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 said about the pause, leads to a general observation, That the natural order of placing the active substantive and its verb, is more friendly to a pause than the inverted order; but that in all the other connexions, inversion affords a far better opportunity for a pause. And hence one great advantage of blank verse over rhyme; its privilege of inversion giving it a much greater choice of pauses than can be had in the natural order of arrangement.

We now proceed to the slighter connexions, which shall be discussed in one general article. Words connected by conjunctions and prepositions admit freely a pause between them, which will be clear from the following instances:

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

Connecting particles were invented to unite in a period two substances signifying things occasionally united in the thought, but which have no natural union and between two things not only separable in idea, but really distinct, the mind, for the sake of melody, cheerfully admits by a pause a momentary disjunction of their occasional union.

One capital branch of the subject is still upon hand, to which I am directed by what is just now said. It concerns those parts of speech which

singly represent no idea, and which become not significant till they be joined to other words. I mean conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and such like accessories, passing under the name of particles. Upon these the question occurs, Whether they can be separated by a pause from the words. that make them significant? Whether, for example, in the following lines, the separation of the accessory preposition from the principal substantive be according to rule?

The goddess with || a discontented air

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 ensign of || the delegates of Jove

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

While angels with || their silver wings o'ershade.

Or the separation of the conjunction from the word that is connected by it with the antecedent word:

Talthybius and || Eurybates the good.

It will be obvious at the first glance, that the fore-, going reasoning upon objects naturally connected, is not applicable to words which of themselves are mere ciphers: we must therefore have recourse to some other principle for solving the present question. These particles out of their place are totally insignificant to give them a meaning, they must be joined to certain words; and the necessity of

this junction, together with custom, forms an arti, ficial connexion that has a strong influence upon the mind: it cannot bear even a momentary sepa. ration, which destroys the sense, and is at the same time contradictory to practice. Another circumstance tends still more to make this separation disagreeable in lines of the first and third order, that it bars the accent, which will be explained afterward, in treating of the accent.

Hitherto upon that pause only which divides the line. We proceed to the pause that concludes the line; and the question is, Whether the same rules be applicable to both? 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 that 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 resembles greatly the concluding pause in an Hexameter line. Both of them indeed are so remarkable, that they never can be graceful, unless where they accompany a pause in the sense. Hence it follows, that a couplet ought always to be finished with some close in the sense; if not a point, at least a comma. The truth is, that this rule is selworks, I find very

dom transgressed. In Pope's

few deviations from the rule. Take the following instances:

Nothing is foreign: parts relate to whole;
One all-extending, all-preserving soul

Connects each being

Another :

To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow'rs,
To steal from rainbows ere they drop in show'rs
A brighter wash

I add, with respect to pauses in general, that supposing the connexion to be so slender as to admit a pause, it follows not that a pause may in every such case be admitted. There is one rule to which every other ought to bend, That the sense must never be wounded or obscured by the music; and upon that account I condemn the following lines; Ulysses, first || in public cares, she found

And,

Who rising, high || th' imperial sceptre rais'd.

With respect to inversion, it appears, both from reason and experiments, that many words which cannot bear a separation in their natural order, admit a pause when inverted. And it may be added, that when two words, or two members of a sentence, in their natural order, can be separated by a pause, such separation can never be amiss in an inverted order. An inverted period, which deviates from the natural train of ideas, requires to be marked in some measure even by pauses in the sense, that the parts may be distinctly known. Take the following examples:

As with cold lips || I kiss'd the sacred veil
With other beauties || charm my partial eyes
Full in my view | set all the bright abode

With words like these || the troops Ulysses rul'd
Back to th' assembly roll || the thronging train

Not for their grief || the Grecian host I blame.

The same where the separation is made at the close of the first line of the couplet :

For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease
Assume what sexes and what shapes they please.

The pause is tolerable even at the close of the couplet, for the reason just now suggested, that inverted members require some slight pause in the

sense:

"Twas where the plane-tree spreads its shades around; The altars heav'd; and from the crumbling ground A mighty dragon shot.

Thus a train of reasoning hath insensibly led us to conclusions with regard to the musical pause, very different from those in the first section, concerning the separating by a circumstance words intimately connected. One would conjecture, that wherever words are separable by interjecting a circumstance, they should be equally separable by interjecting a pause; but, upon a more narrow inspection, the appearance of analogy vanisheth. This will be evident from considering, that a pause in the sense distinguishes the different members of a period from each other; whereas, when two words of the same member are separated by a circumstance, all the three make still but one member; and therefore that words may be separated by