is agreeable in _sound_, exact in _measure_, and ornamental in the mode of _expression_; though the latter, it must be owned, is very closely connected with _number_, as being for the most part sufficiently numerous without any labour to make it so: but composition is apparently different from both, as attending entirely either to the _majestic_ or _agreeable_ sound of our words. Such then are the enquiries which relate to the _nature_ of prosaic harmony. From what has been said it is easy to infer that prose is susceptible of _number_. Our sensations tell us so: and it would be excessively unfair to reject their evidence, because we cannot account for the fact. Even poetic metre was not discovered by any effort of reason, but by mere natural taste and sensation, which reason afterwards correcting, improved and methodized what had been noticed by accident; and thus an attention to nature, and an accurate observation of her various feelings and sensations gave birth to art. But in verse the use of _number_ is more obvious; though some particular species of it, without the assistance of music, have the air of harmonious prose, and especially the lyric poetry, and that even the best of the kind, which, if divested of the aid of music, would be almost as plain and naked as common language. We have several specimens of this nature in our own poets [Footnote: It must here be remarked, that the Romans had no lyric poet before _Horace_, who did not flourish till after the times of _Cicero_.]; such as the following line in the tragedy of _Thyestes_, "_Quemnam te esse dicam? qui in tarda senectute_; "Whom shall I call thee? who in tardy age," &c.; which, unless when accompanied by the lyre, might easily be mistaken for prose. But the iambic verses of the comic poets, to maintain a resemblance to the style of conversation, are often so low and simple that you can scarcely discover in them either number or metre; from whence it is evident that it is more difficult to adapt numbers to prose than to verse.