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.

  CHAP.  XVII.

Of the breaking your bissillables and polysillables and when it is to be used.

Bvt whether ye suffer your sillable to receiue his quantitie by his accent, or by his ortography, or whether ye keepe your bissillable whole or whether ye breake him, all is one to his quantitie, and his time will appeare the selfe same still and ought not to be altered by our makers, vnlesse it be when such sillable is allowed to be common and to receiue any of both times, as in the dimeter, made of two sillables entier.
  e-xtre-ame de`si-re