Sidney was a member of the little group of classical students who called themselves the "Areopagus," and who were interested in introducing classical measures into English verse. Others of the group were Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser, from whose correspondence most of our information regarding the movement is derived. (See the letters in Grosart's edition of Harvey's Works, vol. i. pp. 7-9, 20-24, 35-37, 75-76, 99-107.) Spenser's only known efforts in the same direction are also preserved in this correspondence; a poem in twenty-one iambic trimeters, and this "tetrasticon":-- "See yee the blindfoulded pretie god, that feathered archer, Of lovers miseries which maketh his bloodie game? Wote ye why his moother with a veale hath coovered his face? Trust me, least he my loove happely chaunce to beholde." It would seem that Spenser was attempting, more conscientiously than Sidney did, to follow the classical rules of quantity in making his verses; hence they are more difficult to read according to English rhythm. Sidney's experiments in the classical versification are perhaps the most successful, to modern taste, of all those made in the Elizabethan period. Among the other songs in the _Arcadia_ will be found sapphics and hexameters. See especially Spenser's letter of April, 1580, and Harvey's reply (_op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 35, 99), for notable passages indicating the seriousness with which the members of the "Areopagus" were trying to orm English verse so as to bring it under the rules of classical prosody. The relations of quantity and accent were not understood, as indeed they may be said still not to be understood for the English language. Spenser suggests, in a frequently quoted passage, that in the word _carpenter_ the middle syllable is "short in speech, when it shall be read long in verse,"--that is, because the vowel is followed by two consonants; hence it "seemeth like a lame gosling that draweth one legge after her.... But it is to be wonne with custome, and rough words must be subdued with use." Harvey resented the idea that the common pronunciation of words could be departed from in order to conform them to arbitrary metrical rules, and in his reply said: "You shall never have my subscription or consent ... to make your Carpēnter our Carpĕnter, an inche longer or bigger, than God and his Englishe people have made him.... Else never heard I any that durst presume so much over the Englishe ... as to alter the quantitie of any one sillable, otherwise than oure common speache and generall receyved custome woulde beare them oute." But while all English verse must be consistent with "the vulgare and naturall mother prosodye," Harvey does not despair of finding a system that shall be at the same time "countervaileable to the best tongues" in making possible quantitative verse.