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A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSODY
T
Angrlut i> ^m if iMmntT- * JA
v
^rtfr ati5 {ittnt tnartc ^a t dcomd nw t
*\ *
. a
^?* wtnc Iwre foct tttfbtc V ^{
to-r^Vrv: . f
tt^m>vtf:
,
ml*!fi arfro tt^attttf
FACSIMILE OF THE HYMNS OF ST. GODRIC
FROM MS. REG. v. F. vn. FOL. 85 (BRITISH MUSEUM)
Five-Sixths the Scale of Original MS.
A HISTORY
OF
ENGLISH PROSODY
FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO
THE PRESENT DAY
BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
M.A. OXON J HON. LL.D. ABERD. ; PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH
LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
VOL. I
FROM THE ORIGINS TO SPENSER
' Ainsi karoloient illecques. ' Roman de la Rose
iLontion
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1906
All rights reserved
URL
^5
v.l
PREFACE
THE proposed enquiry, which the writer has meditated
for a good many years, and which, a little helped but
more hindered by his earlier professional duties as a critic
and journalist, has become an actual part of his later
work as a professor of literature, is devoted to a subject
entirely neglected for some centuries of our literary
history. Treated partially and sporadically during the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth, and never at-
tempted as a whole until Mitford's essay towards the end
of this last, it has during the nineteenth been pursued
with increasing attention ; but too often in the fashion of
shreds and patches, and almost always with a view to
enforcing and illustrating preconceived ideas on certain
points. The most famous instance of this is of course
Dr. Guest's History of English Rhythms. No book
known to me in English, except the two just specified,
attempts a complete historical examination up to its own
time ; and while Mitford's, good as it is, is perhaps
injured by prejudice and certainly by necessary imper-
fection of knowledge, the conclusions drawn at every page
by Guest from his admirable collection and digestion of
material, almost deserve Southey's contemporary dis-
missal of them as " worthless."
I shall endeavour to avoid such misfortunes, not by
any superior dexterity in handling, but by the humble
virtue of sticking to the facts of examining, through at
vi PREFACE
least seven hundred years of verse, what the prosodic
characteristics of English have actually been, and what
goodness or badness of poetry has accompanied the
expression of those characteristics. In other words, I
shall try as in other histories of literary matter which
I have written, so in this which I hope to write to
remember that the Rule comes from the Work, not the
Work from the Rule. As to this work itself, I believe I
have read l nearly all the printed stock of English verse
before 1 600 ; and I know that I have read every poet of
the slightest repute since that date, and a great number
of poets who neither have nor deserve any. The process
has taken some time and labour. I trust that the result,
if it be ever completed, may have at least some value.
I had made up my mind from the first to make the
book a history of prosodic study as well as of prosodic
expression, but on mature consideration it seemed better
not to deal with the former subject in this volume. It would
at most have been possible to include, in its last Book, a thin
chapter dealing with Gascoigne and a few other authors
who can be much better dealt with in the next. Only the
battle of classical metres falls necessarily to be noticed here,
and that can be anticipated a little and redone later.
It may seem surprising that, postponing so much, I
should undertake, or hope, to finish the enquiry in two
more volumes ; but I think the method of thorough
investigation of the origins will justify itself. It is the
neglect of these origins, or the insufficient examination of
them, which has been at the root of most of the mistakes
on the subject. And when this neglect is repaired, much
will become quite clear, and need little fresh presentation
1 As these statements are sometimes misunderstood, I may perhaps be
allowed to say that this is not in the least a boast, but merely a guarantee.
That it should be superfluous, I quite admit : whether it is, I leave those
who know to judge.
PREFACE vii
in the later story. I cannot hope, in treating a matter
so complex, so seldom treated hitherto as a whole, and
so full of little traps of detail, to have avoided slips
wholly : but I trust there are not too many of them.
I think I have never yet failed to acknowledge and
salute my predecessors. And therefore I may say that this
book owes hardly anything to Dr. Schipper's elaborate
and painstaking Englische Metrik. I saw from the first
that it could be of little use to me, as it was absolutely
necessary to make the examination of facts anew and
independently ; and I constantly find that great gulf
between its handling and mine which must always exist,
in the particular subject, between a foreigner and a native.
