agreeable 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 seldom transgressed. In Pope's works, I find very 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 flowers,
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 :

And,

Ulysses, first in public cares, she found

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 an interjected circumstance, though these words are not separated by a pause in the sense. This sets the matter in a clear light; for, as observed above,a musical pause is intimately connected with a pause in the sense, and ought, as far as possible, to be governed by it: particularly a musical pause ought never to be placed where a pause is excluded by the sense; as, for example, between the adjective and following substantive, which make parts of the same idea; and still less between a particle and the word that makes it significant.

Abstracting at present from the peculiarity of melody arising from the different pauses, it cannot fail to be observed in general, that they introduce into our verse no slight degree of variety. A number of uniform lines having all the same pause, are extremely fatiguing; which is remarkable in French versification. This imperfection will be discerned by a fine ear even in the shortest succession, and becomes intollerable in a long poem. Pope excels in the variety of his melody; which, if different kinds can be compared, is indeed no less perfect than that of Virgil.

From what is last said, there ought to be one exception. Uniformity in the members of a thought demands equal uniformity in the verbal members which express that thought. When therefore resembling objects or things are expressed in a plurality of verse-lines, these lines in their structure ought to be as uniform as possible; and the pauses in particular ought all of them to have the same place. Take the following examples:

By foreign hands || thy dying eyes were clos'd
By foreign hands || thy decent limbs compos'd
By foreign hands || thy humble grave adorn'd.

Again:

Bright as the sun || her eyes the gazers strike;
And, like the sun, || they shine on all alike.

Speaking of Nature, or the God of Nature :

Warms in the sun | refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars || and blossoms in the trees;
Lives through all life || extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided operates unspent.

Pauses will detain us longer than was foreseen; for the subject is not yet exhausted. It is laid down above, that English Heroic verse admits no more but four capital pauses; and that the capital pause of every line is determined by the sense to be after the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, or seventh syllable. That this doctrine holds true as far as melody alone is concerned, will be testified by every good ear. At the same time, I admit, that this rule may be varied where the sense or expression requires a variation, and that so far the melody may justly be sacrificed. Examples accordingly are not unfrequent, in Milton especially, of the capital pause being after the first, the second, or the third syllable. And that this license may be taken, even gracefully, when it adds vigour to the expression,

will be clear from the following example. Pope, in his translation of Homer, describes a rock broke off from a mountain, and hurling to the plain, in the following words:

From steep to steep the rolling ruin bounds;

At every shock the crackling wood resounds;
Still gath'ring force, it smokes; and urg'd amain,
Whirls, leaps, and thunders down, impetuous to the plain
There stops. So Hector. Their whole force he prov'd,
Resistless when he rag'd; and when he stopt, unmov'd.

In the penult line, the proper place of the musical pause is at the end of the fifth syllable; but it enlivens the expression by its coincidence with that of the sense at the end of the second syllable: the stopping short before the usual pause in the melody, aids the impression that is made by the description of the stone's stopping short; and what is lost to the melody by this artifice, is more than compensated by the force that is added to the description. Milton makes a happy use of this license: witness the following examples from his Paradise Lost.

-Thus with the year

Seasons return, but not to me returns

Day or the sweet approach of even or morn.

Celestial voices to the midnight-air

Sole or responsive each to others note.

And over them triumphant Death his dait
Shook but delay'd to strike.

And wild uproar

Stood rul'd stood vast infinitude confin'd.

Glories

-And hard'ning in his strength

for never since created man

Met such embodied force.

From his slack hand the garland wreath'd for Eve
Down dropp'd || and all the faded roses shed,

Of unessential night, receives him next,
Wide gaping and with utter loss of being,
Threatens him, &c.