first partes slowly, his last & third swiftly:  the amphimacer, his first & last part slowly & his middle part swiftly:  the amphibracus his first and last parts swiftly but his midle part slowly, & so of others by like proportion.  This was a pretie phantasticall obseruation of them, & yet brought their meetres to haue a maruelous good grace, which was in Greeke called [Greek:  rithmos]:  whence we haue deriued this word ryme, but improperly & not wel because we haue no such feete or times or stirres in our meeters, by whose simpathie, or pleasant conueniencie with th’eare, we could take any delight:  this rithmus of theirs, is not therfore our rime, but a certaine musicall numerositie in vtterance, and not a bare number as that of the Arithmeticall computation is, which therefore is not called rithmus but arithmus.  Take this away from them, I meane the running of their feete, there is nothing of curiositie among them more then with vs nor yet so much.

  CHAP.  III.

How many sorts of measures we use in our vulgar.

To returne from rime to our measure againe, it hath bene sayd that according to the number of the sillables contained in euery verse, the same is sayd a long or short meeter, and his shortest proportion is of foure sillables, and his longest of twelue, they that vse it aboue, passe the bounds of good proportion.  And euery meeter may be aswel in the odde as in the euen sillable, but better in the euen, and one verse may begin in the euen, & another follow in the odde, and so keepe a commendable proportion.  The verse that containeth but two silables which may be in one word, is not vsuall:  therefore many do deny him to be a verse, saying that it is but a foot, and that a meeter can haue no lesse then two feete at the least, but I find it otherwise aswell among the best Italian Poets, as also with our vulgar makers, and that two sillables serue wel for a short measure in the first place, and midle, and end of a staffe:  and also in diuerse scituations and by sundry distances, and is very passionate and of good grace, as shalbe declared more at large in the Chapter of proportion by scituation.

The next measure is of two feete or of foure sillables, and then one word tetrasillable diuided in the middest makes vp the whole meeter, as thus
  Re-ue- re-ntli-e

Or a trissillable and one monosillable thus. Soueraine God, or two bissillables and that is plesant thus, Restore againe, or with foure monosillables, and that is best of all thus, When I doe thinke, I finde no fauour in a meetre of three sillables nor in effect in any odde, but they may be vsed for varietie sake, and specially being enterlaced with others the meetre of six sillables is very sweete and dilicate as thus.
  O God when I behold
  This bright heauen so hye
  By thine owne hands of old
  Contrivd so cunningly.