I admire his diligence and his learning unstintedly, but
" he works his work, I mine." Of all previous important
prosodic studies, English and American, I hope to give
due account in the succeeding volumes. 1
I have thought it better to give the necessarily
numerous examples in footnotes : first, because the
inclusion of them in the text breaks and disturbs argu-
ment and exposition ; secondly, that those who dislike
the text may have the solace without the sin. And I
hope the frontispiece-photograph of the Godric fragments
may deserve at least the praise, once bestowed on another
facsimile, of being " a thing of value " in " an otherwise
worthless book." The combined summaries at the end
of each period, and the Appendices on pervading subjects,
may be serviceable, and I have, as always, endeavoured to
make the Index as useful as possible. The little Glossary
of technicalities prefixed is offered out of no impertinent
1 The work of Mr. Bridges and Mr. Omond, and the prosodic part of the
History of Mr. Courthope, all of whom I may, I hope, call my friends, must
be at least mentioned here. I have the misfortune to disagree sometimes
with all of them there is no such " fair field full of fighting folk " as Prosody ;
but this does not affect my salute. And had Mr. J. B. Mayor's English Metre
been fuller, I had hardly written this book.
viii PREFACE
officiousness, or presumption of the reader's ignorance, but
on strong representations of its desirableness.
Unfortunately, I cannot hope to escape the penalties
of "interloping," as far at least as this volume is con-
cerned. Very little attention has hitherto been paid to
Middle English literature as literature, and the attention
that has actually been paid to it has been bestowed
mainly by those who are philologists first of all, if not
last of all also. I " follow not them," for reasons partly
exposed at pp. 1 66 sq. of this volume ; and even if the
Scaligerian tradition of manners had not clung to philo-
logy, I could not expect a warm welcome in the good
sense. It is even not quite uncommon already to find
warnings, quite genuine and respectable, uttered in
reference to the supposed prejudices arising, in dealings
with such matter as that of the early part of this History,
from acquaintance with the later developments of English
literature. Such prejudices are, no doubt, possible. But
I would very strenuously entreat students of the subject,
and critics of this book, to consider whether there is not
another set of prejudices which is likely to be at least
equally operative, being derived in all cases from neglect of
these developments, and in some, perhaps, from insufficient
acquaintance with them. It is not very difficult it can
at any rate be done with some application in no very
great number of years to acquaint oneself with the
theories of phonetics and philology, and to apply them
in an orthodox manner to whatsoever presents itself.
It takes a very much longer time a number of years
which excites not so much sensations of pride as sensa-
tions of ruefulness as one looks back on it to acquaint
oneself with English literature and English poetry at
large. In the one case there is a cheerful and helpful body
of teachers, fellow-students, and disciples, to rally round
one, and assert the prerogative of scholarship ; in the
PREFACE ix
other it is only here and there that one can look for a
comrade who has gone through the same experiences.
And while in the first case the differences no doubt exist-
ing, and existing rather importantly for our present purpose,
are minor ; on the other they are sometimes much more
important, and prevent the assumption, towards the public
of laymen, of that confident corporate face which has so
much effect. Yet it was not, as a rule, in company that
the knight of adventure achieved the best rewards of the
adventurous.
I do not know whether it is too personal to give as a
conclusion the origin, or one of the origins, in my own
case, of the central idea of this book, that feet or " spaces "
are the integers, the grounds, the secret, of English
prosody. More than forty years ago, I was reading the
Odyssey one evening in a set of Oxford rooms, on the
ground-floor looking into Merton Street. Somebody had
a wine not far off ; and the respectable " Slap " (whom
Oxford men of my generation will remember) had brought
his " noise " to the spot according to custom. Just as I
came to the Song of the Sirens, they were playing a
certain waltz of the day, well known to me (for like the
unfortunate hero of a contemporary comic ditty I was
" very fond of dancing ") as The Cornfloiver. And it
struck me, as I listened to the slow voluptuous music,
and read the famous line with the clinging u sound
pervading it, and rendered poignant by the sharper z's
and o's and as
// aye vw, 1 TroXvaiv 'OSvcrev, /^y<* KvSos
with how little truncation (of the last word only) it could
be adjusted spaced to the waltz-time itself, different as
it is from that of the natural hexameter. I do not mean
to say that I elaborated a theory of prosody at the age of
1 This is surely better than S.y' l&v.
x PREFACE
eighteen. But I had, even before that, been accustomed to
scan (and if possible to scan in different ways) the poetry
of which I was, and ever have been, an unsatiated and
insatiable lover ; and by degrees things shaped themselves.
