Besides ten thousands Freaks that dy'd in Thinking."—Dryden.
But it is convenient to take notice, that the ancient poets did not always observe this rule, and took care only that the last syllables of the words should be alike in sound without any regard to the seat of the accent. Thus nation and affection, tenderness and hapless, villany and gentry, follow and willow, and the like, were allowed as rhymes to each other in the days of Chaucer, Spenser, and the rest of the ancients; but this is now become a fault in our versification; and these two verses of Cowley rhyme not at all,
"A dear and lively Brown was Merab's Dye;
Such as the proudest Colours might envy."
Nor these of Dryden,
"Thus Air was void of Light, and Earth unstable,
And Waters dark Abyss unnavigable."
Because we may not place an accent on the last syllable of envy, nor on the last save one of unnavigable; which nevertheless we must be obliged to do, if we make the first of them rhyme to dye, the last to unstable.
But we may observe, that in burlesque poetry it is permitted to place an accent upon a syllable that naturally has none; as,
"When Pulpit, Drum Ecclesiastick,