"Your arms are on the Rhine victorious."
To prove that this verse wants a syllable of its due measure, we need but add one to it; as,
"Your arms are on the Rhine victorious now."
Where, though the syllable now be added to the verse, it has no more than its due number of syllables; which plainly proves it wanted it.
But if the accent be upon the first of these syllables, they cannot be contracted to make a diphthong, but must be computed as two distinct syllables: thus poet, lion, quiet, and the like, must always be used as two syllables; poetry, and the like, as three. And it is a fault to make riot, for example, one syllable, as Milton has done in this verse,
"Their Riot ascends above the lofty Tow'rs."
The same poet has in another place made use of a like word twice in one verse, and made it two syllables each time;
"With Ruin upon Ruin, Rout on Rout."
And any ear may discover that this last verse has its true measure, the other not.
But there are some words that may be excepted; as diamond, violet, violent, diadem, hyacinth, and perhaps some others, which, though they are accented upon the first vowel, are sometimes used but as two syllables; as in the following verses:—