asketh no reliefe: yet if ye giue any _Comma_, it is to make distinction
of sense more then for any thing else: and such _Cesure_ must neuer be
made in the middest of any word, if it be well appointed. So may you see
that the vse of these pawses or distinctions is not generally with the
vulgar Poet as it is with the Prose writer because the Poetes cheife
Musicke lying in his rime or concorde to heare the Simphonie, he maketh
all the hast he can to be at an end of his verse, and delights not in many
stayes by the way, and therefore giueth but one _Cesure_ to any verse: and
thus much for the sounding 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