ding of a meetre. Neuerthelesse he may vse in any
verse both his _comma, colon_, and _interrogatiue_ point, as well as in
prose. But our auncient rymers, as _Chaucer, Lydgate_ & others, vsed these
_Cesures_ either very seldome, or not at all, or else very licentiously,
and many times made their meetres (they called them riding ryme) of such
vnshapely wordes as would allow no conuenient _Cesure_, and therefore did
let their rymes runne out at length, and neuer stayd till they came to the
end: which maner though it were not to be misliked in some sort of meetre,
yet in euery long verse the _Cesure_ ought to be kept precisely, if it
were but to serue as a law to correct the licentiousnesse of rymers,
besides that it pleaseth the eare better, & sheweth more cunning in the
maker by following the rule of his restraint. For a rymer that will be
tyed to no rules at all, but range as he list, may easily vtter what he
will: but such maner of Poesie is called in our vulgar, ryme dogrell, with
which rebuke we will in no case our maker should be touched. Therfore
before all other things let his ryme and concordes be true, cleare, and
audible with no lesse delight, then almost the strayned note of a
Musicians mouth, & not darke or wrenched by wrong writing as many doe to
patch vp their meetres, and so follow in their arte neither rule, reason,
nor ryme. Much more might be sayd for the vse of your three pauses,
_comma_, _colon_, & _periode_, for perchance it be not all a matter to vse
many _commas_, and few, nor _colons_ likewise, or long or short
_periodes_, for it is diuersly vsed, by diuers good writers. But because
it apperteineth more to the oratour or writer in prose then in verse, I
will say no more in it, then thus, that they be vsed for a commodious and
sensible distinction of clauses in prose, since euery verse is as it were
a clause of it selfe and limited with a _Cesure_ howsoeuer the sence
beare, perfect or imperfect, which difference is obseruable betwixt the
prose and the meeter.

_CHAP. V._

_Of Proportion in Concord, called Symphonie or rime._

Because we vse the word rime (though by maner of abusion) yet to helpe
that fault againe we apply it in our vulgar Poesie another way very
commendably & curiously. For wanting the currantnesse of the Greeke and
Latine feete, in stead thereof we make in th'ends of our verses a certaine
tunable sound: which anon after with another verse reasonably distant we
accord to