With Court-Informers haunts, and Royal Spies,
Things done relates, not done she feigns, and mingles Truth with Lies.(Dryd.
But this is only in Heroicks; for in Pindaricks and Lyricks, Verses of 12 or 14 Syllables are frequently and gracefully plac'd, not only after those of 12 or 10, but of any other number of Syllables whatsoever.
The Verses of 4 and 6 Syllables have nothing worth observing, and therefore I shall content my self with having made mention of them. They are, as I said before, us'd only in Operas, and Masks, and in Lyrick and Pindarick Odes. Take one Example of them.
To rule by Love,
To shed no Blood,
May be extoll'd above;
But here below,
Let Princes know,
'Tis fatal to be good.Dryd.
SECT. III.
Several Rules conducing to the Beauty of our Versification.
Our Poetry being very much polish'd and refin'd since the Days of Chaucer, Spencer and the other antient Poets, some Rules which they neglected, and that conduce very much to the Ornament of it, have been practis'd 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, call'd 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 by a Vowel; as,