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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 287 |
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an echo of a delightful report, and to the memory a deeper impression of what is delivered therein ; for as Greek and Latin verse consists of the number and quantity of syllables, so doth the English verse of measure and accent; and though it doth not strictly observe long and short syllables, yet it most religiously respects the accent; and as the short and the long make number, so the acute and grave accent yield harmony, and harmony is likewise number: so that the English verse then hath number, measure, and harmony, in the best proportion of music. But be the verse never so good, never so full, it seems not to satisfy nor breed that delight, as when it is met and combined with a like sounding accent; which seems as the jointure, without which it hangs loose, and cannot subsist, but runs wildly on, like a tedious fancy, without a close." Having thus defended the use of rhyme, he proceeds in a similar strain against the rest of Campion's book, asserting "that of all his eight several kinds of new promised numbers, we have only what was our own before ;" such as have ever been familiarly used among us ; and the like of his other positions. He expresses a wish, however, " that there were not that multiplicity of rhymes as is used by many in sonnets;" he acknowledges, "that to his own ear, those continual cadences of couplets used in long and continued poems are very tiresome and unpleasing;" and he confesses that his " adversary had wrought so much upon him, as to think a tragedy would best comport with a blank verse, |
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