(There is nothing very peculiar or at all original in this, though it was probably now first used continuously for a poem of some length. It is only decasyllabic quatrain with uniform redundance in the first and third lines, and a strong inclination to trochaic opening, which in its turn suggests a primary dactyl and trochees to follow, as an alternative (see dotted scansion). Examples of it anterior to Myers may be found—commented on in the larger History (vol. iii. 481)—in Zophiel, very likely known to Myers, as he was much connected by family friendship with the Lake School; in the famous poem

the authorship of which has been so much contested; and in Emily Bronte's Remembrance (see again vol. iii. of Hist. Pros. p. 378), of which he cannot possibly have been ignorant.[48] His own share in the matter would seem to have been limited to the persevering adoption of it in an unvaried form. Whether this be an advantage or not is a question of taste: the prosodic description of the metre is clear and in no way recondite.)

(b) Ernest Dowson (Cynara) [Non sum qualis eram, etc.]:

(Sextet of Alexandrines with decasyllable (or brachycatalexis) in the 5th line, and with hypercatalexis, redundance, or double rhyme in the 4th and 6th. An original collocation, so far as I know, but nothing new or strange in principle. The actual poem is a rather beautiful one; but how much is contributed to the beauty by the special metre is another question. At any rate, once more, it has no difficulties for foot-scansion.)

(c) The universally known passage in Macbeth—

with the following lines, has also been proposed as a crux. But this must have been a not very brilliant joke; and it would be an insult to the student to scan the passage. It is one of the finest specimens of Shakespearian equivalence and "fingered" blank verse, but offers no more difficulties, on the system of this book, than any couplet of Pope or any verse of the "Old Hundredth." On the other hand, many passages of Shakespeare may not illegitimately puzzle the student if he does not realise that, although (it is believed) every line which is not corrupt can be scanned on our system, every line is by no means an exact five-foot. In accordance with the best English practice, older and newer, Shakespeare does not scruple to extend his lines to Alexandrines, and even to fourteeners, while the exigencies of drama entitle him to use lines of less than five full feet. But all these—the fragments as well as the extended lines—obey the general law of iambic arrangement with substitution in individual feet. Thus in Lady Macbeth's invocation of the Spirits of Evil (I. v. 49)—

is a regular Alexandrine. Her husband's hallucination—

stops in the second line at the third foot. Different lines of the ghost's great speech in Hamlet (I. v. 42-91) show the Alexandrine—

and a fragment of two feet and a half—

If studied in this way, even the scenes where short speeches of the conversational kind form the staple will be found to piece themselves together perfectly well in continuous scansion.

BOOK II
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ENGLISH PROSODY

CHAPTER I
FROM THE ORIGINS TO CHAUCER—THE CONSTITUTION OF ENGLISH VERSE[49]

The main fact, at once central and fundamental—a pivot whereon the whole structure at once rests and turns,—which it is necessary to understand in order to understand English prosody, is connected with—is indeed one side or case of—the other fact of the history of English language and English literature. So far as is known to the present writer, no other language and no other literature stand in precisely the same condition, as regards the relation of their technically "Old," "Middle," and "New" or "Modern" forms. The relation of what is called "Old" French to Modern is not that of "Old" English to Modern, but rather that of "Middle," if not a closer one still. And though "High" and "Low" German have had their various stages separated for philological purposes, the Continental Teutonic dialects have never undergone anything like the process of modification by Romance influence, older and younger, popular and literary, which turned Anglo-Saxon into English between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries.

This process was one not so much—if indeed it was one at all—of conscious borrowing: it was one not so much of deliberate imitation (though there was much of that in a way) as one of actual physical impregnation, fertilising, blending, which resulted in a true and permanent "cross" or "hybrid perpetual," possessing and exercising the faculties of self-development and self-propagation.

In perhaps no way were these faculties more strikingly and remarkably exercised and illustrated than in regard to prosody; and it must, unluckily, be added that in no instance has their exercise been more frequently and more fatally misconstrued. The present writer begins a fresh attempt to set forth what really happened with the following encouragement—in the way of a reviewer's sentence on his earlier and larger effort—before his eyes: "Mr. S.'s contention is that A.S. prosody died out, and that English prosody is entirely drawn from the Latin, with the aid of French and Provençal." Now the "contention" of the History of English Prosody is as directly and deliberately bent against this doctrine as against Dr. Guest's theory, that the principles of Anglo-Saxon prosody have governed English throughout its course. These "falsehoods of extremes" appear to have more lives than a cat, if not as many heads as a hydra; and their main principle of vitality no doubt is that it is possible to put them in plump plain-looking phraseology "which the Beaver can well understand." What did actually happen was far less simple; but the attempt to explain it must once more be made.

