Dryden's Dedication to the Assignation: "He is only like Fungoso in the play, who follows the fashion at a distance."
[162] If Pope's maxim was universally obeyed no new word could be introduced. Dryden was more judicious. "When I find," he said, "an English word significant and sounding, I neither borrow from the Latin nor any other language; but when I want at home I must seek abroad."
Quis populi sermo est? quis enim? nisi carmina molli
Nunc demum numero fluere, ut per læve severos
Effundat junctura ungues: scit tendere versum
Non secus ac si oculo rubricam dirigat uno.—Pers., Sat. i.—Pope.
Garth in the Dispensary:
Harsh words, though pertinent, uncouth appear;
None please the fancy who offend the ear.
[164] "There" is a feeble excrescence to force a rhyme.
[165] Fugiemus crebras vocalium concursiones, quæ vastam atque hiantem orationem reddunt. Cic. ad Heren. lib. iv. Vide etiam Quintil. lib. ix. c. 4.—Pope.
Vowels were said to open on each other when two words came together of which the first ended, and the second commenced with a vowel. Pope has illustrated the fault by crowding three consecutive instances into his verse. The poets diminished the conflict of vowels by a free recourse to elisions. The most usual were the cutting off the "e" in "the," as "th' unlearned," ver. 327; and the "o" in "to," as "t' outlast," ver. 131, "t' examine," ver. 134, "t' admire," ver. 200. The two words were thus fused into one, and the old authors combined them in writing as well as in the pronunciation. The manuscripts of Chaucer have "texcuse," not "t' excuse;" "thapostle," not "th' apostle." The custom has not kept its ground. Whatever might be supposed to be gained in harmony by the conversion of "to examine" into "texamine," or of "the unlearned" into "thunlearned" was more than lost by the departure from the common forms of speech.
[166] "The characters of bad critic and bad poet are grossly confounded; for though it be true that vulgar readers of poetry are chiefly attentive to the melody of the verse, yet it is not they who admire, but the paltry versifier who employs monotonous syllables, feeble expletives, and a dull routine of unvaried rhymes." Essays Historical and Critical.—Warton.