Laws were originally written in verse, and graved on wood. The Roman
laws were engraved on copper. DACIER.
595.--TYRTAEUS.] An ancient Poet, who is said to have been given to the
Spartans as a General by the Oracle, and to have animated the Troops by
his Verses to such a degree, as to be the means of their triumph over
the Messenians, after two defeats: to which Roscommon alludes in his
_Essay on translated Verse_.
When by impulse from Heav'n, Tyrtaeus sung,
In drooping soldiers a new courage sprung;
Reviving Sparta now the fight maintain'd,
And what two Gen'rals lost, a Poet gain'd.
Some fragments of his works are still extant. They are written in the
Elegiac measure; yet the sense is not, as in other Poets, always bound
in by the Couplet; but often breaks out into the succeeding verse: a
practice, that certainly gives variety and animation to the measure;
and which has been successfully imitated in the _rhime_ of our own
language by Dryden, and other good writers.