Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/74



You may please also to observe, that there is not, to the best of my remembrance, one Vowel gaping on another for want of a Cæsura, in this whole Poem. But where a Vowel ends a word, the next begins either with a Consonant, or what is its equivalent; for our W and H aspirate, and our Dipthongues are plainly such: The greatest lati­tude I take, is in the Letter Y, when it concludes a word, and the first Syllable of the next begins with a Vowel. Neither need I have call'd this a latitude, which is only an explanation of this general Rule. That no Vowel can be cut off before another, when we cannot sink the Pronunciation of it: As He, She, Me, I, &c. Virgil thinks it sometimes a Beauty to imitate the License of the Greeks, and leave two Vowels opening on each other, as in that Verse of the Third Pastoral,

But, nobis non licet esse tam disertis. At least, if we study to refine our Numbers. I have long had by me the Materials of an English Prosodia, containing all the Mechanical Rules of Versification, wherein I have treated with some exactness of the Feet, the Quantities, and the Pauses. The French and Italians know nothing of the two first; at least their best Poets have not practis'd them. As for the Pauses, Mal­herb first brought them into France, within this last Century: And we see how they adorn their Alexandrians. But as Virgil propounds a Riddle which he leaves unsolv'd: