Practical Guide to English Versification / With a Compendious Dictionary of Rhymes, an Examination / of Classical Measures, and Comments Upon Burlesque and / Comic Verse, Vers de Société, and Song-writing

by Tom Hood

And round with list'ning Ears the flying Plague is hung." }

—Dryden.

And here we may observe by the way, that whenever a triplet is made use of in an heroic poem, it is a fault not to close the sense at the end of the triplet, but to continue it into the next line; as Dryden has done in his translation of the eleventh Æneid, in these lines:

"With Olives crown'd, the Presents they shall bear, }

A Purple Robe, a Royal Iv'ry Chair, }

And all the Marks of Sway that Latian Monarchs wear, }

And Sums of Gold," &c. }

And in the seventh Æneid he has committed the like fault:

"Then they, whose Mothers, frantick with their Fear, }

In Woods and Wilds the Flags of Bacchus bear, }