I must praise her as I may, Which I do mine own rude way; Sometime setting forth her glories By unheard of allegories--&c. To the measure in which these lines are written, the wits of Queen Anne's days contemptuously gave the name of Namby Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who has used it in some instances, as in the lines on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deliciously; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems to have been, may shew, that in skilful hands it is capable of expressing the subtilest movements of passion. So true it is, which Drayton seems to have felt, that it is the poet who modifies the metre, not the metre the poet; in his own words, that It's possible to climb; To kindle, or to slake; Altho' in Skelton's rhime.[35] [35] "A long line is a line we are long repeating. In the _Shepherds Hunting_ take the following-- "If thy verse doth bravely tower, _As she makes wing, she gets power_; Yet the higher she doth soar, She's affronted still the more, 'Till she to the high'st hath past, Then she rests with fame at last. what longer measure can go beyond the majesty of this! what Alexandrine is half so long in pronouncing or expresses _labor slowly but strongly surmounting difficulty_ with the life with which it is done in the second of these lines? or what metre could go beyond these, from _Philarete_-- "Her true beauty leaves behind Apprehensions in my mind Of more sweetness, than all art Or inventions can impart. _Thoughts too deep to be express'd, And too strong to be suppress'd._" FIVE DRAMATIC CRITICISMS I.--MRS. GOULD (MISS BURRELL) IN "DON GIOVANNI IN LONDON" OLYMPIC THEATRE (1818)