And languish'd for thy Absence like a Prophet,
Who waits the Inspiration of his God."—Rowe.
And this verse of Milton,
"Void of all Succour and needful Comfort,"
wants a syllable; for, being accented on the last save one, it ought to have eleven, as all the verses but two of the preceding example have. But if we transpose the words thus,
"Of Succour and all needful Comfort void,"
it then wants nothing of its due measure, because it is accented on the last syllable.
Section I.—Of the several sorts of verses; and, first, of those of ten syllables: of the due observation of the accents, and of the pause.
Our poetry admits for the most part but of three sorts of verses; that is to say, of verses of ten, eight, or seven syllables. Those of four, six, nine, eleven, twelve, and fourteen, are generally employed in masks and operas, and in the stanzas of lyric and Pindaric odes, and we have few entire poems composed in any of those sort of verses. Those of twelve and fourteen syllables are frequently inserted in our poems in heroic verse, and when rightly made use of, carry a peculiar grace with them. See the next section towards the end.
The verses of ten syllables, which are our heroic, are used in heroic poems, in tragedies, comedies, pastorals, elegies, and sometimes in burlesque.