Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:
He, who defers this work from day to day,
Does on a river's bank expecting stay
Till the whole stream that stopp'd him shall be gone,
WHICH RUNS, AND, AS IT RUNS, FOR EVER SHALL RUN ON.


Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled Alexandrines at
pleasure with the common heroic of ten syllables, and from him
Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He
considered the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestic,
and has therefore deviated into that measure when he supposes the
voice heard of the Supreme Being.

The author of the "Davideis" is commended by Dryden for having
written it in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too
lyrical for an heroic poem; but this seems to have been known before
by May and Sandys, the translators of the "Pharsalia" and the
"Metamorphoses."

In the "Davideis" are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by
the author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have
intended to complete them; that this opinion is erroneous, may be
probably concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no
subsequent Roman poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken
line in the heat of recitation; because in one the sense is now
unfinished; and because all that can be done by a broken verse, a
line intersected by a coesura, and a full stop, will equally effect.

Of triplets in his "Davideis" he makes no use, and perhaps did not