610 And all the chequer'd landscape seems alive.


[_Zephyrs drive_. l. 609. These lines were originally written thus,

Shade follows shade by laughing Zephyrs drove,
And all the chequer'd landscape seems to move.

but were altered on account of the supposed false grammar in using the
word drove for driven, according to the opinion of Dr. Lowth: at the
same time it may be observed, 1. that this is in many cases only an
ellipsis of the letter _n_ at the end of the word; as froze, for frozen;
wove, for woven; spoke, for spoken; and that then the participle
accidentally becomes similar to the past tense: 2. that the language
seems gradually tending to omit the letter _n_ in other kind of words
for the sake of euphony; as housen is become houses; eyne, eyes; thine,
thy, &c. and in common conversation, the words forgot, spoke, froze,
rode, are frequently used for forgotten, spoken, frozen, ridden. 3. It
does not appear that any confusion would follow the indiscriminate use
of the same word for the past tense and the participle passive, since
the auxiliary verb _have_, or the preceding noun or pronoun always
clearly distinguishes them: and lastly, rhime-poetry must lose the use
of many elegant words without this license.]




_Argument of the Third Canto._