An Epitaph. HERE lie the ruins of a lowly tent, Sic musa jam veterascenti Inter justrissmos amicorum & ecclesia 1. W. 5. An Epitaph on the Reverend Mr. Matthew Clarke. M. S. "In hoc sepulchro conditur "MATTHEUS CLARKE, “Patris venerandi filius cognominis, 66 nec ipse minus venerandus: "Quas vero innumeras invicta modestia dotes "Celavit, nec fama profert, nec copia fandi Natus est in agro Leicestriensi, A. D. 1664. Multum dilectus, multum desideratus. In English thus. Sacred to memory. In this sepulchre lies buried 440 MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. of his venerable father, nor less venerable himself: excellent, laborious and successful : Among the controversies of divines And his carriage toward all mankind was But what rich stores of grace lay hid behind Can search; no friend declare, nor fame reveal, Thy wand'ring feet shall rest In distant lands, thy ear shall hear He was born in Leicestershire, in the year 1664. Aged sixty-two years, Much beloved and much lamented. 6. An Epitaph on the Reverend Mr. Edward Brodhurst. "Hoc marmore commemoratur "Vir in sacris supra socios peritus, "Ratione, suadelâ eloquio potens : "Mille virtutibus instructus "EDVARDUS BRODHURST Agro Derbiensi natus est, A. D. 1691. Animam ad superos avolantem Suscipit Christus, agnoscit Deus. Done into English by another hand. This marble calls to our remembrance In force of reason and art of persuasion: When heaven and earth at once shall know Mr. EDWARD BRÖDHURST was. 7. The following Epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton, was composed by my worthy Friend, Mr. Jolin Eames, with a few Decorations added at his Request. "Certis astrorum periodis alligavit, fixitque: "Vi gravitatis flectuntur cometæ, "Colorum sc. miram theoriam "Fidis experimentis non fictis hypothesibus, innixus "Ultra quam fas erat mortalibus sperare, "Posterisque ulterius promovendos Vale, cœlestis anima, "Seculi gentisque tuæ lumen ingens Ac inges desiderium, "Generis humani decus, vale." LXXII.-The Cadence of Verse. IN writings of every kind, an author should be solicitous so to compose his work, that the ear may be able to take in all the ideas, as well as the eye, and to convey his complete sense to the mind with ease and pleasure. Since every sentence has some words in it which are more emphatical than the rest, and upon which the meaning, the beauty, the force, and the pleasure of the sentence depend, the writer should take great care that the hearer may have a distinguishing perception of all these, as well as the person who reads. All the parts of a sentence from one end to the other, are not to be pronounced with the same tone of voice; such a constant uniformity would not only be heavy and tiresome, but the hearer would never be impressed with the true sense of the period, unless the voice of the reader were changed agreeably, as the sense of words require. This is properly called cadence. A good cadence in verse, is much the same thing as the proper and graceful sound of a period in prose. This arises partly from the harshness or softness of the words, and the happy disposition of them, in a sort of harmony with the ideas which are represented, partly from the long and short accents which belong to the syllables well mingled, and partly also from the length and shortness of the sentences, and a proper situation of the pauses or stops, as well as from putting the emphatical words in their due places. All this might be made evident in a variety of instances, by shewing how obscure or how languid the sense sometimes would be found, if the proper cadences be not observed by the writer or reader; how ungraceful, how un musical, and even offensive would some sentences appear in prose, or some lines in verse, if harsh-sounding words were put when the softer are required, if syllables of a short accent were placed in the room of long, if the emphatical words or pauses were disposed in improper places? The most skilful and melodious reader, with his utmost labour and art of pronunciation, can. never entertain a judicious auditory agreeably, if the writer has not done his part in this respect. And though these matters are of far less importance in poesy, than the propriety, grandeur, beauty, and force of the ideas, and the elegant disposition of them, yet the late Duke of B. in his famous Essay on Poetry, supposes them to be of some necessity to make good verse. "Number and rhyme, and that harmonious sound "Which never does the ear with harshuess wound, This theme would furnish sufficient matter for many pages; but upon occasion of a question put to me a few days ago upon this subject, I shall here take notice only of those vicious cadences in verse, which arise from long or short syllables iH-placed, or from colons, commas and periods ill-disposed, as far as my amusements in poesy have given me any knowledge of this kind. It has been an old and just observation, that English verse generally (consists of iambic feet: An iambic foot has two syllables, whereof the first is short, and the latter long. An English verse of the heroic kind, consists of five such feet; so that in reading it, the accent is usually laid upon the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth syllables. Mr. Dryden, who was counted the best versifier of the last age, is generally very true to this iambic measure, and observes it perhaps with too constant a regularity. So in his Virgil he describes two serpents in ten lines, with scarce one foot of any other kind, or the alteration of a single syllable. "Two serpents rank'd abreast, the seas divide, Though all these ten lines glide on so smoothly, and seem to caress the ear, yet perhaps this is too long an uniformity to be truly grateful, unless we excuse it by supposing the poet to imi tate the smoothness of the serpents, swift, easy and uniform motion over the sea and land, without the least stop or interruption. In the lines of heroic measure, there are some parts of the line which will admit a spondee, that is, a foot made of two long |