in the most flagrant case of almost palpable error, that, after all, there
may be a plot in it. You may be put down with shame by some man reading
the line otherwise, reading it with a different emphasis, a different
caesura, or perhaps a different suspension of the voice, so as to bring
out a new and self-justifying effect. It must be added, that, in
reviewing Milton's metre, it is quite necessary to have such books as
'Nare's English Orthoepy' (_in a late edition_), and others of that
class, lying on the table; because the accentuation of Milton's age was,
in many words, entirely different from ours. And Mr. Landor is not free
from some suspicion of inattention as to this point. Over and above his
accentual difference, the practice of our elder dramatists in the
resolution of the final _tion_ (which now is uniformly pronounced
_shon_), will be found exceedingly important to the appreciation of a
writer's verse. Contribution, which now is necessarily pronounced as a
word of four syllables, would then, in verse, have five, being read into
con-tri-bu-ce-on. Many readers will recollect another word, which for
years brought John Kemble into hot water with the pit of Drury Lane. It
was the plural of the word ache. This is generally made a dissyllable by
the Elizabethan dramatists; it occurs in the 'Tempest.' Prospero says--

'I'll fill thy bones with aches.'

What follows, which I do not remember _literatim_, is such metrically
as to _require_ two syllables for aches. But how, then, was this to
be pronounced? Kemble thought _akies_ would sound ludicrous; _aitches_
therefore he called it: and always the pit howled like a famished
_menagerie_, as they did also when he chose (and he constantly chose) to
pronounce _beard_ like _bird_. Many of these niceties must be known,
before a critic can ever allow _himself_ to believe that he is right in
_obelizing_, or in marking with so much as a ? any verse whatever of