Chapter XVI: Section III: Several rules conducing to the beauty of our

versification._

Our poetry being very much polished and refined since the days of Chaucer, Spenser, and the other ancient poets, some rules which they neglected, and that conduce very much to the ornaments of it, have been practised by the best of the moderns.

The first is to avoid as much as possible the concourse of vowels, which occasions a certain ill-sounding gaping, called by the Latins _hiatus_; and which they thought so disagreeable to the ear, that, to avoid it, whenever a word ended in a vowel, and the next began with one, they never, even in prose, sounded the vowel of the first word, but lost it in the pronunciation; and it is a fault in our poets not to do the like, whenever our language will admit of it.

For this reason the _e_ of the particle the ought always to be cut off
before the words that begin with a vowel; as,

"With weeping Eyes she heard th' unwelcome News."—_Dryden._

And it is a fault to make the and the first syllable of the following word two distinct syllables, as in this,

"Restrain'd a while by the unwelcome Night."—_Waller._

A second sort of hiatus, and that ought no less to be avoided, is when a word that ends in a vowel that cannot be cut off, is placed before one that begins with the same vowel, or one that has the like sound; as,

"Should thy Iambicks swell into a Book."—_Waller._

The second rule is, to contract the two last syllables of the preterperfect tenses of all the verbs that will admit of it; which are all the regular verbs whatsoever, except only those ending in _d_ or _t_, and _de_ or _te_. And it is a fault to make amazed of three syllables, and loved of two, instead of amazed of two, and loved of one.

And the second person of the present and preterperfect tenses of all verbs ought to be contracted in like manner; as thou lov'st, for thou lovest, &c.

The third rule is, not to make use of several words in a verse that begin with the same letter; as,

"The Court he knew to Steer in Storms of State,
He in these Miracles Design discern'd."

Yet we find an instance of such a verse in Dryden's translation of the first pastoral of Virgil:

"Till then a helpless, hopeless, homely swain."

Which I am persuaded he left not thus through negligence or inadvertency, but with design to paint in the number and sound of the words the thing he described—a shepherd in whom

"Nec spes libertatis erat, nec cura peculi."

Now how far the sound of the _h_ aspirate, with which three feet of that verse begin, expresses the despair of the swain, let the judicious judge. I have taken notice of it only to say, that it is a great beauty in poetry, when the words and numbers are so disposed, as by their order and sound to represent the things described.

The fourth is, to avoid ending a verse by an adjective whose
substantive begins the following; as,

"Some lost their quiet Rivals, some their kind
Parents," &c.—_Davenant._

Or, by a preposition when the case it governs begins the verse that follows; as,

"The daily less'ning of our life, shews by
A little dying, how outright to dye."

The fifth is, to avoid the frequent use of words of many syllables, which are proper enough in prose, but come not into verse without a certain violence altogether disagreeable; particularly those whose accent is on the fourth syllable from the last, as undutifulness.