In these verses two things are chiefly to be considered:
1. The seat of the accent.
2. The pause.
For 'tis not enough that verses have their just number of syllables; the true harmony of them depends on a due observation of the accent and pause.
The accent is an elevation or a falling of the voice on a certain syllable of a word.
The pause is a rest or stop that is made in pronouncing the verse, and that divides it, as it were, into two parts; each of which is called an hemistich, or half-verse.
But this division is not always equal, that is to say, one of the half-verses does not always contain the same number of syllables as the other. And this inequality proceeds from the seat of the accent that is strongest, and prevails most in the first half-verse. For the pause must be observed at the end of the word where such accents happen to be, or at the end of the following word.
Now, in a verse of ten syllables this accent must be either on the second, fourth, or sixth; which produces five several pauses, that is to say, at the third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh syllable of the verse:
For,
When it happens to be on the second, the pause will be either at the third or fourth.