“But when should people strive their bonds to break,
If not when kings are negligent or weak?”
So Pope likewise pronounced weak rhyming it with take. Both he and Dryden offer numerous examples of speak rhyming with wake, sphere with bear, hear with care, retreat and complete with great, and treat with the French tête, as in Pope’s imitation of Horace:
“The guests withdrawn had left the treat,
And down the mice sate, tête-à-tête.”
In the Hind and the Panther Dryden uses the now vulgar pronunciation of clear thus:
“The sense is intricate, ’tis only clear
What vowels and consonants are there.”
But this was a perfectly faultless rhyme then and was sanctioned by the best usage. So the vulgar pronunciation of key is the only open sesame to this perfect rhyme in Dryden’s time:
“’Twere pity treason at his door to lay,
Who makes heaven’s gate a lock to its own key.”
Here also occurs the obsolete pronunciation of says rhyming with days, and said is wedded to maid and even have consorts with slave and wave, all of which pronunciations have long ago been repudiated by standard English and survive now only in the speech of the rustics and upon Irish lips.
The story is told of an old Scotchman who, like some others not of Scotch descent, occasionally draw their inspiration from an illicit source that during a spell of serious illness he was visited by the good minister who pointed out to him his weakness and endeavored to persuade him to leave off his bibulous habit. When the minister told the erring Scotchman that in heaven whither he was going there would be no wine, he impulsively exclaimed: “I dinna ken, but I think it would be but dacent (decent) to have it on the table.” This is precisely the way Dryden and Pope pronounced the word decent, and the pronunciation still lingers as a provincialism.
Pope rhymes nature with satire and makes Craggs exclaim in a dialogue: