to put in a plaine French word for
an English, & so by your leaue do many of our common rimers at this day:
as he that by all likelyhood, hauing no word at hand to rime to this word
[_ioy_] he made his other verse ende in [_Roy_] saying very impudently
thus,
_O mightie Lord of loue, dame Venus onely ioy
Who art the highest God of any heauenly Roy._
Which word was neuer yet receiued in our language for an English word.
Such extreme licentiousnesse is vtterly to be banished from our schoole,
and better it might haue bene borne with in old riming writers, bycause
they liued in a barbarous age, & were graue morall men but very homely
Poets, such also as made most of their workes by translation out of the
Latine and French toung, & few or none of their owne engine as may easely
be knowen to them that list to looke vpon the Poemes of both languages.
Finally as ye may ryme with wordes of all sortes, be they of many
sillables or few, so neuerthelesse is there a choise by which to make your
cadence (before remembred) most commendable, for some wordes of exceeding
great length, which haue bene fetched from the Latine inkhome or borrowed
of strangers, the vse of them in ryme is nothing pleasant, sauing
perchaunce to the common people, who reioyce much to be at playes and
enterludes, and besides their naturall ignoraunce, haue at all such times
their eares so attentiue to the matter, and their eyes vpon the shewes of
the stage, that they take little heede to the cunning of the rime, and
therefore be as well satisfied with that which is grosse, as with any
other finer and more delicate.
_Chap. IX._
_Of Concorde in long and short measures, and by neare or farre distaunces,
and which of them is most commendable_.
But this ye must obserue withall, that bycause your concords containe the
chief part of Musicke in your meetre, their distaunces may not be too wide
or farre asunder, lest th'eare should loose the tune, and be defrauded of
his delight, and whensoeuer ye see any maker vse large and extraordinary
distaunces, ye must thinke he doth intende to shew himselfe more
artificiall then popular, and yet therein is not to be discommended, for
respects that shalbe remembred in some other place of this booke.
Note also that rime or concorde is not commendably vsed both in the end
and middle of a verse, vnlesse it be in toyes and trifling Poesies, for it
sheweth a certaine lightnesse either of the matter or of the mak
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