sdowne, Jan. 10, 1712 [13].]

[Footnote 27: Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. ep. 1, ver. 75.]

[Footnote 28: Oldham's Elegies.]

[Footnote 29: Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. ep. 1, ver. 213.]

[Footnote 30: A Version of the Psalms: Preface.]

[Footnote 31: Evelyn's Diary, vol. ii. p. 27; Pepys's Diary, 4th ed.,
vol. iii. p. 219.]

[Footnote 32: Account of the Life of Cowley, prefixed to his works, ed.
1688]

[Footnote 33: Wordsworth's Works, vol. iii. p. 333.]

[Footnote 34: Prior's Preface to Solomon.]

[Footnote 35: Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 77.]

[Footnote 36: Dryden maintains, in his Dedication to the AEneis, that the
triplet, conjoined with the Alexandrine, is "the _magna charta_ of
heroic poetry." "Besides," he says, "the majesty which it gives, it
confines the sense within the barriers of three lines, which would
languish if it were lengthened into four." Johnson, while granting that
the variety arising from triplets was desirable, wished that there
should "be some stated mode of admitting them," in order to prevent
their coming upon the reader by surprise, and to keep up the constancy
of metrical laws. Such a rule would introduce a new species of monotony,
and do away with the benefit which principally recommended triplets to
Dryden. Ideas which were not enough for four lines, and over-much for
two, would not recur at stages fixed beforehand. Swift thought triplets
and Alexandrines "a corruption," and boasted that he had "banished them"
by a triplet in his City Shower. "I absolutely," he adds, "did prevail
with Mr. Pope, and Gay, and Dr. Young, and one or two more to reject
them. Mr. Pope never used them till he translated Homer, which was too
long a work to be so very exact in; and I think in one or two of his
last poems he has, out of laziness, done the same thing, though very
seldom." Swift was mistaken in his assertion that Pope never used
triplets till he translated the Iliad. They occur in the Essay on
Criticism, the Temple of Fame, and other pieces, and not only did these
works appear before the Homer, but they appeared after the triplet in
the City Shower, which Swift flattered himself had banished all triplets
from poetry. Nor had he any need to persuade Young and Gay to reject
them if they had been exploded by his triplet of 1710, for it was two or
three years later before either Young or Gray printed their first
rhymes. They contained, however, triplets in spite of his City Shower,
which