As to what Anglo-Saxon prosody itself was, although, as in all these matters, there are minor dissidences among the authorities, the main arrangement is sun-clear. There is practically only one line; though (and the fact is of inestimable importance, and when once really understood will carry the understander through to the very present day) the syllabic lengths of that line may differ largely even in normal cases, and to an at first sight almost irrational degree in what are called the "extended" varieties.

This normal line in its most normal condition—neither cut short nor drawn out—consists usually of about nine or ten syllables. These are not arranged so as to produce a definite foot-rhythm, though there is a general suggestion of the trochee. And attempts (not to be spoken of with anything but encouragement and wishes for their success, if with some doubt as to its attainment) have been made to assign, in all cases, definite division into associations of syllables which might be called "feet." Other features are unmistakable and incontestable. There is always a sharp middle division—so strong that the lines may be, and often are, printed as halves. There are always more or fewer (most frequently two in the first half and one in the second) alliterated syllables (one consonant or any vowel). And these syllables, with occasionally another or so, are usually accented, but divided from each other by a certain or uncertain number of unaccented ones. The proportion and arrangement of these fall into the controverted things; and the extension of the normal line is a point only of indirect importance, though of very great importance indirectly, here. The attempts which have been made to trace ballad metre, nursery-rhyme metre, etc., to A.S. originals are also outside our limits. To the present writer they appear to be hopelessly vitiated by two absolutely certain facts: (1) that we do not know how Anglo-Saxon was pronounced; (2) that its pronunciation, whatever it was, must have been radically affected by the changes which made it into Middle English. But four cardinal points remain, of such importance that they cannot be too attentively studied or too constantly remembered. They are these: that the oldest English prosody rested on (1) a system of hard and fast middle pause; (2) alliteration, distributed over the whole line; (3) accented and unaccented syllables, the former usually knit to the alliteration in some kind of sub-combination; but (4) that the laws of this combination, and the principle on which the sub-combinations could be substituted, omitted, or multiplied, were of the freest description. It is said, and it can well be believed, that they forbade some things. It is certain that they permitted very many, combining the freest substitution in the same line, of the kind observable in the Latin and Greek hexameter or trimeter, with an apparent variety of lengths, in different lines, hardly inferior to that of a Greek chorus or ode.

This prosody governed English verse from a time certainly anterior to the existence of any "English" nationality to about 1000 A.D., the great bulk of the production resulting under it being considerably older than the last-named date. At or about that date, certainly before the "Conquest," it began to be subjected to devitalising and disintegrating influences, not necessary to be discussed in detail here. The important fact is that from c. 1000 to c. 1200 the existing amount of Old English verse is very small indeed; and that, even in the few existing probably dated examples, singular changes begin to exhibit themselves. In the "Rhyming Poem" (before 1000?) the introduction of the element indicated in the title completely revolutionises the system.[50] In the "Grave Poem" (c. 1100?) a new element of rhythm appears, the tendency being, here and henceforth, to substitute iambic, varied by anapæestic, cadence for the general trochaic run, and to associate two lines or four halves in a kind of quatrain.[51] In the remarkable fragments of St. Godric (1150?) rhyme, which does not appear in the "Grave Poem," assists the rhythmical tendency of this latter to make a new music;[52] and the well-known "Canute Song"[53] chimes in. While if the "Paternoster" be really of the twelfth century, as some have said, there are in it iambic dimeter couplets[54] of a kind which never, by any chance, suggests itself in the whole corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry proper.

This couplet is neither more nor less than a pair of iambic dimeters or "four-accent ['-beat'] lines in rising stress," shortened occasionally to seven syllables instead of eight, probably from the first also admitting extension, not by addition of feet, but by substitution of them.

Two couplets, or two batches of short (half) lines, from Layamon will show the difference at once and unmistakably to any one who possesses an ear:

The first distich, it will be observed, is a loose and broken-down one on the schemes of perfect O.E. verse. There is hardly any real alliteration, and the accented syllables are clumsily placed and valued. But the thing does retain, and that pretty sufficiently, the strong centre pause, and the folding-back swing of the two halves, like those of a flail or a pair of lemon-squeezers, which are the real characteristics of O.E. or A.S. verse. It is not itself "riche" versification; it is not "wel idone"; but you cannot mistake it for anything but what it is.

