I hope, from the candour of your lordship, and your
often-experienced goodness to me, that if the faults are not too
many you will make allowances, with Horace:-
"Si plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura."
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 caesura 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 diphthongs, 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
called 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 licence of the Greeks, and
leave two vowels opening on each other, as in that verse of the
third pastoral--
"Et succus pecori, et lac subducitur agnis.
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