may always be conceived independent of the verb. When the paffive fubject is introduced before the verb, we know not that an action is to be exerted upon it; therefore we may reft till the action com mences. For the fake of illuftration take the following examples.

ORA

Shrines! where their vigils || pale-ey'd virgins keep
Soon as thy letters || trembling I unclose
No happier task || these faded eyes pursue

What is faid about placing the pause, leads to a general observation, which I shall have occafion for afterwards. The natural order of placing the active fubftantive and its verb, is more friendly to a pause than the inverted order. But in all the other connections, inverfion affords by far a bet ter opportunity for a paufe. Upon this depends one of the great advantages that blank verse hath over rhyme. The privi lege of inverfion, in which it far excels rhyme, gives it a much greater choice of pauses, than can be had in the natural order of arrangement,

We

We now proceed to the flighter connections, which fhall be difcuffed in one general article. Words connected by conjunc tions and prepofitions freely admit a pause betwixt them, which will be clear from the following inftances.

Affume what sexes and what shape they please
The light militia of the lower sky

Connecting particles were invented to unite in a period two fubftantives fignifying things occafionally united in the thought, but which have no natural union. And betwixt two things not only feparable in idea, but really distinct, the mind, for the fake of melody, chearfully admits by a pause a momentary disjunction of their occafional union.

One capital branch of the fubject is ftill upon hand, to which I am directed by what is juft now faid. It concerns thofe parts of fpeech which fingly reprefent no idea, and which become not fignificant till they be joined to other words. I mean conjunctions, 3 E 2

prepofitions,

prepofitions, articles, and fuch like acceffories, paffing under the name of particles Upon thefe the question occurs, Whether they can be separated by a pause from the words that make them fignificant? Whether, for example, in the following lines, the feparation of the acceffory prepofition from the principal fubftantive, be according

And heighten'd by the diamond's circling rays:
When victims at || yon altar's foot we lay
So take it in the very words of Creech

An enfign of || the delegates of Jove

Two ages o'er || his native realm he reign'd

While angels, with || their filver wings o'erfhade

Or feparating the conjunction from the word it connects with what

goes

Talthybius and Eurybates the good

before:

It will be obvious at the first glance, that the foregoing reatoning upon objects natu

rally

rally connected, are not applicable to words which of themselves are mere ciphers. We muft therefore have recourse to fome other principle for folving the prefent question. These particles out of their place are totally infignificant. To give them a meaning, they must be joined to certain words. The neceffity of this junction, together with cuttom, forms an artificial connection, which has a ftrong influence upon the mind. It cannot bear even a momentary feparation, which destroys the fenfe, and is at the fame time contradictory to practice. Another circumftance tends ftill more to make this feparation difagreeable. The long fyllable immediately preceding the full pause, must be accented; for this is requi red by the melody, as will afterward appear. But it is ridiculous to accent or put an emphasis upon a low word that raises no idea, and is confined to the humble province of connecting words that raise ideas. And for that reafon, a line must be difagreeable where a particle immediately precedes the full paufe; for fuch construction

of

L

of a line makes the melody difcord with the fense.

Hitherto we have difcourfed upon that pause only which divides the line. Are the fame rules applicable to the concluding pause? This must be answered by making a distinction. In the first line of a couplet, the concluding pause differs little, if at all, from the pause which divides the line; and for that reason, the rules are applicable to both equally. The concluding pause of the couplet, is in a different condition: it refembles greatly the concluding pause in a Hexameter line. Both of them indeed are so remarkable, that they never can be graceful, unless when they accompany a pause in the fenfe. Hence it follows, that a couplet ought always to be finished with fome clofe in the sense; if not a point, at least a comma. The truth is, that this rule is feldom transgreffed. In Pope's works, upon a curfory fearch indeed, I found but the following

deviations from the rule.

Nothing