Perhaps the Sirens are dangerous guides here as elsewhere,
but I have never been so certain of that. At any rate, I
am sure that attention to prosody never barred or spoiled
attention to poetry, except in those who have been made
unpoetical from the beginning. The poets, it is true,
escape us more or less. " Their feet have trod so near to
God, we may not follow them." But some footprints on
the ways by which they reached the Divine Presence
remain. And of these ways perhaps the most clearly
trodden, and perhaps the farthest-reaching of all, is the
Way of Metre. 1
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
EDINBURGH, Feb. 22, 1906.
1 I cannot express my thanks too heartily to Professors Ker, Elton, and
Gregory Smith for the kindness with which they have read my proofs on
this rather troublesome matter, and for the admirable suggestions which they
have made. Also I must warmly thank my colleague, Mr. A. B. Webster,
Lecturer in English in the University of Edinburgh, for undertaking to read
the final proofs of the illustrative passages once more with the books, and
Mr. Fuller Maitland and Professor Niecks for information as to the Godric music.
Lastly, if it be not too impudent, I should like to express my infinite thanks to
two other friends, who, I fear, will disapprove many things in this book to
Dr. Furnivall and to Professor Skeat. But for their work, for that of others
whom they very mainly have encouraged and enlisted, and for that of Thomas
Wright most of all in the generation before them, we should not have had
those texts without which I myself never care to work on any subject what-
soever, and which in this case have gone far to secure us access to the
whole range of English poetry. I dare say my use of what they have
provided is vicious ; but at least no one shall say of my book, as Sir Philip
Sidney said in a certain audacious poetic inversion, ' ' Do they call virtue there
ungratefulness ? "
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The Title Definition of subject Matters barred or subordinated The
matter preferred, and the method to be applied to it The time
concerned Illustrations from Professor Skeat on Guest and
Chaucer Antecedent Prosodies Anglo-Saxon Latin Its diver-
gent lessons The earlier or "classical" metre The later "accen-
tual " rhythm The clash of Rhythm and Metre Rhyme
Greek (?) French and Proven9al Scandinavian Celtic
Summary .......
CHAPTER II
FROM IIOO(?) TO I2IO(?)
Difficulty as to dates and documents Working solution and selection
The Canute song The fragments of St. Godric The Pater-
noster The Moral Ode The Orison of Our Lady Layamon
The Ormulum The lesson of their examination The " foot " or
" measure unit " Its internal and external arrangement Resem-
blances and differences of the result as compared with the mother-
prosodies The importance and influence of rhyme Illustrated
from the Rhyming Poem and Layamon From the Ormulwn and
the other pieces From the Paternoster, Orison, and Poema Morale
And generally ... 27
CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
PAGE
The documents Layamon B The later Moral Ode The Bestiary
Sinners Beivare, etc. The Love- Rune The Owl and the Nightin-
gale Tendency to syllabic rigidity The correctives of this Versi-
cular survival : Proverbs of Alfred Modified in Proverbs of
Hendyng Genesis and Exodus The Northern Psalter Robert of
Gloucester The earliest Romances : Havelok King Horn -The
earliest English fabliaux . . . . .50
INTERCHAPTER I . ... 72
BOOK II
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I
THE METRICAL ROMANCES
Scale and matter of the period The general prosodic phenomena of
metrical Romance The Auchinleck MS. The octosyllabic
couplet poems Those in "Romance stanza" Origin and char-
acter of this Other stanzas : Sir Tristrem Others Lybius
Dtsconus, etc. . . . . . . .89
CHAPTER II
ALLITERATIVE ROMANCE AND THE ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL
GENERALLY
The reappearance of alliterative measure Its character : interim com-
parison of Layamon and Langland The wholly unrhymed poems :
William of Palerne, etc. Character and influence of their versifi-
cation The poems with rhyme and stanza Gawain and the Green
Knight The Awntyrs of Arthtir The Pistyl of Susan The
Pearl Merits and dangers of the blend Character of the reaction
generally . . . . . . .100
CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY BEFORE OR CONTEMPORARY
WITH CHAUCER GOWER
PACE
Robert of Brunne His metrical jumble Lyric: MS. Harl. 2253
Analysis of its metres Alison The Cuckoo Song, note Lesson of
these Especially as to Equivalence and Foot-division The Percy
Society "Religious Poems" William of Shoreham Wright's
"Political Songs" The Cursor Mundi Minor poems of the
Vernon MS. " The Dispute between a Good Man and the Devil "
" The Castle of Love " Hampole Minot Gower His octo-
syllabics His other verse His general quality . . .112
CHAPTER IV
CHAUCER
Plan of campaign What Chaucer had before him in prosody His
work : The Romaunt of the Rose The early " Minor Poems "
The ABC and its stanza Rhetorical prosody The Complaint
unto Pity Rhyme-royal The Book of the Duchess The Com-
plaint of Mars The Parliament of Foules The other Minors
Their lesson Troilus and Creseide The House of Fame
Cadence, note The decasyllabic : retrospect of its origin ; and
study of its virtues The Legend of Good Women Digression on
difficulties The crux of text "Critical" editions of the classics
and of Middle English Solid points for discussion : the stanza
forms The lines Decapitation or initial monosyllabic foot Tri-
syllabic feet Elision and Slur Trisyllabics proper Alexandrines
Syllable-values Rhyme Note on " Chauceriana " . .143
NOTE ON CHAUCERIANA . 178
CHAPTER V
LANGLAND AND OTHER ALLITERATIVES
Piers Plowman Its general character The verse compared with
Anglo-Saxon With Layamon Its intrinsic values : Structure
Alliteration Rhymelessness Quality of the lines Qualifications
of the rhythm Other alliterative poems c. 1400. . .179
INTERCHAPTER II . . 189
xiv CONTENTS
BOOK III
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I
THE DRAMA
PAGE
The Harrowing of Hell The York Plays The Townley The
Coventry The Chester The rest . . . 203
CHAPTER II
THE SUCCESSORS OF CHAUCER
Ungracious state of the subject Lydgate and his reputation His older
panegyrists His recent defenders The Minor Poems London
Lickpenny The Story of Thebes The Temple of Glass The
Assembly of Gods The Secrets of the Philosoffres The Two
Nightingale Poems The Pilgrimage and other octosyllabic poems
Occleve An interim lesson from the pair The last group
Hawes The Conversion of Swearers The Pastime of Pleasure
Barclay Skel ton His " doggerel "The " Skeltonic " verse . 218
CHAPTER III
BALLADS AND OTHER FOLK POETRY MISCELLANEOUS
The " Ballad Question " not ours Ballad metre very much ours Its
history and qualities The original fourteener Chevy Chase
Gamelyn The Nut-brown Maid The great Carol The Suffolk
Dirge Miscellanea : songs and carols Miscellanea : longer
works ........ 246
CHAPTER IV
THE PROSODY OF THE SCOTTISH POETS
Character and relative importance Correctness and its moral Points
for attention Early octosyllabic couplet : Barbour The Saints'
Lives Wyntoun Blind Harry James I. Henryson Dunbar
His successors not equal Douglas The j&neid The original
poems The Eighth Prologue Lyndsay The Reformation satires
CONTENTS
PAGE
Minor poems generally Alexander Scott Old-fashioned beauty
of his metres Montgomerie The Cherry and Slae metre Others
Hume and Mure ...... 265
INTERCHAPTER III ... . 288
NOTE ON THE THREE PRECEDING BOOKS . . 299
BOOK IV
THE COMING OF SPENSER
CHAPTER I
THE TURN OF THE TIDE ITALIAN INFLUENCE
Outline of subject Specific quality, for the purpose, of Italian, and of
the sonnet itself Wyatt's general effect The English sonnet In
Wyatt In Surrey Other forms " Poulter's measure " Wyatt's
intertwisted decasyllabics Surrey's other metres His blank verse 303
CHAPTER II
THE TURN OF THE TIDE CLASSICAL INFLUENCE
Twofold direction of this Pseudo-classical "versing" Metrical study 318
CHAPTER III
THE POETS BETWEEN SURREY AND SPENSER
Constituents Predominance of the fourteener Googe His snapped
verses Turberville Tusser Gascoigne The later miscellanists
The translators Sackville The Mirror for Magistrates . 322
CHAPTER IV
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY DRAMA TO MARLOWE
The great transition Its chief plank : doggerel Alexandrines Bale's
Kingjohan St. Mary Magdalene, etc. Heywood, etc. Progress
of the doggerel Examples The Four Elements Calisto and
CONTENTS
Melibcea Every Man, etc. Others And others again to Shake-
speare The metrical aspect of the doggerel group The infancy
of blank verse Gorboduc Contrast of potentiality and later
achievement The Misfortunes of Arthur The Marlowe group . 335
CHAPTER V
SPENSER
His position, looking before and after The Shepherds Kalendar The
" February " metre The others Other poems Mother Hubbard's
Talc Spenser as a sonneteer The Prothalamion and Epithala-
mion The Faerie Queene, and its stanza A true prosodic entity
The diction Capacities of the stanza, internal and co-operative 350
INTERCHAPTER IV ... . 370
APPENDICES (I. Equivalence, etc. ; II. Common Syllables ; III.
Doggerel; IV. Alliteration; V. Feet 1200-1600; VI. Metres,
do. ; VII. Pause, do. ; VIII. Rhyme, do. ; IX. Vowel-Music, do.) 381
INDEX ........ 423
GLOSSARIOLUM TECHNICUM
For excuse of this short hand-list see Preface. It is confined to words of
frequent occurrence. Others are in Index.
Anacrusis. A half- foot or syllable prefixed to the regular metrical scheme.
In English, though there are examples of pure anacrusis, it generally takes
the form of a monosyllabic foot which may be included in the scheme.
Some have proposed to call it "catch."
Arsis. This term, and its correlative thesis, are rather differently, and some-
times contradictorily, used by prosodists. I use it always as meaning the
lengthening caused by raising or emphasising the voice, and thesis as the
contrary process, or occasion, of shortening by drop or slip.
Casura. At one time an odd habit existed in English of using this as equiva-
lent to "elision." I always use it as = "pause," and as = the most
important pause in the line, if there are more pauses than one. In classical
scansion the caesuras are usually penthemimeral, i.e. at the fifth syllable,
or hephthemimeral, at the seventh. See note p. 270.
Catalexis. In the use of this term (literally " leaving off") and its derivatives
there are also some variations. In the following pages it always means,
when used generally, defect or excess at the end of a line. Catalectic
simply means that a syllable is wanting ; brachycatalectic that a whole foot
is so ; hypercatalectic that there is a syllable over.
Dimeter, etc. (see note p. 169). It is usual in Greek to employ this notation
of anapaests as well as of iambics. The English anapaest is, however, as
a rule, a rather bulkier foot than the Greek, and when used as a base is
less frequently shortened by equivalence. There is, therefore, some excuse
for using "tetrameter" here, though there is an anapaestic tetrameter
proper in Aristophanes.
Epanaphora. Beginning successive clauses or verses with the same word or
phrase. It must be distinguished from epanorthosis, which means picking
up a word again to play on, or emphasise it.
Eqiiivalence and substitution. See Appendix.
Feet. Most of these are familiar to everybody, but some are not, so that it
may be well to give a full list : Pyrrhic, \j \j ; Iamb, w ; Trochee, w ;
Spondee, ; Tribrach, ^i^>^>; Molossus, ; Anapcest, ww ; Dactyl,
^j\j', Cretic, w ; Amphibrach, w w; Bacchic, w ; Antibacchic,
^> ; Paon, ww\^ , the odd syllable taking each of the four possible
positions ; Epitrite, w, ditto ; Choriamb, w w ; Antispast,
\j ~> ; Ionic a minore, \j^ ; Ionic a majore, \j w ; Di-iamb,
w ^/ ; Ditrochee, w w; Dochmiac, a five-syllable foot most com-
monly w v> , but of course largely variable.
BOOK I
THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS
VOL. I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The Title Definition of subject Matters barred or subordinated
The matter preferred, and the method to be applied to it
The time concerned Illustrations from Professor Skeat on
Guest and Chaucer Antecedent Prosodies Anglo-Saxon
Latin Its divergent lessons The earlier or " classical " metre
The later "accentual" rhythm The clash of Rhythm and
Metre Rhyme Greek (?) French and Proven$al Scandi-
navian Celtic Summary.
i. DEFINITION OF THE SUBJECT
I HAVE called the book which I am proposing to write, The Title.
A History of English Prosody, after some deliberate con-
sideration of alternatives. " History of English Rhythms "
is not only a title preoccupied by the best-known and
(with all its faults) by far the best book existing on the
subject that of Dr. Guest but it was used in that book
with such a definitely polemical, if not actually question-
begging, intention that it could hardly be thought of.
And " History of English Metre" which for some time I
preferred, seems to be open to complementary objections.
It might be taken as aggressive on the opposite side
to Dr. Guest's attack ; and if one guarded against this,
there would be the serious logical difficulty that we have
to deal with some things to which the term " metre "
can only be applied by a great stretch of propriety.
" History of English Versification " is free from these
objections, but might seem to promise a more theoretical
handling than I intend, for reasons to be shortly exposed ;
3
4 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
and " History of English Verse " would be too large, and
might be taken to signify some competition with Warton
and my friend Mr. Courthope. " Prosody," on the other
hand, except to those who take fright or offence at any-
thing that even suggests the influence of the classical
languages in this matter, seems entirely anodyne, the
term having long been used in all languages, modern as
well as ancient, for a division of, or a supplement to,
Grammar, and carrying no treacherous or question-
begging connotation with it.
