Our poetry being very much polished and refined since the days of Chaucer, Spenser, and the other ancient poets, some rules which they neglected, and that conduce very much to the ornaments of it, have been practised by the best of the moderns.
The first is to avoid as much as possible the concourse of vowels, which occasions a certain ill-sounding gaping, called by the Latins hiatus; and which they thought so disagreeable to the ear, that, to avoid it, whenever a word ended in a vowel, and the next began with one, they never, even in prose, sounded the vowel of the first word, but lost it in the pronunciation; and it is a fault in our poets not to do the like, whenever our language will admit of it.
For this reason the e of the particle the ought always to be cut off before the words that begin with a vowel; as,
"With weeping Eyes she heard th' unwelcome News."—Dryden.
And it is a fault to make the and the first syllable of the following word two distinct syllables, as in this,
"Restrain'd a while by the unwelcome Night."—Waller.
A second sort of hiatus, and that ought no less to be avoided, is when a word that ends in a vowel that cannot be cut off, is placed before one that begins with the same vowel, or one that has the like sound; as,
"Should thy Iambicks swell into a Book."—Waller.
The second rule is, to contract the two last syllables of the preterperfect tenses of all the verbs that will admit of it; which are all the regular verbs whatsoever, except only those ending in d or t, and de or te. And it is a fault to make amazed of three syllables, and loved of two, instead of amazed of two, and loved of one.
And the second person of the present and preterperfect tenses of all verbs ought to be contracted in like manner; as thou lov'st, for thou lovest, &c.