mary canon in the art of Versification to have let such vowel sounds meet where he did not intend an elision in the scansion of the verse. He dropped the n in the only remaining example of this word in his Poetry. "Embryos, and Idiots, Eremites, and Friars." In the Plural this was no longer wanted to prevent the open Vowels; he therefore discarded it. The Euphony of our Language is somewhat diminished by the discontinuing to write mine and thine, instead of my and thy when these Pronouns were not followed by a Consonant; as well as by the disuse of none for no, if it precede a vowel: of which rule Puttenham was so observant that he has, in his work on the "Arte of English Poesie," none impeachment, none answer, with similar combinations as unknown to modern ears. Dr. Watts thought (see preface to his Hora Lyrica), that MILTON affected archaisms and exoticisms; and "the oddness (he adds) of an antique "sound gives but a false pleasure to the ear." But neither this Critic, nor Addison (Travels, under Venice), seem to have paid regard to the frequent advantage this license afforded him on metrical considerations. It was not, I suspect, so much to give the cast of Antiquity to his Poetry, that he preferred Eremites to Hermits, and surcease rather than cease, or marish instead of marsh, &c. In the first instance a trisyllable was called for, and in the latter places dissyllables were wanted. Thus too, for the convenience of his verse, he, like others who preceded him, wrote 'sdein'd (P. L. IV. 50), not, as Hume suggested, in imitation of the Italian, for he oftener has disdained, but because a monosyllable was commodious; as he follows the Greek in Briareos where the line required a quadrisyllable to complete it; and revived, as a metrical augmentation the obsolete prefix y in "y-pointed," and "y-clept." The vitious Comparative "worser" will hardly be found in his Prose. The "labour of Book writing" was to MILTON a labour of love; and diligence is always minute. Neither was his Knowlege less exact than extensive. What Augustus said of Horace is to the full as applicable to our own Poet: he also is emendatissimus Auctor. So critically scrupulous was he that he commences this Oration with " They who;" a refinement little attended to by the most punctilious of the present age. "Those who" for the Nominative has obtained all the authority which custom can confer on any departure from grammatical strictness. In certain expressions not even Addison or Swift, however deserving praise for idiomatical English, were so studiously correct in the grammatical part of their language as some of our Writers of a period much anterior. Since MILTON castigavit ad unguem, and held no care unworthy his Genius, who should disregard these nicer particularities? The above are among a thousand scattered proofs of the errour in supposing that he who undertook to vindicate the ways of GOD to Man, would not deign to bestow thought on such slight points of Criticism as Syllables and Sounds. (The Rambler; No. 95.) The Moralist must have forgotten, that not to be apprehensive of abasement, by paying attention to inferiour circumstances, is a privilege of conscious greatness. enough ILLUSTRATION, R. (Referred to in p. 190.) Anough.] Mr. Todd thinks anough instead of literally an imitation of the Doric Dialect;" and Peck says idly, that it is "very pastoral" (Mem. of the Life and poetical Works of MILTON; &c. p. 153. 4to. 1740). 153. 4to. 1740). And also remarks of Comus, that, " being of the pastoral sort, "our Authour had many pastoral words in it.” ib. p. 136. To prop this conceit, he particularized, among other instances, woome for womb, hearbs for herbs, and infers the same from the duplication of the o in the first syllable of bosom (p. 142), as well as from this Letter being prefixed to ugly (p. 150), yet these modes of spelling were not confined to Comus; neither did MILTON propose to throw an air of rusticity over a Masque to be performed before a sort of vice-regal Court; on the contrary, this dramatic piece is written throughout in a sus tained style. The fact is, that these with many other words are printed in the Edition of his minor Poems in 1645, as they were then sounded. This pronunciation of enough continues in general use; and so does hearb and boosom to this day among the uneducated in the West of England: as ougly still is in the northern part of the Island and in Cornwall. Mr. Warton took this to be only the old way of writing ugly; and the rule of Orthography which our Authour adopted has been variously misconceived. Johnson decides it (Pref. to his Dict.) to have been "in zeal for analogy," that he dropped the e in height; while Mr. Capell Lofft fancied sovran for sovereign to be a Poet's licence. But that supposition falls to the ground when we find it equally in the prosewritings. He was as ill understood by Richardson; who tells the Reader that MILTON ejected the c from scent, because it was not in the French sentir; nor in the Italian sentire; whence we borrowed it. Of this suggestion Bishop Pearce in his Review of Bentley's emendations of Par. Lost declared his approbation. MILTON'S Scheme of Orthography was not however governed by the derivation. He concurred with those, and the practice was then by no means singular, who would make the written represen S tation of Thought correspond with oral Speech: e. gr. hainous, lantskip, mountanous, Divell, detters, scholler. To the same end, he suppressed the silent Letters in haughty, apophthegm, learning, viscount, signiory, &c., as well as wrote Chetiv, not Chetib; and Piatza, in conformity to the Italian utterance of the double z; as Burton did Novitza, and, if I remember rightly, Harrington Putzuoli. In the instances apparently in opposition to this observation, where he departs from the customary mode as in frontispice, extasy, rarify, accedence, skeptical, Ghittar, aery, glutenous, &c.;—though these Orthographies be more etymological, his aim was, we may now discern, a nearer approximation to vocal Language; to bring the alphabetic characters of Thought in closer affinity to the "articulated air" of which these combinations of Letters are the visible signs. In pursuance of this principle grassy sord," i. e. sward, is the genuine reading in Par. Lost, (XI. 433.). This peculiarity, which Johnson calls a corruption, prompted Fenton to give erroneously sod in the Edition of which he superintended the Publication. The Lexicographer again misapprehended MILTON's object when disposed to think that he intended to preserve the Saxon guns, by exhibiting grunsel. (Par. Lost. I. 460.) But I am unaware of any reason to suppose, that the |