This form is not to be confused with 'hendecasyllabic verse', a quantitative meter used by Catullus.
William Webbe refers to its "quantitative" meter and language approvingly, but his knowledge of the poem is indirect.
His intention to introduce quantitative meter only appears in his introduction to the "adónicos sáficos", since these lend themselves well to a hendecasyllabic form:
The term originally applied to the quantitative meter of Classical Greek poetry, in which an iamb consisted of a short syllable followed by a long syllable.
Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in "delay").
An English language example of the dactylic hexameter, in quantitative meter:
As the absurd meaning of this example demonstrates, quantitative meter is extremely difficult to construct in English.
It consists of a series of englynion, or short stanzas in quantitative meter, and survives in a number of manuscripts.
In 1984, a manuscript of his latest research led to the very origin of the well tempered quantitative poetic meters of the Indo-Persian languages.
These terms originally applied to the quantitative meter of classical poetry.