usually closes the idea with it, and that the end of most of them is marked by something epigrammatic either in sense or sound, which would be out of its place except in the concluding couplet. Each canto, or collection of stanzas, then may be compared to a gallery of cabinet pictures, all perhaps striking or beautiful, but frequently executed on different principles, each of which is often only in harmony with itself. Whoever, therefore, unites any of these little paintings, yet more, he who runs them into one piece, will necessarily either present a picture full of cross lights, and every species of inconsistency, or will only avoid this by leaving out whatever is most characteristic in the original, and by making a smear without light, shade, or distinction of outline.
Entertaining this opinion, I have chosen the stanza in preference to the couplet; and because I would imitate Ariosto as closely as the nature of our language will allow, have, like Harrington and Huggins, chosen his own ottava rima as the most preferable form of it. Like Mr. Huggins, I have also
