If Delia smile, || the flow’rs begin to spring. If then it be not a matter of indifferency where to make the pause, there ought to be rules for determining what words may be separated by a pause and what are incapable of such separation. I shall endeavour to unfold these rules; not chiefly for their utility, but in order to exemplify some latent principles that tend to regulate our taste even where we are scarce sensible of them. And to that end, it seems the eligible method to run over the verbal relations, beginning with the most intimate. The first that presents itself, is that of adjective and substantive, being the relation of substance and quality, the most intimate of all. A quality cannot exist independent of a substance, nor is it separable from it even in imagination, because they make parts of the same idea; and for that reason, it must, with regard to melody, be disagreeable, to bestow upon the adjective a sort of independent existence, by interjecting a pause betwixt it and its substantive. I cannot therefore approve the following lines, nor any of the sort; for to my taste they are harsh and unpleasant. Of thousand bright || inhabitants of air The sprites of fiery || termagants inflame The rest, his many-colour’d || robe conceal’d The same, his ancient || personage to deck Ev’n here, where frozen || Chastity retires I sit, with sad || civility, I read Back to my native || moderation slide Or shall we ev’ry || decency confound Time was, a sober || Englishman wou’d knock And place, on good || security, his gold Taste, that eternal || wanderer, which flies But ere the tenth || revolving day was run First let the just || equivalent be paid Go, threat thy earth-born || Myrmidons; but here Haste to the fierce || Achilles’ tent (he cries) All but the ever-wakeful || eyes of Jove Your own resistless || eloquence employ I have upon this article multiplied examples, that in a case where I have the misfortune to dislike what passes current in practice, every man upon the spot may judge by his own taste. The foregoing reasoning, it is true, appears to me just: it is however too subtile, to afford conviction in opposition to taste.