With the other you have got into a new world. There is alliteration here; but it has nothing on earth to do with the construction and run of the verse. There is what you may call accent if you insist upon it; but it is quite differently and much more regularly arranged, constituting, moreover, a rhythm perfectly distinct to the ear. There are two halves; but the second half is not so much a completion as a repetition. And instead of the strong middle break—a break and nothing else—the halves are tipped with rhyme—a division which, if they were printed straight on, you would not notice till you got to the end of the second, and which requires very little (hardly any) stop of the voice, while the breach of the old couplet insists on this.

Now the question legitimately suggests itself, "Why is this strange contrast present?"—a contrast which, it should be added, is not only present but omnipresent in this great poem of 30,000 (half) lines in all forms, from something quite near the old A.S. line, through things farther from it, to imperfect forms of the new couplet and so to perfect ones. One answer is as follows: "This couplet was already established in French literature—in fact in the very French literature (Wace) which formed part of Layamon's originals. Moreover, it exists also in Latin—the Latin of the hymns with which the priest Layamon must have been perfectly familiar. When, therefore, it appears, he is simply imitating it with more or less success." Now the facts of this answer, as far as they go, are indisputable. The octosyllabic couplet, though not so old as the decasyllabic line in O.F., is very old, and by Layamon's time had been written very largely indeed. Octosyllabic lines, both of iambic and trochaic cadence, form the very staple of the Latin hymns; and both in Latin (earlier far) and in French, after a period of assonance, rhyme had thoroughly established itself.

So far, so good; but it is to be hoped that intelligent minds will perceive an occurring difficulty. If this selection of metre is an elaborate attempt to imitate French or Latin, or both, why are its results so extraordinarily sporadic? One could understand the presence of many imperfect lines and couplets; it might even be surprising that in a first attempt there should be such good ones as that above quoted. But how could the man, in an actual majority of cases, produce stuff like the other distich quoted, and many more unrhythmical still, which are not even attempts at the iambic couplet—which have no connection whatever with it?

No; an explanation at once more subtle and more natural is wanted; for it is a great mistake to think that the subtler is necessarily the less natural. Does not this immense mass of apparently confused experiment suggest that the language itself has passed into a new rhythmical atmosphere?—that two different metrical systems, one dropping and dying off ever fainter to the ear, the other becoming clearer and clearer to it, were sounding in Layamon's brain? Sometimes he writes under one influence; sometimes under the other; more frequently under confused echoes of both. Such a set of causes would produce exactly such a set of results.

Nor is it of the slightest relevance, as an objection, to say that the total number of new Romance words in Layamon is very small—a couple of hundred perhaps in both forms of the poem taken together. You do not necessarily require one Romance word to fashion the most complicated metres of Tennyson and Mr. Swinburne. The point is, "What was the general rhythm, and what were the means of obtaining it, which sounded most gratefully in English ears at the opening of the thirteenth century and onwards?"

The facts, if they, as they too seldom have been, are carefully arranged and impartially considered, answer this further question as clearly as any reasonable person can desire.

We possess a relatively considerable number of poems composed probably between 1200 and 1250. The most important of these are, besides Layamon's Brut itself, the Ormulum, the Poema Morale or Moral Ode, the Orison of Our Lady, a Bestiary, the Proverbs of Alfred and of Hendyng, the Love-Rune and other minor pieces, the Middle English Genesis and Exodus, and The Owl and the Nightingale.

Hardly two of these are in the same metre, at least in the same form of the same metre, and none of them exhibits exactly the same curious blend of old and new as that which appears in the Brut. But, for that very reason, they enforce the same general lesson—for they do enforce it—in the most striking and conclusive way possible. That lesson is, as we saw, that the new language of English was seeking in every possible way for a new prosody of English, and was finding it under several and special forms of experiment, but in the same general spirit.

