Yet even these contractions increase the roughness of a language too rough already; and though in long poems they may be sometimes suffered, it never can be faulty to forbear them.
Milton frequently uses in his poems the hypermetrical or redundant line of eleven syllables.
————Thus it shall befall
Him who to worth in woman over-trusting
Lets her will rule.——
I also err'd in over much admiring.
Verses of this kind occur almost in every page; but though they are not unpleasing or dissonant, they ought not to be admitted into heroick poetry, since the narrow limits of our language allow us no other distinction of epick and tragick measures, than is afforded by the liberty of changing at will the terminations of the dramatick lines, and bringing them by that relaxation of metrical rigour nearer to prose.
[!--Note--] ([54]) Variation. "This licence, though an innovation in English poetry, is yet allowed in many other languages ancient and modern; and therefore the criticks on Paradise Lost have, without much deliberation, commended Milton for introducing it." First folio edition.