[27] Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. ep. 1, ver. 75.
[28] Oldham's Elegies.
[29] Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. ep. 1, ver. 213.
[30] A Version of the Psalms: Preface.
[31] Evelyn's Diary, vol. ii. p. 27; Pepys's Diary, 4th ed., vol. iii. p. 219.
[32] Account of the Life of Cowley, prefixed to his works, ed. 1688
[33] Wordsworth's Works, vol. iii. p. 333.
[34] Prior's Preface to Solomon.
[35] Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 77.
[36] Dryden maintains, in his Dedication to the Æneis, that the triplet, conjoined with the Alexandrine, is "the magna charta of heroic poetry." "Besides," he says, "the majesty which it gives, it confines the sense within the barriers of three lines, which would languish if it were lengthened into four." Johnson, while granting that the variety arising from triplets was desirable, wished that there should "be some stated mode of admitting them," in order to prevent their coming upon the reader by surprise, and to keep up the constancy of metrical laws. Such a rule would introduce a new species of monotony, and do away with the benefit which principally recommended triplets to Dryden. Ideas which were not enough for four lines, and over-much for two, would not recur at stages fixed beforehand. Swift thought triplets and Alexandrines "a corruption," and boasted that he had "banished them" by a triplet in his City Shower. "I absolutely," he adds, "did prevail with Mr. Pope, and Gay, and Dr. Young, and one or two more to reject them. Mr. Pope never used them till he translated Homer, which was too long a work to be so very exact in; and I think in one or two of his last poems he has, out of laziness, done the same thing, though very seldom." Swift was mistaken in his assertion that Pope never used triplets till he translated the Iliad. They occur in the Essay on Criticism, the Temple of Fame, and other pieces, and not only did these works appear before the Homer, but they appeared after the triplet in the City Shower, which Swift flattered himself had banished all triplets from poetry. Nor had he any need to persuade Young and Gay to reject them if they had been exploded by his triplet of 1710, for it was two or three years later before either Young or Gray printed their first rhymes. They contained, however, triplets in spite of his City Shower, which had none of the effect he imagined. It merely proved, what no one doubted, that a metre proper to serious subjects was ludicrous in a burlesque. Swift's dislike to triplets and Alexandrines was a prejudice, and he did not pretend to offer any reason for his decree.