The Introduction to the _Poetical Works_ of 1832 contains a concise and technical statement of Hunt's theory of the heroic couplet. He argues that the triplet tends to condensation, three lines instead of four; that it carries onward the fervor of the poet's feeling, delivering him from the ordinary laws of his verse, and that it expresses continuity. Of the bracket he says: "I confess I like the very bracket that marks out the triplet to the reader's eye, and prepares him for the music of it. It has a look like the bridge of a lute."[78] The use of the Alexandrine in the heroic couplet, he avers, gives variety and energy. Double rhymes are defended on historical grounds. For himself he claims credit as a restorer, not an innovator, and prophesies that the perfection of the heroic couplet is "to come about by a blending between the inharmonious freedom of our old poets in general ... and the regularity of Dryden himself.... If anyone could unite the vigor of Dryden with the ready and easy variety of pause in the works of the late Mr. Crabbe, and the lovely poetic consciousness in the _Lamia_ of Keats ... he would be a perfect master of the rhyming couplet." A study of the heroic couplet from Dryden to Shelley based on two hundred lines from each poet has yielded the results indicated in the table on the following page. Professor Saintsbury says: "There is no doubt that his [Hunt's] versification in _Rimini_ (which may be described as Chaucerian in basis with a strong admixture of Dryden, further crossed and dashed slightly with the peculiar music of the followers of Spenser, especially Browne and Wither) had a very strong influence both on Keats and on Shelley, and that it drew from them music much better than itself. This fluent, musical, many-colored-verse was a capital medium for tale telling."[79] Professor Herford marks it as the "starting point of that free or Chaucerian treatment of the heroic couplet and of the colloquial style, eschewing epigram and full of familiar turns, which Shelley in _Julian and Maddalo_, and Keats in _Lamia_, made classical."[82] Mr. R. B. Johnson calls it "a protest against the polished couplet of Pope--a protest already expressed to some extent in the _Lyrical Ballads_, but through Hunt's influence, guiding the pens of Keats, Shelley and some of his noblest successors."[83] Mr. A. J. Kent says that "No one-sided sentiment of reaction against our so-called Augustan literature disqualified Leigh Hunt from becoming, as he afterwards became, the greatest master since the days of Dryden of the heroic couplet."[84] Leigh Hunt's greatest mistake in the handling of the couplet has been clearly pointed out by Mr. Colvin, who says that he "blended the grave and the colloquial cadences of Dryden, without his characteristic nerve and energy in either."[85] The late Dr. Garnett said that the ease and variety of Dryden was restored by Hunt to English literature.[86] Monkhouse pointed out that Keats and Shelley, more than