Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/199

Rh tention by studied discords, or affected to break his lines and vary his pauses.

But though he was thus careful of his versification, he did not oppress his powers with superfluous rigour. He seems to have thought with Boileau, that the practice of writing might be refined till the difficulty should overbalance the advantage. The construction of his language is not always strictly grammatical; with those rhymes which prescription had conjoined, he contented himself, without regard to Swift's remonstrances, though there was no striking consonance; nor was he very careful to vary his terminations, or to refuse admission, at a small distance, to the same rhymes.

To Swift's edict for the exclusion of Alexandrines and Triplets he paid little regard; he admitted them, but, in the opinion of Fenton, too rarely; he uses them more like rally in his translation than his poems.

He has a few double rhymes; and always, I think, unsuccessfully, except once in the "Rape of the Lock."

Expletives he very early ejected from his verses; but he now and then admits an epithet rather commodious than important. Each of Rh