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ah yes elisions, thanks for helpful suggestions.
Max

Quoting Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>:

> > and this couplet disconcerts me, making me wonder if it has been
> > transcribed
> > correctly.
> >
> > Max
> 
> I checked the original 1616 publication of the text, Max, and here's how the
> relevant lines read there:
> 
> They, then, that liuing where the matter is bred,
>      Dare for these poemes, yet, both aske, and read,
> And like them too .
> 
> ... so it looks as if the text dave originally posted is pretty accurate.
> 
> For what it's worth, in line three there is a "the" elide marked:  "If
> workes (not th'authors) ."
> 
> But there what's marked is an elided "the" followed by a vowel.
> 
> One way or the other, it seems as if "the matter is bred" should be
> pronounced with four rather than five syllables.  But it's been suggested to
> me that the elide may be on "matter is", which would then be have the phrase
> pronounced something like, "the matt'ris bred" rather than the elide on "the
> matter".
> 
> Robin
> 
> > Quoting David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>:
> >
> >> Well I haven't yet unburied my Jonson, but pulling up the net, I like the
> >> fittingness of this, accompanying Donne's Satires. Although the
> >> enjambement
> >> isn't as frequent as in the excerpt from the Horace translation, it's
> >> distinct enough. And look at the caesuras and tempi.
> >> It's not him at his best either, but typicality is better for examples
> >> sake,
> >> is it not?
> >>
> >>
> >> To Lucy, Countess of Bedford, with John Donne's Satires by Ben Jonson
> >>  Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are
> >> Life of the Muses' day, their morning star!
> >> If works, not th' author's, their own grace should look,
> >> Whose poems would not wish to be your book?
> >> But these, desir'd by you, the maker's ends
> >> Crown with their own. Rare poems ask rare friends.
> >> Yet satires, since the most of mankind be
> >> Their unavoided subject, fewest see;
> >> For none e'er took that pleasure in sin's sense
> >> But, when they heard it tax'd, took more offence.
> >> They, then, that living where the matter is bred,
> >> Dare for these poems, yet, both ask and read
> >> And like them too, must needfully, though few,
> >> Be of the best; and 'mongst those best are you,
> >> Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are
> >> The Muses' evening, as their morning star.
> 





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