I like your late Englishe Hexameters so exceedingly well, that I also enure my penne sometimes in that kinde....  For the onely or chiefest hardnesse, whych seemeth, is in the Accente, which sometime gapeth, and, as it were, yawneth ilfauouredly, coming shorte of that it should, and sometime exceeding the measure of the Number, as in Carpenter; the middle sillable being vsed shorte 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 sillable, when it is in Verse stretched out with a Diastole, is like a lame dogge that holdes up one legge.  But it is to be wonne with Custome, and rough words must be subdued with Vse.  For why a God’s name may not we, as else the Greekes, have the kingdome of our owne Language, and measure our Accentes by the Sounde, reserving the Quantitie to the Verse?

The amiable Edmonde seems to be smiling in his sleeve as he writes this sentence.  He instinctively saw the absurdity of attempting to subdue English to misunderstood laws of Latin quantities, which would, for example, make the vowel in “debt” long, in the teeth of use and wont.

We give a specimen of the hexameters which satisfied so entirely the ear of Master Gabriel Harvey,—­an ear that must have been long by position, in virtue of its place on his head.

Not the like Discourser, for Tongue and head to be found out; Not the like resolute Man, for great and serious affayres; Not the like Lynx, to spie out secretes and priuities of States; Eyed like to Argus, Earde like to Midas, Nosd like to Naso, Winged like to Mercury, fittst of a Thousand for to be employed.

And here are a few from “worthy M. Stanyhurst’s” translation of the “Aeneid.”

  Laocoon storming from Princelie Castel is hastning,
  And a far of beloing:  What fond phantastical harebraine
  Madnesse hath enchaunted your wits, you townsmen unhappie? 
  Weene you (blind hodipecks) the Greekish nauie returned,
  Or that their presents want craft? is subtil Vlisses
  So soone forgotten?  My life for an haulfpennie (Trojans), etc.

Mr. Abraham Fraunce translates two verses of Heliodorus thus:—­

  Now had fyery Phlegon his dayes reuolution ended,
  And his snoring snowt with salt waues all to bee washed.

Witty Tom Nash was right enough when he called this kind of stuff, “that drunken, staggering kinde of verse which is all vp hill and downe hill, like the waye betwixt Stamford and Beechfeeld, and goes like a horse plunging through the myre in the deep of winter, now soust up to the saddle, and straight aloft on his tiptoes.”  It will be noticed that his prose falls into a kind of tipsy hexameter.  The attempt in England at that time failed, but the controversy to which it gave rise was so far useful that it called forth Samuel Daniel’s “Defence of Ryme” (1603), one of the noblest pieces of prose in the language.  Hall also, in his “Satires,” condemned the heresy in some verses remarkable for their grave beauty and strength.