Orm—evidently, from his punctilio about spelling,[55] a man curious and particular about details—adopts the French principle of absolute syllabic uniformity; though he does not accept any of the actually existing French metres, and rejects—possibly to save trouble, possibly as thinking them unsuitable to his sacred subject—both assonance and rhyme. He writes—in the strictest and most humdrum iambic cadence, as of the least-inspired French or Latin poetry—"fifteeners" or combinations of eights and sevens. Of the old long-lined stave he has kept no positive quality but its centre pause, and hardly any important negative one save its rhymelessness. Of the new metre, he has aimed at—he has certainly reached—nothing but its foot-division and consequent rhythm. But he has got these in the most pronounced, if hardly in the most attractive, form. Except for the odd syllable, we are here already in full presence of the jog-trot ballad and hymn "common measure" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nay, this odd syllable itself is of great interest, for it reappears in the sung "breath" or "grunt"—"a":

Opinions may differ slightly on the question whether this fifteener is actually the same as the fourteener which later became so common, and which directly engendered the common measure itself; or whether the two were independent attempts to metricise the old long line. It is of course clear that, as final e's dropped off, fifteen would become fourteen in any case. But in two of the poems mentioned above, the Moral Ode and the Orison of Our Lady, although the first-named has many fifteeners, and the last is highly irregular, the set towards iambic seven-foot rhythm is well marked. And there are two still more interesting things about these two poems. We have several versions of the Poema Morale which have been arranged—not on prosodic grounds—in order of chronological sequence. And it is in the highest degree noteworthy that the latest of these forms, like the later version of Layamon, exhibits remarkable touches of prosodic melioration. It is still more important that among the irregular and experimental varieties of the Orison actual iambic decasyllables, and, what is more, something like the decasyllabic couplet, make their appearance nearly two centuries before Chaucer.[56]

These remarkable lessons in comparison are repeated, with the usual and invaluable confirmation of variety, in the curious documents called respectively the Proverbs Alfred and the Proverbs of Hendyng. The relation, in point of matter, of the latter to the former, and of the former itself to a possible A.S. collection made by the king, or under his auspices, need not concern us. It is enough that our existing Proverbs of Alfred are M.E. in language and early thirteenth century in date; while those of "Hendyng" are perhaps half a century younger. These latter are slightly more modern in language; but this is accompanied by, and no doubt not a little directly connected with, still greater modernisation of form. The earlier rehandler (or some of the rehandlers, for the work is pretty certainly not of one only) evidently stuck as near as he could to his original—words and all. But he was, or they were, in Layamon's state—only more so. Rhyme appears fitfully; regular iambic and trochaic rhythm more fitfully; alliteration most fitfully of all. The various sections are stanza-bundles of short lines or half lines, which, taken singly and printed straight on, might tempt no very hasty, ill-informed, or unintelligent reader to regard them as sheer prose, with an irregular sing-song and jingle here and there. On the other hand, the Proverbs of Hendyng are unmistakable English verse, the stanza called in French rime couée, from the Latin versus caudatus (afterwards common and famous as the six-line stanza in which a very large proportion, if not the majority, of our romances are written). It is a combination of eight- and six-syllabled lines arranged 8, 8, 6, 8, 8, 6, and rhymed aabccb; the rhythm being regularly iambic, and the whole differing in no respect from similar verse of the nineteenth century, and in only one respect from such as Gray's "Cat" ode in the eighteenth. And that one is priceless, for it is the appearance of substitution—the great English characteristic which separates our verse from its French patterns—if patterns they were—which the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries unwisely gave up, for which Shenstone pleaded,[57] and which Chatterton, and Blake, and Southey, and Coleridge restored. Monosyllabic and trisyllabic feet, as shown in the examples,[58] are freely employed; and the result is that a double advantage is secured. The actual shapelessness of one direct parent, the broken-down A.S. versicle, is effectually cured: there is no possibility of mistaking this composition for prose. The possible monotony and sing-song of the other—the regular syllabic French model, long afterwards parodied and exposed immortally in Chaucer's Sir Thopas—is avoided likewise. There is a little assonance, but for the most part quite regular and satisfactory rhyme. There is effective correspondent rhythm, resulting from feet clearly marked, but, as has been said, boldly handled in the English, not the French or Low Latin manner. The stanza is well kept, though the substitution prevents its being a mere mechanic reproduction. In short, there is freedom, and there is order.

