Tudalen:Llythyrau Goronwy Owen.djvu/35

fewer good ones. I would never wish to see our Poetry reduced to the English Standard, for I can see nothing in That that should entitle it to the Name of Poetry, but only the number of Syllables (which yet is never scrupulously observed) and a choice of uncommon, or if you please Poetick words, and a wretched Rhyme, some times at the end, and in Blank Verse, i.e. the best kind of English Poetry, no Rhyme at all. Milton's Paradise Lost is a Book I read with pleasure, nay with Admiration, and raptures: call it a great, sublime, nervous, &c, &c, or if you please a Divine Work. You will find me ready to subscribe to anything that can be said in praise of it, provided you do not call it Poetry, or, if you do so, that you would likewise allow our Bardd Cwsg to take his seat amongst the Poets. As the English Poetry is too loose, so ours is certainly too much confined and limited, not in the Cynghaneddau, for without them it were no Poetry; but in the length of Verses and Poems too, our longest lines not exceeding Ten Syllables. (Too scanty a space to contain anything Great within the compass of Six or Seven Stanzas, the usual length of our Gwawododyn Byrr) And our longest. Poems not above Sixty or Seventy Lines, the standard Measure of D. ap Gwilym's Cywyddau; which is far from being a length adequate to a Heroic Poem. However, these are, I apprehend, difficulties that will never be remedied; these Models our wise Fore-fathers left us, and these I presume, they judged most agreeable to the genius of our Nation and Language. Some freedom and ease of composition is, and was always observed to be productive of happier effects than an over-rigid aud starched nicety. Thus the Greeks were much less confined as to Quantities than the Romans. And, not to detract from Virgil's deserved praise, I think Homer may be justly allowed to be preferable to him, almost in such a measure and proportion, as an original Writer is [to a] Translator. The Romans had several words even in their own Language, that, by reason of their Quantities, could not possibly be put into Verse. Thus, Horace was at a loss to name the Town Equotutium, and was fain to describe it by a round-about sort of a Paraphrase. And Martial was hard put to it, to name the favourite Boy Earinus, Domitian's