Note 141 — Chapter I · BEFORE 1700
Reading edition
This phrase, which has been treated as enigmatic, is quite clear in the context, addressed to Lawes the musician as one
Whose tuneful and well-measured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and long.
That is to say, Lawes was not guilty, as most composers notoriously are, of laying musical stress on a syllable that could not prosodically bear it.