But this aduertisement I will giue you withall, that if ye vse too many dactils together ye make your musike too light and of no solemne grauitie such as the amorous Elegies in court naturally require, being alwaies either very dolefull or passionate as the affections of loue enforce, in which busines ye must make your choice of very few words dactilique, or them that ye cannot refuse, to dissolue and breake them into other feete by such meanes as it shall be taught hereafter: but chiefly in your courtly ditties take heede ye vse not these maner of long polisillables and specially that ye finish not your verse them as [retribution] restitution] remuneration] recapitulation] and such like: for they smatch more the schoole of common players than of any delicate Poet Lyricke or Elegiacke.
CHAP. XV.
_Of all your other feete of three times and how well they would fashion a meetre in our vulgar.__
All your other feete of three times I find no vse of them in our vulgar meeters nor no sweetenes at all, and yet words inough to serue their proportions. So as though they haue not hitherto bene made artificiall, yet nowe by more curious obseruation they might be. Since all artes grew first by obseruation of natures proceedings and custome. And first your [Molossus] being of all three long is euidently discouered by this word [pe-rmi-tti-ng] The [Anapestus] of two short and a long by this word [fu`ri`o-us] if the next word beginne with a consonant. The foote [Bacchius] of a short and two long by this word [re`si-sta-nce] the foote [Antibachius] of two long and a short by this word [e-xa-mple`] the foote [Amphimacer] of a long a short & a long by this word [co-nque`ri-ng] the foote of [Amphibrachus] of a short a long and a short by this word [re`me-mbe`r] if a vowell follow. The foote [Tribrachus_] of three short times is very hard to be made by any of our trissillables vnles they be compounded of the smoothest sort of consonants or sillables vocals, or of three smooth monosillables, or of some peece of a long polysillable & after that sort we may with wresting of words shape the foot [Tribrachus] rather by vsurpation then by rule, which neuertheles is allowed in euery primitiue arte & inuention: & so it was by the Greekes and Latines in their first versifying, as if a rule should be set downe that from henceforth these words should be counted al Tribrachus [e`ne`mi`e] re`me`di`e] se`li`ne`s] mo`ni`le`s] pe`ni`le`s] cru`e`lli`e] & such like, or a peece of this long word [re`co-ue`ra`ble`] innu`me`ra`ble`] rea`di`li`e] and others. Of all which manner of apt wordes to make these stranger feet of three times which go not so currant with our eare as the dactil, the maker should haue a good iudgement to know them by their manner of orthographie and by their accent which serue most fitly for euery foote, or else he shoulde haue always a little calender of them apart to vse readily when he shall neede them. But because in very truth I thinke them but vaine & superstitious obseruations nothing at all furthering the pleasant melody of our English meeter, I leaue to speake any more of them and rather wish the continuance of our old maner of Poesie, scanning our verse by sillables rather than by feete, and vsing most commonly the word Iambique & sometime the Trochaike which ye shall discerne by their accents, and now and then a dactill keeping precisely our symphony or rime without any other mincing measures, which an idle inuentiue head could easily deuise, as the former examples teach.
CHAP. XVI.
Of your verses perfect and defectiue; and that which the Graecians called the halfe foote.
The Greekes and Latines vsed verses in the odde sillable of two sortes, which they called Catalecticke and Acatalecticke, that is odde vnder and odde ouer the iust measure of their verse, & we in our vulgar finde many of the like, and specially in the rimes of Sir Thomas Wiat, strained perchaunce out of their originall, made first by Francis Petrarcha: as these Like vnto these, immeasurable mountaines, So is my painefull life the burden of ire: For hie be they, and hie is my desire And I of teares, and they are full of fountaines. Where in your first second and fourth verse, ye may find a sillable superfluous, and though in the first ye will seeme to helpe it, by drawing these three sillables,[i-m me` su`] into a dactil, in the rest it can not be so excused, wherefore we must thinke he did it of purpose, by the odde sillable to giue greater grace to his meetre, and we finde in our old rimes, this odde sillable, sometime placed in the beginning and sometimes in the middle of a verse, and is allowed to go alone & to hang to any other sillable. But this odde sillable in our meetres is not the halfe foote as the Greekes and Latines vsed him in their verses, and called such measure pentimimeris and eptamimeris, but rather is that, which they called the catalectik or maymed verse. Their hemimeris or halfe foote serued not by licence Poeticall or necessitie of words, but to bewtifie and exornate the verse by placing one such halfe foote in the middle Cesure, & one other in the end of the verse, as they vfed all their pentameters elegiack: and not by coupling them together, but by accompt to make their verse of a iust measure and not defectiue or superflous: our odde sillable is not altogether of that nature, but is in a maner drownd and supprest by the flat accent, and shrinks away as it were inaudible and by that meane the odde verse comes almost to be an euen in euery mans hearing. The halfe foote of the auncients was reserued purposely to an vse, and therefore they gaue such odde sillable, wheresoeuer he fell the sharper accent, and made by him a notorious pause as in this pentameter. Ni-l mi` hi` re-scri-ba`s a-tta`me`n i-pse` ve` ni`.
Which in all make fiue whole feete, or the verse Pentameter. We in our vulgar haue not the vse of the like halfe foote.
CHAP. XVII.
Of the breaking your bissillables and polysillables and when it is to be used.