Sir Philip Sidney, who was very unhappy in Versification, seems to have despised this Beauty in Verse, and even to have thought it an Excellence to fix the Pause always in one Place, namely at the End of the second Foot: So that he must have had no more Ear for Poetry than Mr. Cowley. Not but that I am apt to think some Writers in Sir Philip Sidney's time carried this matter to a ridiculous Extreme. Others thought this Beauty a Deformity, and concluded it so from two or three silly Latin[page 53] Lines of Ennius and Tully, such as,
O Tite, Tute, Tati, &c.
And,
O Fortunatam, natam, &c.
without ever attending to Virgil in the least.
Spencer every where abounds in all his Works with Alliterations; I will produce but one, which is exceeding beautiful.
"The Lilly, Lady of the Flow'ry Field.
Here is a double initial Alliteration, and a continual mix'd Alliteration of the liquid L, which makes the Verse so very musical that there are few such Lines in our, or any other Language.
Fairfax, who was one of the first curious Versifyers amongst us, embellishes his Lines continually with this Ornament.
In his Description of a Troop of fighting Monks, in his first Book of his Translation of Tasso, are these Lines.