Definition of It is, however, still desirable to set down exactly the
signification which it is intended to attach to the word,
or, to put the thing differently, the extent of claim which
it is intended to mark out on the subject. The inclusion
will be found tolerably wide, I think, but there will be
throughout one exclusion which I fear may possibly be
resented or contemned, judging from the eager attention
which has been bestowed upon the matter excluded by
many, if not most, who have handled the subject itself.
I do not propose, in these pages, to take a side upon, to
argue out, or (except when it meets us unavoidably in
connection with some of the questions mooted) to refer
at all to the problem so frequently and hotly discussed,
with, as some think, such very little effect, as to the par-
ticular agency which constitutes that difference of the
value of syllables out of which rhythm and metre are
made. That there is such a difference, and that out of it
rhythm and metre are constituted, not merely in English,
but in every European language known to us, hardly the
very rage of controversy will, I suppose, deny. The first
line of the ALneid and the first line of the Caedmonian or
Pseudo-Caedmonian Genesis, any stanza of Sappho and
any versicle of Walt Whitman, alike consist of what till
recently nobody hesitated to call " longs and shorts "
of two classes of sound-values (possibly subdividable into
minor classes, but broadly distinguished each from other)
the juxtaposition of which, on no matter what system,
constitutes what most people call poetry, and what all
who use the terms call rhythmical and metrical writing.
CHAP, i INTRODUCTORY
On what, in turn, constitutes this difference I do not pro- Matters
pose, unless obiter or accidentally, or when dealing histori- ba *i- or ^
cally with those who have discussed it, to say one word in
this book. I call the two classes " longs " and " shorts "
without the very slightest innuendo or insinuation that I
believe the source of difference to be the greater length
of time, the greater quantity, in the technical sense, of the
one as compared with the other. I do not, if any one
cares for my opinion, think that " length " and " shortness "
always or strictly do constitute the difference. Neither
do I think that " stress " or " slur," that " weight " or
" lightness," supplies the universal cause ; nor that " sharp-
ness " or absence of sharpness, nor that " strength " or
" weakness " does so ; nor that any of the other pairs of
opposites which have been suggested will suffice. All these
oppositions may now and then be acceptable enough ; in
many cases combinations of them may exist. But to me
all this is a previous question, and one in the solution of
which I am wholly uninterested, not least because I do
not think it possible.
Therefore the battle of Accent v. Quantity, 1 which The matter
seems to interest most writers on Prosody so much, will, P referred -
except historically, make very little figure in this book.
I think, I must confess, that most persons who have
used these words combatively have, as Mr. Matthew
Arnold most falsely and unjustly said of another matter,
" got ruffled by fighting " till they have really forgotten
what the words they use mean. When I speak of Prosody
I mean : The laws and variations observable in the rhythmical
and metrical grouping of sets of the two values just referred
to. And I call these two values " long " and " short " just
as I might call them " Abracadabra " and " Abraxas "
absolutely without prejudice or preference to any theory
of the exact process by which the one becomes Abraxas
or the other Abracadabra.
On the other hand, we shall endeavour to enquire and the
method to be
1 Once more I shall be perfectly frank and state my own opinion, which is a ^^ 1
that in English accent is a cause #/" quantity, but not the only cause, and not
a stable one. See App. on "Common Syllables."
6 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
exactly and faithfully, from the very beginning of what
can fairly be called English literature, what the arrange-
ments of these two base-values have been, and how the
manipulation of them has effected (or, to be entirely
impartial, has coincided with) improvement, or deteriora-
tion, or stationary quality in English poetry. To put the
matter in yet another light, the subject of our enquiries
will be Architecture, not Petrology ; Painting, not the
enquiry into the chemical constitution of colours ; Art,
not Science. But we shall find it possible and desirable,
if not positively necessary, to include in our enquiries
all important previous enquiries into the subject, because
these constitute a very important part of the actual
history thereof.
The time The system of temporal limitation requires less
' ' comment. The distinction between Anglo-Saxon and
English is one of those things which escape the too
curious enquirer, but present no difficulties to the com-
munis sensus ; and this distinction is never more unmis-
takable by the latter than in the case of verse. Exactly
how the islands may be dotted across the Behring
Straits of 1000-1200 the philologist may be left to settle
for himself. It is certain that between the poems of the
Exeter Book, which roughly represent the further shore,
and the work of Layamon, for instance, which represents
the hither, a gulf is fixed, so far as we can judge, far
mightier than that between the poems of perhaps seven
centuries earlier and those of 1000, than, as we more
or less know, that between the poems of seven actual
centuries later and those of 1200. From the hither
shore, therefore, we begin, yet not without consideration
of the further, or of the islands between, or of the possible
assistances to communication.
