_CHAP. XVI._

_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 Petrarcha_: as
these
_Like vnto these, immeasurable mountaines,
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,[_i-m 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, sometime 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 _hemimeris_ or halfe foote
serued not by licence 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 vfed 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_.
_Ni-l mi` hi` re-scri-ba`s a-tta`me`n i-pse` ve` ni`_.

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

_CH