Abominable, inutterable; and worse
 Than fables yet have feigned.———

⁠ ———From the shore
 They view'd the vast immensurable abyss.

Impenetrable, impal'd with circling fire.

To none communicable in earth or heav'n.

Yet even these contractions encrease the roughness of a language too rough already; and though in long poems they may be sometimes suffered, it never can be faulty to forbear them.

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.