Then this mania, pedantry, or whatever other evil name may be given it, never attained to the dignity of doing harm. No Englishman who could write good rhyme was ever deterred from doing so by the fear that he would become a Goth, and eat acorns with swine. The real belief of the Elizabethan poets was expressed in _The Arte of English Poesie_, which tradition has assigned to George Puttenham. If we have not the feet of the Greeks and Latins, which we “as yet never went about to frame (the nature of our language and wordes not permitting it), we have instead thereof twentie other curious points in that skill more than they ever had, by reason of our rime, and tunable concords, or simphonie, which they never observed. Poesie therefore may be an arte in our vulgar, and that very methodicall and commendable.” _The Arte of English Poesie_ was published in 1589. Webbe’s discourse had appeared three years before. The conflict, such as it was, was really over, though the superiority of “versifying” to rhyming might continue to be discussed as an academic question. Thomas Campion, who, as if to show the hollowness of his own cause, was a writer of rhymed songs of great beauty, might talk “of the childish titilation of riming” in his _Art of English Poetry_ in 1602, and be answered by Daniel in his _Defence of Ryme_, but they were discussing “a question of the schools.” The attempt to turn English poetry from its natural course belongs to the curiosities of literary history. [SN: _Poetry of first half of Elizabeth’s reign._]