Lastly, the unchanging purpose of the book is, and
will be, to let the texts and the facts tell their own story;
and to submit, in all intelligent interpretation, to that
story absolutely. The writer has had some practice in
literary history, and, whatever his dose of original sin,
whatever his accumulation of self-sought corruption, ought
CHAP, i INTRODUCTORY
to know something about it by this time. He is con-
vinced that the greatest of all dangers, the things to be
avoided much more than a rock from which you may
escape only damaged, and as much as a whirlpool
wherein you will be wholly whelmed, are, firstly, the
" must have been," the assumption of convenient but
unknown facts, and the suppression of inconvenient
though known ones ; secondly, the attempt to dictate to
great artists, the preposterous theory of the " monstrous
beauty," the disqualification of the player because he
has not played an artificial game. Rhythm and metre,
accent and quantity, sections here and sections there, strict
syllabic identity and elastic syllabic equivalence, all are
good when they appear in the making of good poetry,
none are good when they appear in much more when they
have apparently caused the making of poetry that is bad.
Nobody, in the study of literature, should be afraid of
having his heart grieved with anything that is truly shown
to his eyes. For it is only fear that hath torment, and the
love of literature, like other loves, casts out fear altogether. 1
I shall perhaps best illustrate the principles on which
this book will proceed as well as, incidentally, the extreme
difficulties which are introduced in the discussion of
prosodic matters by the difference of the eyes with which
men see, and the difference of the ears with which they
hear, from two criticisms of my friend Professor Skeat,
than whom it would be impossible for me to mention any
living authority on English with sincerer honour, respect,
and (both for public and private help) gratitude.
The first is the following passage from Dr. Skeat's illustrations
Preface to Guest :-
1 I do not know whether I ought to add a third danger, my own attempt
to avoid which will no doubt, as it has done already, provoke or grieve the
excellent persons who always desiderate "philosophical" treatment of a
subject. I have dared their anger and their sorrow before, and must, how-
ever regretfully, dare them again. Probably an abstract handling of Prosody
is possible the mathematical element in it prevents difficulty in allowing that.
But such a handling is not the task which I have set myself. I may say,
without flippancy, qui taime le suive. He should even, if he will con-
descend to do so, receive considerable assistance in his quest from the results
of my humbler enquiries.
8 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
The mark | so constantly used throughout the book to indi-
cate the scansion invariably marks the accented syllables, and is
not used to mark the division into feet as in the case of Greek
and Latin verses. It is, in fact, only another way of marking
accent, used in place of the more usual, but far more clumsy,
method of employing marks of accentuation. Thus it is the
same thing whether we write
When | the Bri|tish war|rior queen |
or whether we write
When the British warrior queen.
. . . Yet, when Dr. Guest correctly scans a certain line thus
In | the hexam|eter ri|ses: the fountain's siljvery col|umn,
it is curious to find a MS. note in Mr. Swifte's copy to this
effect : " I think the proper scansion of this line is
In the hexjameter j rises the | fountain's | silvery | column."
That is to say, Mr. Swifte "corrects" the author by scanning
the line exactly the same as before : he has merely employed the
symbol | in a sense of his own, by dividing the line into feet in
the usual schoolboy fashion.
The other passage is from a note to Chaucer's
Boethius, Metre I, last two lines
O ye, my frendes, what or wherto avauntede ye me to ben weleful ?
For he that hath fallen stood nat in stedefast degree,
which represent in Latin
Quid me felicem toties jactastis amici ?
Qui cecidit stabili non erat ille gradu.
The note is :
With regard to the last sentence, Mr. Stewart remarks in his
essay on Boethius, that Chaucer here " actually reproduces the
original metre, i.e. a hexameter and pentameter." The true
M.E. pronunciation must, for this purpose, be entirely neglected,
which amounts to saying that Chaucer must have been profoundly
unconscious of any such intention.
Now these passages are very curious. It is not
necessary to dwell on the perhaps slightly question-begging
description of the usual accentual marking as " clumsy,"
or upon the strange supposition that another mark, which
if it has any meaning at all means division, does not
divide. The point to which I wish to draw attention is
CHAP, i INTRODUCTORY
Professor Skeat's assertion that the method of scansion
which poor Mr. Swifte suggested in his " schoolboy "
fashion is "exactly the same" as Dr. Guest's, and (I
suppose) that the actual division of the first line of
Boadicea is " exactly the same " as if it were divided,
When the | British | Warrior | Queen.
