perch —
“By many a dern and painful,”
PERICLES, iii. Gower, 15.
“A perch is a measure of five yards and a half,” says Steevens, and truly enough; but the unknown author of this portion of Pericles (using here the word for the sake of a rhyme) thought no
more about the exact measure of a perch than
Milton did about that of a rood, when he tells us
that Satan“lay floating many a
rood.”