The whole passage is well worth reading. The best account of the movement toward classical versification in the days of the "Areopagus" will be found in Professor Schelling's _Poetic and Verse Criticism in the Reign of Elizabeth_ (Publications of the University of Pennsylvania). O ye Nymphes most fine who resort to this brooke, For to bathe there your pretty breasts at all times: Leave the watrish bowres, hyther and to me come at my request nowe. And ye Virgins trymme who resort to Parnass, Whence the learned well Helicon beginneth: Helpe to blase her worthy deserts, that all els mounteth above farre. (WILLIAM WEBBE: Sapphic Verse, in _A Discourse of English Poetrie_. 1586.) Webbe was another of those who believed "that if the true kind of versifying in immitation of Greekes and Latines, had been practised in the English tongue, ... it would long ere this have aspyred to as full perfection, as in anie other tongue whatsoever." So he added to his _Discourse_ (see Arber Reprint, pp. 67-84) a discussion of the principles of quantitative prosody, and some specimens of what might be done by way of experiment.[42] The Sapphics from which the present specimen is taken are a paraphrase of Spenser's praise of Elizabeth in the fourth eclogue of the _Shepherd's Calendar_. (For a specimen of Webbe's hexameters, see p. 334, below.) Greatest in thy wars, Greater in thy peace, Dread Elizabeth; Our muse only truth, Figments cannot use, Thy ritch name to deck That itselfe adorns: But should now this age Let all poesye fayne, Fayning poesy could Nothing faine at all Worthy halfe thy fame. (THOMAS CAMPION: Iambic Dimeter, "an example Lyrical," in _Observations in the Art of English Poesie_. 1602.) Rose-cheekt Lawra come Sing thou smoothly with thy beawtie's Silent musick, either other Sweetely gracing. Lovely formes do flowe From concent devinely framed, Heav'n is musick, and thy beawtie's Birth is heavenly. (THOMAS CAMPION: Trochaic Dimeter, _ib._) The full title of Campion's work was: "Observations in the Art of English Poesie; wherein it is demonstratively proved, and by example confirmed, that the English toong will receive eight severall kinds of numbers, proper to it selfe, which are all in this booke set forth, and were never before this time by any man attempted." Campion, like other classical versifiers, condemned rime as a barbarity; but in imitating the classical measures he does not violate the normal English accent, so that his verses read smoothly in English rhythm. Curiously enough, he includes among his innovations an iambic measure which proves to be ordinary decasyllabic verse: "Goe numbers boldly passe, stay not for ayde Of shifting rime, that easie flatterer, Whose witchcraft can the ruder eares beguile".