allow then to be all long if they will so
best serue your turne, and if they be tailed one to another, or th'one to
a _dissillable_ or _polyssillable_ ye ought to allow them that time that
best serues your purpose and pleaseth your eare most, and truliest
aunsweres the nature of the _ortographie_ in which I would as neare as I
could obserue and keepe the lawes of the Greeke and Latine versifiers,
that is to prolong the sillable which is written with double consonants or
by dipthong or with finale consonants that run hard and harshly vpon the
toung: and to shorten all sillables that stand vpon vowels, if there were
no cause of _elision_ and single consonants & such of them as are most
flowing and slipper vpon the toung as _n.r.t.d.l._ for this purpose to
take away all aspirations, and many times the last consonant of a word as
the Latine Poetes vsed to do, specially _Lucretius_ and _Ennnius_ to say
[_finibu_] for [_finibus_] and so would not I stick to say thus [delite]
for [delight] [hye] for [high] and such like, & doth nothing at all
impugne the rule I gaue before against the wresting of wordes by false
_ortographie_ to make vp rime, which may not be falsified. But this
omission of letters in the middest of a meetre to make him the more
slipper, helpes the numerositie and hinders not the rime. But generally
the shortning or prolonging of the _monosillables_ dependes much vpon the
nature or their _ortographie_ which the Latin Grammariens call the rule of
position, as for example if I shall say thus.
_No-t ma`ni`e daye-s pa-st_. Twentie dayes after,
This makes a good _Dactill_ and a good _spondeus_, but if ye turne
them backward it would not do so, as.
_Many dayes, not past_.
And the _distick_ made all of _monosillables_.
_Bu-t no-ne o-f u-s tru-e me-n a-nd fre-e,
Could finde so great good lucke as he_.
Which words serue well to make the verse all _spondiacke_ or _iambicke_,
but not in _dactil_, as other words or the same otherwise placed would do,
for it were at illfauored _dactil_ to say.
_Bu-t no`ne o`f, u-s a`ll tre`we._

Therefore whensoeuer your words will not make a smooth _dactil_, ye must
alter them or their situations or else turne them to other feete that may
better beare their maner of sound and orthographie: or if the word be
_polysillable_ to deuide him, and to make him serue by peeces, that he
could not do whole and entierly. And no doubt by like consideration did
the Greeke & Latine versifie