ice,' Spenser was drawn 'to their
faction.'

'I am of late,' he writes to Harvey, 'more in love
wyth my Englishe versifying than with ryming; whyche I
should have done long since if I would then have
followed your councell.' In allying himself with these
Latin prosody bigots Spenser sinned grievously against
his better taste. 'I like your late Englishe
hexameters so exceedingly well,' he writes to Harvey,
'that I also enure my pen sometime in that kinde,
whyche I find in deed, as I have heard you often
defende in word, neither so harde nor so harsh [but]
that it will easily and fairly yield itself to our
mother tongue. For the onely or chiefest hardnesse
whyche seemeth is in the accente; whyche sometimes
gapeth and as it were yawneth il-favouredly, comming
shorte of that it should, and sometimes exceeding the
measure of the number; as in carpenter the middle
sillable being used short in speache, when it shall be
read long in verse, seemeth like a lame gosling that
draweth one legge after hir. And heaven being used
shorte as one syllable, when it is in verse stretched
with a Diastole is like a lame dogge, that holdes up
one legge.'{6} His ear was far too fine and sensitive
to endure the fearful sounds uttered by the poets of
this Procrust{ae}an creed. The language seemed to groan
and shriek at the agonies and contortions to which it
was subjected; and Spenser could not but hear its
outcries. But he made himself as deaf as might be.
'It is to be wonne with custom,' he proceeds, in the
letter just quoted from, 'and rough words must be
studied with use. For why, a God's name, may not we,
as the Greekes, have the kingdom of oure owne language,
and measure our accentes by the sounde, reserving the
quantitie to the verse? . . . I would hartily wish you
would either send me the rules or precepts of arte
which you observe in quantities; or else follow mine
that Mr. Philip Sidney gave me, being the very same
which Mr. Drant devised, but enlarged with Mr. Sidney's
own judgement, and augmented with my observations, that
we might both accorde and agree in one, leaste we
overthrowe one another and be overthrown of the rest.'
He himself produced the following lines in accordance,
as he fondly hoped, with the instructions of the new
school:--

IAMBICUM TRIMETRUM.

Unhappie verse! the witnesse of my unhappie state,
[as indeed it was in a sense not meant]
Make thy selfe fluttring winge o