How did Joshua Steele try to analyze English verse through musical notation?

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In his work Prosodia Rationalis (1779), Joshua Steele attempted to analyze English verse by applying musical notation to the structure of language.1

Steele’s approach was characterized by the following methods and insights:

Musical Properties: He assigned specific musical qualities, such as pitch and duration, to individual syllables.1
Temporal Basis: Steele is recognized as the first "timer" among metrists, asserting that English verse is governed by musical pulse and moves in either common or triple time.1
Comprehensive Scope: He argued that a valid prosodic theory must account for all properties and accidents inherent in language, rather than focusing solely on metre.1

While his method was highly personal and idiosyncratic, it foreshadowed modern structural linguistic efforts to analyze the full range of acoustic elements in poetry. However, later critics have argued that musical scansion functions more as a performance than a formal analysis, noting that it can lead to arbitrary readings and obscure stylistic distinctions between different poets.1