My very dear Friend,—I hear with wonder from Arabel of your repudiation of my word 'octosyllabic' for the two lines in your controversial poem. Certainly, if you count the syllables on your fingers, there are ten syllables in each line: of that I am perfectly aware; but the lines are none the less belonging to the species of versification called octosyllabic. Do you not observe, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that the final accent and rhyme fall on the eighth syllable instead of the tenth, and that that single circumstance determines the class of verse—that they are in fact octosyllabic verses with triple rhymes?
Hatching succession apostolical,
With other falsehoods diabolical.
Pope has double rhymes in his heroic verses, but how does he manage them? Why, he admits eleven syllables, throwing the final accent and rhyme on the tenth, thus:
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,
The rest is nought but leather and prunella.
Again, if there is a double rhyme to an octosyllabic verse, there are always nine syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable, thus:
Compound for sins that we're inclined to,
By damning those we have no mind to.
('Hudibras.')
Again, if there is a triple rhyme to an octosyllabic verse (precisely the present case) there must always be ten syllables in that verse, the final accent and rhyme falling on the eighth syllable; thus from 'Hudibras' again:
Then in their robes the penitentials
Are straight presented with credentials.
Remember how in arms and politics,
We still have worsted all your holy tricks.
You will admit that these last couplets are precisely of the same structure as yours, and certainly they are octosyllabics, and made use of by Butler in an octosyllabic poem, whereas yours, to be rendered of the heroic structure, should run thus: