Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/259

Rh same ever honoured knight, with so musical an ear, had that veneration for the tuneableness and chiming of verse, that he speaks of a poet as one that has "the reverend title of a rhimer." Our celebrated Milton has done these nations great prejudice in this particular, having spoiled as many reverend rhimers, by his example, as he has made real poets.

For which reason, I am overjoyed to hear that a very ingenious youth of this town is now upon the useful design (for which he is never enough to be commended) of bestowing rhime upon Milton's Paradise Lost, which will make the poem, in that only defective, more heroick and sonorous than it hitherto has been. I wish the gentleman success in the performance; and, as it is a work in which a young man could not be more happily employed, or appear in with greater advantage to his character, so I am concerned that it did not fall out to be your province.

With much the same view, I would recommend to you the witty play of pictures and mottoes, which will furnish your imagination with great store of images and suitable devices. We of these kingdoms have found our account in this diversion, as little as we consider or acknowledge it; for to this we owe our eminent felicity in posies of rings, mottoes of snuffboxes, the humours of signposts with their elegant inscriptions, &c. in which kind of productions not any nation in the world, no not the Dutch themselves, will presume to rival us.

For much the same reason, it may be proper for you to have some insight into the play called, What is