Not less worthy of study is the Bestiary.[59] Here the direct origins are fortunately known and are of the utmost importance. The ultimate one is the Latin of Thetbaldus in "Leonine" hexameters—that is to say, hexameters with, in this case not very complete or regular, but still unmistakable, rhyme at the cæsura and the end. This gives something of a ready-made correspondence to the old A.S. line with its middle break, and, at the same time, suggests rhyming halves. But there was also at hand a French bestiary by Philippe de Thaun, where the writer, taking the other already established hexameter-trimeter of his own literature, the Alexandrine, breaks it into regular six-syllabled couplets. The Englishman, whoever he was, endeavours to follow this arrangement, and perhaps something more. He has got the six-syllable line and couplet in his ear; he has got even a sort of notion of stanza in addition, and he now and then hears rhyme. But he is a very rough verse-smith, in the Proverbs of Alfred stage or near it, and he is perpetually hitting and missing cadences and constructions which were not to be perfected for long, but half developed—queer creatures rearing themselves from the earth like those in the old woodcuts of the Creation. He has more variety than Layamon, and sometimes more music than the Alfred man; but with them he provides the great museum of examples of English verse in the first stage of making.

Every now and then, too, he provides us with something that is not rough at all, as in the passage appended,[60] which is perfect modern English rhythm and goes to a well-known carol tune. And of this more perfect craftsmanship, in forms precise enough to bring out the qualities and capacities of the new prosody, the minor and miscellaneous poems of the thirteenth century supply ample and varied instances. There is Romance-six, probably earlier than the Proverbs of Hendyng; "fourteener" metre, more polished than that of the Moral Ode; and, best of all, the beginning, in the Love-Rune,[61] of the great alternately rhymed octosyllabic quatrain, the "long measure" ("common," or the split fourteener, was to be a little later) of a myriad hymns and secular pieces since. This long measure is in some ways more advanced than almost anything of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, displaying equivalence, admitting internal rhyme[62]—prophesying, through Chatterton and Blake, the Great Instauration of Coleridge, Southey, and Scott.

But we must complete this group by what are perhaps its most important, though not its earliest members, the two great examples of the octosyllabic line itself in its simplest couplet form. It may almost be said that Genesis and Exodus (the M.E. not the A.S. paraphrase) and The Owl and the Nightingale are sufficient between them to teach all the main secrets of English prosody. They are certainly sufficient to show what it is and what it is not.

We have seen how this couplet emerges in the Brut of Layamon, and how it there presents itself as a "transient and embarrassed" alternative to mostly broken-down and shapeless pairs of something like the old half-line. In the two poems just mentioned it is not transient, but abides; nor is it in the least embarrassed. It has quite shaken off its dilapidated companions, and abides in its own house. But that house is a house of two wings or two fronts. The one which the author of The Owl and the Nightingale prefers approximates in its verse-building to the French system of architecture, and is, if not rigidly uniform in syllabic arrangement (and especially patient as the metre always has been since of limitation to seven with a consequent hint of trochaic rhythm), yet almost rigidly iambic or trochaic in run. The other, of which Genesis and Exodus is the main occupant, admits, with the utmost freedom, that principle of trisyllabic (if not also monosyllabic) equivalence into which the old liberty of Anglo-Saxon had transformed itself under the sufficient but not tyrannical pressure of the new foot prosody. And it presents an almost perfect specimen of the metre which Spenser (whether intentionally or not) employed in parts of the Shepherd's Calendar, and which Coleridge, more than 500 years later, believed himself to have invented, and explained in a very insufficient manner.

It is upon the understanding which the student attains and upon the interpretation which he makes or accepts of the group of pieces from the Brut to Genesis and Exodus, which have just been discussed, that this student's whole conception of English prosody will depend. Unfortunately, he will not find such authorities as have delivered themselves on the subject by any means unanimous; more unfortunately still, it must be said here, he will find most of them inadequate, and not a few positively wrong. In another part of this book some account of the more usual theories is given. It is enough to say here, that neither the system which regards this verse as consisting of a certain number of "stressed" syllables and a certain or uncertain number of "unstressed," nor that which would regard some of it as following old English, some new French models, appears to fit the actual facts or explain their actual consequences. To assign the "equivalenced" varieties to a northern, the "unequivalenced" to a southern origin, may or may not be in accordance with historical and geographical fact, but is prosodically irrelevant. To be content with discovering actual or possible particular foreign models for each metre may not be useless (something on the subject will again be found elsewhere in this volume), but will be inadequate, and may be misleading, if the general phenomena are not examined or if their lesson is not learnt.

