Oh say what stranger cause, yet unexplor’d,
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?
A plurality of lines of the fourth order, would not have a good effect in succession; because, by a remarkable tendency to rest, its proper office is to close a period. The reader, therefore, must be satisfied with instances where this order is mixed with others.
Not louder shrieks to pitying Heav’n are cast,
When husbands, or when lapdogs, breathe their last.
Again,
Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,
And hew triumphal arches to the ground.
Again,
She sees, and trembles at th’ approaching ill,
Just in the jaws of ruin, and codille.
Again,
With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,
He first the snuff-box open’d, then the case.
And this suggests another experiment, which is, to set the different orders more directly in opposition, by giving examples where they are mixed in the same passage.