Note 1. “In 1602 appeared Thomas Campion’s Observation in the Art of English Poetry, the famous pamphlet in which this graceful Elizabethan rimer advocated a return to classical quantitative verse. He illustrated his proposed rhythms with original experiments, which in all but one case are no less unhappy than most quantitative poems in English. The one exception, however, illustrating a trochaic strophe, deserves to be quoted as an example, not only of graceful melody, but of perfect lyrical form. The motive—Laura’s beauty—is introduced in the first words, developed through an Elizabethan ‘conceit’ of human beauty in general, and closed with a philosophic contemplation of perfect beauty in the abstract.” (John Erskine: The Elizabethan Lyric, ed. 1905.) See also Observations in the art of English Poesy, p. 258, Bullen’s ed. of Campion’s Works, 1903. [back]
