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ORTHOMETRY. |
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it, and partly that it is very difficult, if not impracticable, to avoid it. In Milton's poetry, to compute from the fifty first and fifty last lines of Paradise Lost and Savison Agonistes, there is an hiatus at every fifth. In his other poems, it may not be so frequent perhaps.
It is hardly necessary to say more of the hiatus ; yet this may be added, that, whatever offence it may give will be less noted if it stands at a pause, as:
Works without show, and without pomp presides.
Pope. " Essay on Crit." 75.
Nature, like liberty, is but restrained.
lb. 90.
Immortal Vida I on whose honour'd brow.
lb. 705.
In these instances the hiatus is better managed than in the three quoted above from the same poem. On the other hand, the hiatus will be perceived most when the two vowels which mark it are such that the organs of speech, in pronouncing them, keep the same position.
There is a different sort of hiatus, as it may be termed, which is made when a word or part of it stands for two syllables that might be contracted into one ; as, heaven, tower, violet, evening, &c. for then there is a gap, because the verse seems to want its full measure. The same want appears still plainer when such words as glorious, earlier, |
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