All the Masters of Verse from Chaucer to Milton, and from Milton to this time, were sensible of this Art. Dryden attends to it more than any thing else.

“Beneath the Shade which Beechen Boughs diffuse, You Tityrus entertain your Sylvan Muse:  Round the wide World in Banishment we roam, Forc’d from our pleasing Fields and native Home.

Again,

Arms and the Man I sing, who forc’d by Fate And haughty Juno’s unrelenting Hate, Expell’d and Exil’d, left the Trojan Shore:  Long Labours, both by Sea and Land he bore.

Mr. Pope begins his Poems with this Delicacy.

“First in these Fields I try the Sylvan Strains, Nor blush to sport on Windsor’s blissful Plains. Fair Thames flow gently from thy Sacred Spring, While on thy Banks Sicilian Muses Sing; Let Vernal Airs thro’ trembling Osiers play, And Albion’s Cliffs resound the rural Lay.  You, that too wise for Pride, too good for Pow’r Enjoy the Glory to be great no more.

Mr. Pitt has the following Lines in his 2d AEneid.

“So when an aged Ash, whose Honours rise From some steep Mountain tow’ring to the Skies, With many an Axe by shouting Swains is ply’d, Fierce they repeat the Strokes from every Side; The tall Tree trembling, as the Blows go round, Bows the high Head, and nods to every Wound.

Sir Philip Sidney, who was very unhappy in Versification, seems to have despised this Beauty in Verse, and even to have thought it an Excellence to fix the Pause always in one Place, namely at the End of the second Foot:  So that he must have had no more Ear for Poetry than Mr. Cowley.  Not but that I am apt to think some Writers in Sir Philip Sidney’s time carried this matter to a ridiculous Extreme.  Others thought this Beauty a Deformity, and concluded it so from two or three silly Latin Lines of Ennius and Tully, such as,

  O Tite, Tute, Tati, &c.

And,

  O Fortunatam, natam, &c.

without ever attending to Virgil in the least.

Spencer every where abounds in all his Works with Alliterations; I will produce but one, which is exceeding beautiful.

  “The Lilly, Lady of the Flow’ry Field.

Here is a double initial Alliteration, and a continual mix’d Alliteration of the liquid L, which makes the Verse so very musical that there are few such Lines in our, or any other Language.

Fairfax, who was one of the first curious Versifyers amongst us, embellishes his Lines continually with this Ornament.