Note 80 — VOL. XXVI., No. 153.—DECEMBER, 1877.

We do not here forget such songs as Shakspeare’s “Come away, come away, Death,” or Ben Jonson’s “See the chariot at hand here of Love,” or the anapests and dactyls in the madrigals. But we think it cannot be gainsaid that the general tendency of the earlier poets was to simple rhythms, and that the intricate arrangements of rhyme and novelties of metre in which modern poets delight were little known to them, or, if known, little relished.