Soon as thy letters || trembling I unclose
No happier task || these faded eyes pursue
What is said about placing the pause, leads to a general observation, which I shall have occasion for afterwards. The natural order of placing the active substantive and its verb, is more friendly to a pause than the inverted order. But in all the other connections, inversion affords by far a better opportunity for a pause. Upon this depends one of the great advantages that blank verse hath over rhyme. The privilege of inversion, in which it far excels rhyme, gives it a much greater choice of pauses, than can be had in the natural order of arrangement.
We now proceed to the slighter connections, which shall be discussed in one general article. Words connected by conjunctions and prepositions freely admit a pause betwixt them, which will be clear from the following instances.
Assume what sexes || and what shape they please
The light militia || of the lower sky
Connecting particles were invented to unite in a period two substantives signifying things occasionally united in the thought, but which have no natural union. And betwixt two things not only separable in idea, but really distinct, the mind, for the sake of melody, chearfully admits by a pause a momentary disjunction of their occasional union.
One capital branch of the subject is still upon hand, to which I am directed by what is just now said. It concerns those parts of speech which singly represent no idea, and which become not significant till they be joined to other words. I mean conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and such like accessories, passing under the name of particles. Upon these the question occurs, Whether they can be separated by a pause from the words that make them significant? Whether, for example, in the following lines, the separation of the accessory preposition from the principal substantive, be according to rule?
The goddess with || a discontented air
And heighten’d by || the diamond’s circling rays