It should not be hard to learn for any one who will patiently consider the facts narrated in this chapter, the dates (as far as they are known or guessed), and the scanned examples given in the text, the notes, and the general survey. It will be strange if he does not perceive that there is here something much more than a mere regularising of accentual verse with the addition of rhyme, something much more than a mere imitation of French and Latin models, like the frequent attempts at English hexameters, or those at English ballades and rondeaux which were revived some thirty years ago; above all, something not in the least adequately described by the phrases "adopting the French principles of prosody," "following the rhythm of the foreigner," and so forth. If, as he should,[63] he possesses some knowledge of Latin verse, classical and mediæval, some of French, a little (the more the better) of Old English, and as much as possible of Modern; if he will allow this knowledge to settle and clarify his observation of this Middle English verse of the latest twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century, without allowing arbitrary theories of any kind to interfere, it seems almost impossible that he can fail to see what was going on. The prosody of English was changing from accent and alliteration to feet and rhyme; but it was not following French, or the general run of mediæval Latin, in adopting syllabic uniformity as a rule; and it was, in a large number, if not the majority of instances, allowing the substitution of equivalent feet (especially anapæsts for iambs) exactly as some, but not all, classical metre had allowed it.

Another point with which the student cannot familiarise himself too early, and one which he will find rarely or never insisted on in works dealing with English prosody, is that this apparent irregularity of foot arrangement brings out the existence, the importance, and, so to speak, the personality of the feet themselves, in a way impossible of achievement when a uniform number of syllables is insisted on in a line, and when "accent," "stress," or whatever the emphasising agent be called or considered, is restricted wholly or as much as possible to exactly corresponding places in that line. This monotony may sometimes seem to soothe, but in reality only deadens the susceptibility of the ear, and that ear comes to recognise only, if not only to demand, such coarser stimulus as that given by strong and more or less uniform centre-pause, as the sharp snap or clang of the concluding rhyme, and as rhetorical, not strictly poetical, emphasis placed on special points, especially by the aid of antithesis. On the other hand, the slight effort necessary to recognise the unity of the equivalent feet, under their diversity of substitution, demands and begets an active sensitiveness, which very soon yields positive, keen, and varied delight. No modern poetry can vie with English in the possession and provision of this, and those who neglect it deprive themselves of one of the greatest privileges of an Englishman.

But it is, of course, not contended that perfection in so difficult and exquisite an accomplishment was, or could have been, attained at once. The prosody, like the language, had to "make itself," to "grow," and, even more than the language, it had not merely to grow like a vegetable, but to make itself by animated, if often unconscious, efforts. Had things been otherwise it would have been far less interesting. As it is, there is not one of the imperfect efforts which have been briefly reviewed here that is not a "document in the case," a step in the progress, a fresh attempt of the bird to chip the shell and get clear of the fragments.

These documents, speaking approximately, have brought us to, and perhaps a little beyond, the middle of the thirteenth century. Philologists and palæographers do not give us much as dating from the latter part of that century, or at least from the third quarter of it. But towards the close, and onwards to the supposed birth date of Chaucer (1340), we have an ever-increasing mass of interesting material continuing the demonstration just given. At an uncertain period (not impossibly close to that birth itself) we find also a new phenomenon of a general kind and of first-rate importance; and in the last half or, say, the last third of the century we come, not only to Chaucer himself, but to two other poets, lesser than himself as masters of form, but by no means small in that respect, and contrasted with him in it after a really marvellous fashion.

We can give less individual attention to the first-named group of documents; but as a matter of fact they require less, and sub-group themselves. At the close of the thirteenth century we have a body of verse, the whole of it sometimes ascribed by guess-work, part of it ascribed with certainty, and yet more not without probability, to Robert of Gloucester. This work, consisting of a Chronicle and of many Saints' Lives, is entirely written in fourteener (or, when there is a final e, fifteener) couplets of the same general stamp as those which we have seen in the Moral Poem, but differentiated from those of the Ormulum by the admission of equivalence. They are, however, much more advanced than even the latest version of the Poema Morale; and the writer, or writers, can make them into a capital narrative vehicle, distinctly indicating, if not freely expressing, the further resolution into the ballad metre of eight and six.

But this craving for narrative in verse did not confine itself to a single vehicle; indeed, in probably a very great majority of instances, it preferred another, or two others, with which we are also acquainted, and further varieties still which we have not yet seen, but which show, unmistakably, the advance in prosodic aptitude. The great body of narrative verse, known as "the Romances," begins to date from the end of the thirteenth century—a few, such as Havelok and Horn, are certainly earlier than the fourteenth; by the end of the first third, if not of the first quarter, of this latter, a very large number were as certainly in existence.