In these deep solitudes and awful cells, Where heav’nly-pensive || Contemplation dwells, And ever-musing || Melancholy reigns. The point of the greatest delicacy regards the active verb and the passive substantive placed in their natural order. On the one side it will be observed, that these words signify things which are not separable in idea. Killing cannot be conceived without some being that is put to death, nor painting without a surface upon which the colours are spread. On the other side, an action and the thing on which it is exerted, are not, like substance and quality, united in one individual subject. The active subject is perfectly distinct from that which is passive; and they are connected by one circumstance only, that the action exerted by the former, is exerted upon the latter. This makes it possible to take the action to pieces, and to consider it first with relation to the agent, and next with relation to the patient. But after all, so intimately connected are the parts of the thought, that it requires an effort to make a separation even for a moment. The subtilising to such a degree is not agreeable, especially in works of imagination. The best poets however, taking advantage of this subtilty, scruple not to separate by a pause an active verb from its passive subject. Such pauses in a long work may be indulged; but taken singly, they certainly are not agreeable. I appeal to the following examples. The peer now spreads || the glitt’ring forfex wide As ever sully’d || the fair face of light Repair’d to search || the gloomy cave of Spleen Nothing, to make || philosophy thy friend Shou’d chance to make || the well-dress’d rabble stare Or cross, to plunder || provinces, the main These madmen never hurt || the church or state How shall we fill || a library with wit What better teach || a foreigner the tongue? Sure, if I spare || the minister, no rules Of honour bind me, not to maul his tools. On the other hand, when the passive subject by inversion is first named, there is no difficulty of interjecting a pause betwixt it and the verb, more than when the active subject is first named. The same reason holds in both, that though a verb cannot be separated in idea from the substantive which governs it, and scarcely from the substantive it governs; yet a substantive may always be conceived independent of the verb. When the passive subject is introduced before the verb, we know not that an action is to be exerted upon it; therefore we may rest till the action commences. For the sake of illustration take the following examples. Shrines! where their vigils || pale-ey’d virgins keep Soon as thy letters || trembling I unclose No happier task || these faded eyes pursue