Vili PREFACE. 
Since writing the account of the modes of versifi- 
cation usual amongst the rhyming Latin poets 4, I 
have met with an ancient treatise upon metre, writ- 
ten about the end of the fifteenth century, or proba- 
bly earlier, in which are laid down the rules observed 
by the writers of the middle ages in their Leonine 
verses. It is unnecessary to state particularly the 
contents of the first part, since it relates to metre in 
general: the second is entitled Colores Metrorum 
Variati, that is, the various rhymes of verse, and 
contains a great number of curious examples. They 
are placed promiscuously but may be arranged in the 
following order, which I before adopted. They have 
each their appropriate names ¢. 
The hexameter and pentameter metres were the 
most frequent. The Leonine poets observed, that 
from the different ways in which the feet might be 
legitimately varied, the heroic or hexameter verse af- 
4 Essay on Rhyming Latin Verse, p. 17, 
* Published by James Nasmith, M.A. at Cambridge, 1778, 
at the end of two other works, Itineraria Symonis Simionis, et 
Willelmi de Worcestre, Quibus accedit Tractatus de metro, 
in quo traduntur tegule & scriptoribus medii evi in versibus 
Leoninis ob » exeunto seculo xv. ut videtur scriptus. In- 
certi autoris, e cod, manus, in Bibl. Col. Corp. Christ. Cant. N°. 
386. I have collated it with the original, and corrected some 
errors by it, Some parts seem much corrupted 
