To these measures and their laws, may be reduced every species of English verse.
Our versification admits of few licences, except a synalœpha, or elision of e in the before a vowel, as th' eternal; and more rarely of o in to, as t' accept; and a synaresis, by which two short vowels coalesce into one syllable, as question, special; or a word is contracted by the expulsion of a short vowel before a liquid, as av'rice, temp'rance.
Thus have I collected rules and examples, by which the English language may be learned, if the reader be already acquainted with grammatical terms, or taught by a master to those that are more ignorant. To have written a grammar for such as are not yet initiated in the schools, would have been tedious, and perhaps at last ineffectual.