[139] "Wat'ry," "prosp'rous," and even "vi'let."
[140] As "the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre," "a barbarous and modern bondage," contrasting with "apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse to another."
[141] This phrase, which has been treated as enigmatic, is quite clear in the context, addressed to Lawes the musician as one
Whose tuneful and well-measured song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent, not to scan
With Midas' ears, committing short and long.
That is to say, Lawes was not guilty, as most composers notoriously are, of laying musical stress on a syllable that could not prosodically bear it.
[CHAPTER II]
FROM BYSSHE TO GUEST
Bysshe's Art of Poetry.
In 1702, just after the beginning of the new century, there appeared a book which, though it received little directly critical notice, and was spoken of with disapproval by some who did notice it, was repeatedly reprinted, and which expressed, beyond all reasonable doubt, ideas prevalent largely for a century or more before it, and almost universally for a century or more after it. This was the Art of Poetry of Edward Bysshe. The bulk of it is composed of dictionaries of rhyme, etc. But a brief Introduction puts with equal conciseness and clearness the following views on English prosody.