Rhyme is not less unfit for deep distress, than for subjects elevated and lofty; and for that reason has been long disused in the English and Italian tragedy. In a work, where the subject is serious though not elevated, it has not a good effect; because the airiness of the modulation agrees not with the gravity of the subject. The _Essay on Man_, which treats a subject great and important, would show much better in blank verse. Sportive love, mirth, gaiety, humour, and ridicule, are the province of rhyme. The boundaries assigned it by nature, were extended in barbarous and illiterate ages, and in its usurpations it has long been protected by custom. But taste in the fine arts, as well as in morals, improves daily; and makes a progress, slowly indeed, but uniformly, towards perfection: and there is no reason to doubt, that rhyme in Britain will in time be forc’d to abandon its unjust conquests, and to confine itself within its natural limits. * * * * * Having thrown out what occurred upon rhyme, I close the section with a general observation. The melody of articulate sound so powerfully inchants the mind, as to draw a vail over very gross faults and imperfections. Of this power a stronger example cannot be given, than the episode of Aristæus, which closes the fourth book of the _Georgics_. To renew a stock of bees when the former is lost, Virgil asserts, that they will be produced in the intrails of a bullock, slain and managed in a certain manner. This leads him to say, how this strange receipt was invented; which is as follows. Aristæus having lost his bees by disease and famine, never dreams of employing the ordinary means for obtaining a new stock; but, like a froward child, complains heavily of his misfortune to his mother Cyrene, a water-nymph. She advises him to consult Proteus, a sea-god, not how he was to obtain a new stock, but only by what fatality he had lost his former stock; adding, that violence was necessary, because Proteus would say nothing voluntarily. Aristæus, satisfied with this advice, though it gave him no prospect of repairing his loss, proceeds to execution. Proteus is catched sleeping, bound with cords, and compelled to speak. He declares, that Aristæus was punished with the loss of his bees, for attempting the chastity of Euridice, the wife of Orpheus; she having got her death by the sting of a serpent in flying his embraces. Proteus, whose sullenness ought to have been converted into wrath by the rough treatment he met with, becomes on a sudden courteous and communicative. He gives the whole history of Orpheus’s expedition to hell in order to recover his spouse; a very entertaining story indeed, but without the least relation to the affair on hand. Aristæus returning to his mother, is advised to deprecate by sacrifices the wrath of Orpheus, who was now dead. A bullock is sacrificed, and out of the intrails spring miraculously a swarm of bees.