On the other hand, the verse of the satires of John Donne, from which the following specimen is taken, is the roughest and most difficult of all the satires of the group. The reputation of Donne's satires for metrical ruggedness has affected unjustly that of his other poetry and that of the Elizabethan satires in general. Dryden said: "Would not Donne's Satires, which abound with so much wit, appear more charming if he had taken care of his words and of his numbers?" (_Essay on Satire._) And Pope "versified" two of them, so as to bring them into a form pleasing to the ear of his age. Therefore I suffered this: towards me did run A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun E'er bred, or all which into Noah's ark came: A thing which would have posed Adam to name; Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies, Than Afric's monsters, Guiana's rarities;... Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been Velvet, but 'twas now (so much ground was seen) Become tufftaffaty; and our children shall See it plain rash awhile, then nought at all. This thing hath travelled, and faith, speaks all tongues, And only knoweth what to all states belongs. (JOHN DONNE: _Satire iv._ ll. 17 ff. ab. 1593.) This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peas, And utters it again when God doth please. He is wit's pedlar, and retails his wares At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs; And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know, Have not the grace to grace it with such show. This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve. Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve. He can carve too, and lisp: why, this is he That kiss'd his hand away in courtesy; This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice, That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice In honorable terms: nay, he can sing A mean most meanly, and, in ushering, Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet; The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet. (SHAKSPERE: _Love's Labor's Lost_, V. ii. 315-330. ab. 1590.) The use of rimed couplets in Shakspere's dramas is especially characteristic of his earlier work. In this play, _Love's Labor's Lost_, Dowden says, "there are about two rhymed lines to every one of blank verse" (_Shakspere Primer_, p. 44). In the late plays, on the other hand, rime disappears almost altogether. It will be observed that while Shakspere's heroic verse is usually fairly regular, with not very many run-on lines, it yet differs in quality from that of satires. The dramatic use moulds it into different cadences, and the single couplet is, perhaps, less noticeably the unit of the verse.