In my choice of a metre I have been led by the following considerations. The beauty and completeness of the stanza of Spenser appear now to be generally acknowledged. But it certainly presents great difficulties in a language so unvocal compared with those of Southern Europe, and so little abounding in rhymes as the English. It is more difficult in a narrative and consecutive poem than in one of a descriptive and reflective character, like _Childe Harold_, where the topics and the order in which they shall be discussed are both at the discretion of the poet. Yet the terrible exigencies of four recurring rhymes in each stanza have led even such a master as Byron into not a few puzzling dilemmas, as in his description of Cintra (_Childe Harold_, i. 19), where he has completed a stanza, in which “steep,” “weep,” and “deep” had already done service, with “torrents leap,” although the faintest trickle of a torrent was never seen in that locality! As he proceeded in his task, he attained to a more perfect mastery of his materials; and, I think, the fourth canto unsurpassed in English poetry. It may be asked why I hoped to succeed in what Byron found so difficult? My answer is that I do not think the difficulty insuperable, as Byron has proved it not to be in the latter and infinitely finer part of his poem, that none but a Milton could elevate blank verse to the sublimity as well as harmony of the _Paradise Lost_, that rhyme, and especially such an elegant form of rhymed verse as the stanza of _Childe Harold_, possesses a popular and inalienable charm, that success (if achieved at all) rises with the magnitude of the difficulties encountered, and that Spenser himself, Thomson’s _Castle of Indolence_, his other imitators, Shenstone’s _Schoolmistress_, Beattie’s _Minstrel_ and West’s _Education_, Campbell’s _Gertrude of Wyoming_, occasional short pieces by Wordsworth, Wiffin’s _Translation of Tasso_, Scott’s introductions to very many cantos of his several poems (in these two latter cases I speak merely of mechanical execution), Shelley’s _Revolt of Islam_ and _Adonais_, Kirke White’s _Hermit of the Pacific_ and _Christiad_, Mrs. Norton’s _Child of the Islands_, and a few (too few) verses of Tennyson and Milnes abundantly prove the capability of the stanza. The Italian _ottava rima_, although sanctified by the use of Tasso and Ariosto, adopted almost universally in the heroic poetry of one Peninsula, and most successfully introduced by Camóens into the only epic poetry of the other, appears unadapted for any but burlesque or satirical poetry in the English language, the serious passages of _Don Juan_ deriving all their beauty from being interspersed with lighter, and the excellence and power of Fairfax’s _Tasso_ being marred by the effect of the metre. The English heroic couplet becomes clearly, I think, monotonous in a long poem--a doom from which not all the genius of Dryden and Pope could rescue it. And if in his _Corsair_,