English poetry -- History and criticism; Poetry -- Early works to 1800
Your last proportion is that of figure, so called for that it yelds an
ocular representation, your meeters being by good symmetrie reduced into
certaine Geometricall figures, whereby the maker is restrained to keepe
him within his bounds, and sheweth not onley more art, but serueth also
much better for briefenesse and subtiltie of deuice. And for the same
respect are also fittest for the pretie amourets in Court to entertaine
their seruants and the time withall, their delicate wits requiring some
commendable exercise to keepe them from idlenesse. I find not of this
proportion, vsed by any of the Greeke or Latine Poets, or in any vulgar
writer, sauing of that one forme which they cal _Anacreens egge._ But
being in Italie conuersant with a certaine gentleman, who had long
trauailed the Orientall parts of the world, and seene the Courts of the
great Princes of China and Tartarie. I being very inquisitiue to know of
the subtillities of those countreyes, and especially in matter of learning
and of their vulgar Poesie, he told me that they are in all their
inuentions most wittie, and haue the vse of Poesie or riming, but do not
delight so much as we do in long tedious descriptions, and therefore when
they will vtter any pretie conceit, they reduce it into metricall feet,
and put it in forme of a _Lozange_ or square, or such other figure, and so
engrauen in gold, siluer, or iuorie, and sometimes with letters of
ametist, rubie, emeralde or topas curiousely cemented and peeced together,
they sende them in chaines, bracelets, collars and girdles to their
mistresses to weare for a remembrance. Some fewe measures composed in this
sort this gentleman gaue me, which I translated word for word and as neere
as I could followed both the phrase and the figure, which is somewhat hard
to performe, because of the restraint of the figure from which ye may not
digresse. At the beginning they wil seeme nothing pleasant to an English
eare, but time and vsage will make them acceptable inough, as it doth in
all other new guises, be it for wearing of apparell or otherwise. The
formes of your Geometricall figures be hereunder represented.
[Illustration: labelled diagrams of lines of different lengths (forming
different shapes):
The Lozange, called Rombus (diamond)
The Fuzie or spindle, called Romboides (narrow diamond)
The Triangle or Tricquet (pyramid)
The Square or quadrangle (square)
The Pillaster or Cillinder (tall rectangle)
The Spire or taper, called piramis (tall pyramid)
The Rondel or Sphere (circle)
The egge or figure ouall (vertical egg)
The Tricquet reuerst (triangle)
The Tricquet displayed (hour-glass)
The Taper reuersed (narrow triangle)
The Rondel displayed (half circle upon the other half)
The Lozange reuersed (wide diamond <>) u
The Egge displayed (half oval upon the other half - n)
The Lozange rabbated (hexagon).]
_Of the Lozange._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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