The Arte of English Poesie

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THE FIRST BOOKE, Of Poets and Poesie.

THE SECOND BOOKE, OF PROPORTION POETICAL.

2.1.

Of Proportion Poeticall.

2.2.

Of proportion in Staffe.

2.3.

Of proportion in measure.

2.4.

How many sorts of measures we use in our vulgar.

2.5.

How the good maker will not wrench his word to helpe his rime, either by falsifying his accent, or by untrue orthographie.

2.6.

Of concorde in long and short measures, and by neare or farre distaunces, and which of them is most commendable.

2.7.

Of proportion by situation.

2.8.

Of Proportion in figure.

2.9.

How if all maner of sodaine innouations were not very scandalous, specially in the lawes of any langage or arte, the use of the Greeke and Latine feete might be brought into our vulgar Poesie, and with good grace inough.

2.10.

A more particular declaration of the metricall feete of the auncient Poets Greeke and Latine and chiefly of the feete of two times.

2.11.

Of your feet of three times, and first of the Dactil.

2.12.

Of all your other feete of three times and how well they would fashion a meetre in our vulgar.

2.13.

Of your verses perfect and defectiue, and that which the Graecians called the halfe-foote.

2.14.

Of the breaking your bisillables and polysillables and when it is to be used.

THE THIRD BOOKE, OF ORNAMENT.

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2.13. 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 Patrarcha: as these

Like unto these, immeasurable mountaines,

108

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, [im 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, sometimes 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 hemmimeris or halfe foote serued not by license 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 vsed 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.

Nil mi hi rescribas attamen ipse ve ni.

Which in all make fiue whole feete, or the verse Pentameter. We in our vulgar haue not the vse of the like half foote.

University of Virginia Library

2.13. Of your verses perfect and defectiue, and that which the Graecians called the halfe-foote.