Page:Johnson - Rambler 2.djvu/207

N° 88. I believe every reader will agree, that in all those passages, though not equally in all, the musick is injured, and in some the meaning obscured. There are other lines in which the vowel is cut off, but it is so faintly pronounced in common speech, that the loss of it in poetry is scarcely perceived; and therefore such compliance with the measure may be allowed.

Yet even these contractions encrease the roughness of a language too rough already; and though in long poems they may be sometimes suffered, it never can be faulty to forbear them.