Mr. Cowley had found out that
no kind of staff is proper for an heroic poem, as being all too
lyrical; yet though he wrote in couplets, where rhyme is freer from
constraint, he frequently affects half-verses, of which we find not
one in Homer, and I think not in any of the Greek poets or the
Latin, excepting only Virgil: and there is no question but he
thought he had Virgil's authority for that licence. But I am
confident our poet never meant to leave him or any other such a
precedent; and I ground my opinion on these two reasons: first, we
find no example of a hemistich in any of his Pastorals or Georgics,
for he had given the last finishing strokes to both these poems; but
his "AEneis" he left so incorrect, at least so short of that
perfection at which he aimed, that we know how hard a sentence he
passed upon it. And, in the second place, I reasonably presume that
he intended to have filled up all these hemistichs, because in one
of them we find the sense imperfect:-
"Quem tibi jam Troja .
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