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I 16 ORTHOMETRY. |
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they represent it to be of greater magnitude than I think it is in reality, I will here state their opinions respecting it, and their practice. Pope says, " the hiatus should be avoided with more care in poetry than in oratory ; and I would try to prevent it, unless where the cutting it off is more prejudicial to the sound than the hiatus itself." Dryden is still more averse to the hiatus. " There is not (says he in his dedication to the AEneid), to the best of my remembrance, one vowel gaping on another for want of a caesura [i.e. a cutting off) in this whole poem ; but where a vowel ends a word, the next begins 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 lati-tudewhich is only an explanation of the 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." In another place he mentions the hiatus with extreme severity. " Since I have named the synalepha, which is cutting ofifone vowel immediately before another, I will give an example of it from Chapman's Homer. It is in the first line of the argument to the first Iliad.
Apollo's priest to th' Argive fleet doth bring.
Here we see he makes it not the Argive, but th' Argive; to shun the shock of the two vowels immediately following each other; but in the same |
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