So when I went to put my Purse as God wou’d have it, my Smock was unripped,
And instead of putting it into my Pocket down it slipped.
It will be no Authority with him, that Mr. Dryden commonly contracted the Syllables that end in Ed or Eth. He was a Poet, and tho’ certainly in most cases the sound is sweetned by it, yet it offends those who are not for losing a Letter, and were they Frenchmen, would doubtless be for pronouncing every one of them, as well as Writing, to the great strengthning of that Enervate Tongue, which languishes in reading for want of the Ez’s and Er’s, so barbarously mangled in Pronounciation. A great Lord, and one who wou’d be worthy of a Place, which is deny’d him in this Academy, having written against my Lord Rochester in an Essay upon Poetry, Mr. Wolseley, attacks the Essayer in a Preface written on purpose, and printed before Valentinian, wherein he has criticis’d on his Lordship’s Poem, and on these two Lines in particular.
That Author’s Name has undeserved Praise,
Who pall’d the Appetite he meant to raise.
Where he observes the Advantage the Verse had in the Ed, for without it it must have hobled on Nine Feet instead of Ten. What does that Ed, says he, in undeserved do there? I know no Business it has, unless it be to crutch a Lame Verse, and each out a scanty Sense; for the Word that is now used is Undeserv’d. I shou’d not take notice of such a Thing as this, but that I have to do with a giver of Rules, and a Magisterial Corrector of other Men; tho’ upon the observing such little Niceties, does all the Musick of Numbers defend. But the Refinement of our Versication is a sort of Criticism, which the Essayer, if we may judge of his Knowledge by his Practice, seems yet to learn; for never was there such a Pack of Stiff ill sounding Rhimes put together as his Essay is stuff’d with: To add therefore to his other Collections, let him remember hereafter, that Verses have Feet given ’em either to walk gracefully and smooth, and sometimes with Majesty and State like Virgils, or to run light and easy like Ovid’s, not to stand stockstill like Dr. Donne’s, or to hobble like indigested Prose: That the counting of the Syllables is the least Part of the Poets Work, in the turning either of a soft or a Sonorous Line; that the Ed’s went away with the [A]For to’s, and the Until’s in that general[A] Rout that fell on the whole Body of the thereon’s, the therein’s, and thereby’s, when those useful Expletives, the altho’s and the Unto’s, and those most convenient Synalæpha’s ’midst, ’mongst, ’gainst, and ’twixt, were every one cut off; which dismal Slaughter was follow’d with the utter Extirpation of the ancient House of the hereof’s and the therefrom’s, &c. Nor is this Reformation the Arbitrary Fancy of a Few, who would impose their own Private Opinions and Practices upon the rest of their Countrymen, but grounded on the Authority of Horace, who tells us in his Epistle de arte Poetica, that Present Use is the final Judge of Language, (the Verse is too well known to need quoting)[B] and on the common Reason of Mankind, which forbids us those antiquated Words and obsolete Idioms of Speech, whose worth Time has worn out, how well soever they may seem to stop a Gap in Verse, and suit our shapeless Immature Conceptions; for what is grown Pedantick and unbecoming when ’tis spoke, will not have a jot the better grace for being writ down. This Gentleman’s Opinion, and that of others, which agrees with his, justify’d by the Example of all the Polite Writers in King Charles the Second’s Reign, which probably may be the Augustan Age of English Poetry, is not to warrant the Affectation of such as are for the Can’ts, the Don’ts, the Won’ts, the Shan’ts, &c. but to refer to the Ear the cutting off those useless Syllables the Ed’s and Eth’s both in Verse and Prose; and I question whether any one wou’d not be better pleas’d to hear disturb’d read than disturbed, and rebuk’d than rebuked, tho’ the Doctor wonders how it can be endur’d.
How intolerable must those two Lines of Hudibras be to him then, on more Accounts than one.
Hence ’tis that ’cause y’ ’ave gain’d o’ th’ College
A quarter Share at most of Knowledge.
Where there are almost as many Abreviations as there are Words, and I question whether the being an Hudibrastick is sufficient to excuse it, if it is, otherwise inexcusable; perhaps the Reader may not be displeas’d to see the Lines that follow, which are no great Digression from our Subject.