and
) for dissyllabic and trisyllabic foot arrangements.
[231]. “For the haughty obscure verse doth not much delight, and the verse that is too easy is like a tale of a roasted horse.”
[232]. See Mitford, Harmony of Language, p. 105, who thinks the licence just the other way, and indeed roundly pronounces the pronunciation in one syllable “impossible.” A little later, again, Guest thinks the dis-syllable “uncouth and vulgar.” A most documentary disagreement!
[233]. See Grosart’s Works of Gabriel Harvey, vol. i. pp. 6-150. Parts will be found in the Globe edition of Spenser, pp. 706-710.
[234]. I am not responsible for the eccentricities of this form.
[235]. In order of composition, not of publication.
[236]. This word, which is certainly a cousin of “balderdash,” is a good example of the slang and jargon so often mixed with their preciousness by the Elizabethans. Nash borrowed it from Harvey to use against him; and the eccentric Stanyhurst even employs it in his Virgil. Stanyhurst’s hexameters, by the way (vide Mr Arber’s Reprint in the English Scholars Library, No. 10, London, 1880), are, thanks partly to their astounding lingo, among the maddest things in English literature; but his prose prefatory matter, equally odd in phrase, has some method in its madness.
[237]. La Casa’s book of etiquette and behaviour.