" I remember an old gentleman who
always used the contracted form of the participle in conversation,
but always gave it back its embezzled syllable in reading. Sir Thomas
Browne seems to have preferred the more solemn form. At any rate he
has the spelling _empuzzeled_ in prose.
[367] He thinks the same of the variation _strook_ and _struck_,
though they were probably pronounced alike. In Marlowe's "Faustus"
two consecutive sentences (in prose) begin with the words "Cursed be
he that struck." In a note on the passage Mr. Dyce tells us that the
old editions (there were three) have _stroke_ and _strooke_ in the
first instance, and all agree on _strucke_ in the second. No
inference can be drawn from such casualties.
[368] The lines are _not_ "from one of the Satires," and Milton made
them worse by misquoting and bringing _love_ jinglingly near to
_grove_. Hall's verse (in his Satires) is always vigorous and often
harmonious. He long before Milton spoke of rhyme almost in the very
terms of the preface to Paradise Lost.
[369] Mr. Masson goes so far as to conceive it possible that Milton
may have committed the vulgarism of leaving a _t_ out of _slep'st_,
"for ease of sound." Yet the poet could bear _boast'st_ and--one
stares and gasps at it--_doat'dst_.
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