scruple to revive all or nearly all those licences of theirs which the intervening age had disallowed. There was a special rashness in his attempt considering the slightness of his own critical equipment, and considering also the strength of the long riveted fetters which he undertook to break and the charges of affectation and impertinence which such a revival of obsolete metrical and verbal usages--the marks of what Pope had denounced as 'our rustic vein And splay-foot verse'--was bound to bring against him. First of his revolutionary treatment of the metre. He no longer uses double or feminine endings, as in his epistles of the year before, with a profusion like that of _Britannia's Pastorals_. They occur, but in moderation, hardly more than a score of them in any one of the four books. At the beginning he tries often, but afterwards gives up, an occasional trick of the Elizabethan and earlier poets in riming on the unstressed second syllables of words such as 'dancing' (rimed with 'string'), 'elbow' (with 'slow'), 'velvet' (with 'set'), 'purplish' (with 'fish'). On the other hand he regularly resolves the 'tion' or 'shion' termination into its full two syllables, the last carrying the rime, as--'With speed of five-tailed exhalations:' 'Before the deep intoxication;' 'Vanish'd in elemental passion;' and the like. He admits closed couplets, but very grudgingly, as a general rule in the proportion of not more than one to eight or ten of the unclosed. He seldom allows himself even so much of a continuous run of them as this:-- Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole A breeze most softly lulling to my soul; And shaping visions all about my sight Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light; The which became more strange, and strange, and dim, And then were gulph'd in a tumultuous swim: Or this:-- So in that crystal place, in silent rows, Poor lovers lay at rest from joys and woes.-- The stranger from the mountains, breathless, trac'd Such thousands of shut eyes in order plac'd; Such ranges of white feet, and patient lips All ruddy,--for here death no blossom nips. He mark'd their brows and foreheads; saw their hair Put sleekly on one side with nicest care.