The pause is tolerable even at the close of the couplet, for the reason just now suggested, that inverted members require some slight pause in the sense:
’Twas where the plane-tree spread its shades around:
The altars heav’d; and from the crumbling ground
A mighty dragon shot.
Thus a train of reasoning hath insensibly led us to conclusions with regard to the musical pause, very different from those in the first section, concerning the separating by an interjected circumstance words intimately connected. One would conjecture, that where-ever words are separable by interjecting a circumstance, they should be equally separable by interjecting a pause. But, upon a more narrow inspection, the appearance of analogy vanisheth. To make this evident, I need only premise, that a pause in the sense distinguishes the different members of a period from each other; that two words of the same member may be separated by a circumstance, all the three making still but one member; and therefore that a pause in the sense has no connection with the separation of words by interjected circumstances. This sets the matter in a clear light. It is observed above, that the musical pause is intimately connected with the pause in the sense; so intimately indeed, that regularly they ought to coincide. As this would be too great a restraint, a licence is indulged, to place pauses for the sake of the music where they are not necessary for the sense. But this licence must be kept within bounds. And a musical pause ought never to be placed where a pause is excluded by the sense; as, for example, betwixt the adjective and following substantive which make parts of the same idea, and still less betwixt a particle and the word which makes it significant.
Abstracting at present from the peculiarity of modulation arising from the different pauses, it cannot fail to be observed in general, that they introduce into our verse no slight degree of variety. Nothing more fatigues the ear, than a number of uniform lines having all the same pause, which is extremely remarkable in the French versification. This imperfection will be discerned by a fine ear even in the shortest succession, and becomes intolerable in a long poem. Pope excels all the world in the variety of his modulation, which indeed is not less perfect of its kind than that of Virgil.
From what is now said, there ought to be one exception. Uniformity in the members of a thought, demands equal uniformity in the members of the period which expresses that thought. When therefore resembling objects or things are expressed in a plurality of verse-lines, these lines in their structure ought to be as uniform as possible, and the pauses in particular ought all of them to have the same place. Take the following examples.
By foreign hands || thy dying eyes were clos’d,
By foreign hands || thy decent limbs compos’d,
By foreign hands || thy humble grave adorn’d.
Again,
Bright as the sun, || her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, || they shine on all alike.
Speaking of Nature, or the God of Nature:
Warms in the sun || refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars || and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life || extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided || operates unspent.