Let us examine this. According to the system of prosody
which I, like Mr. Swifte, adopt and understand, the Guestian
division of the two lines makes the Boadicea line iambic
and the Coleridge line anapaestic ; and as a matter of
fact I think the latter right, while I think the first wrong.
But how can they be "exactly the same"? The
respective rhythms in the first case are :
A B
When When the
the Brit- British
ish War- Warrior
rior Queen. Queen.
In the second :
A B
In In the hex-
the hexam- ameter
eter ri- rises the
ses the fount- fountain's
ain's sil- silvery
very col- column,
umn.
I lay no stress on the division of words, which I do
not think a very important point, though some persons of
worship think otherwise, and which, as it happens, cuts
different ways. I think Mr. Swifte is right in his division
of the hexameter, supposing that an English dactyl is
possible, which, in continuous scansion, I do not believe.
But these things are questions of taste. What seems to
me to be not a question of taste at all, but one which lies
at the absolute foundation of any possible theory of
prosody, is whether Professor Skeat is right, or whether he
is wrong, in regarding the two systems as " exactly the
same." To my ear, as also to my eye and my mind, they
are irreconcilably different. The base-rhythms of the two
io THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
plans are diametrically opposed, the poetical effect is
entirely unlike, and I can hardly perceive any concordat
or compromise as to English verse being possible between
those who perceive, and those who do not perceive, this
difference.
The other case is of a conveniently different kind.
Again, I shall not dwell on the point that "the true
pronunciation of Middle English " is very mainly guess-
work resting on ingenious hypotheses not a century
old. 1 Never mind that What we are asked to believe
is that Chaucer, translating a certain rhythm, and apparently
reproducing that rhythm, was not consciously (or even, I
suppose, ^consciously) reproducing it at all.
Now observe this. The Latin hexameter is a very
artificial arrangement, and it is x to one that it could be
reproduced accidentally. The Latin pentameter is a still
more artificial rhythm, and it is y to one that it could be
so reproduced. But the two combined are of such an
artificiality, that for any one to have them before him
and to reproduce them without conscious or unconscious
echo is an improbability, the odds against which I must
leave to some member of Professor Skeat's University
to work out, for a mere Oxonian's mathematics are not
equal to it.
But an illustration is always something of a digression,
though this digression was, I think, worth making. I need
but partly add, and partly repeat, that my object is here
to examine, in chronological order, the practice and the
theories of English Prosody which have actually existed
in the seven centuries between 1200 and 1900 ; that so
far as I myself start with a working theory of Prosody, it
is that it consists of arrangements of certain factors which
are themselves juxtapositions of sound-values of (generally
1 It has been objected to me that we do know, and not guess, that
" weleful " was trisyllabic, and so on. But I think I can hit this ball well to
the boundary. In Chaucer's time, if not by Chaucer, we know that these ^'s
were getting obliterated, and whatever he might do in deliberate verse, he
might easily neglect them in a mere vague haunting echo of memory.
Indeed, he seems actually to have written " welful " elsewhere. (Observe
that I do not say he " intended " to reproduce the rhythm.)
INTRODUCTORY u
speaking) two different kinds ; that by calling these sound-
values "long" and "short" I do not intend to beg the question
as to their origin and differentia ; and that in calling their
combinations or arrangements generally" feet," and individu-
ally or specifically by the names of iamb, anapaest, and
the like, by using such other terms of classical prosody as
catalexis, anacrusis, and so forth, I am again taking no
liberty and spreading no snare. The accent-man may,
wherever he pleases, substitute for my " iamb " " combination
of unaccented and accented syllables " ; the stress-man for
my " anapaest " " unit of two unstressed and one stressed
syllable " ; the disciple of Ellis one of his chains of
"super-strong," "sub-weak," etc., for my "dimeter" and my
" heroic." If, on such substitution, it be found that I have
ignored any clench, begged any question, taken any unfair
advantage, I shall give up the passage altogether. In so
far as I appeal to any tribunal, it is that of the fairly
sensitive and well-trained ear. How would such an ear
" scan " (again with no malice in the word) each line ?
and when such an ear has pronounced, what most rational
rationale presents itself as a formula to express the
scansion ? Of the answers to these questions, and the
working-out necessary to get those answers, I hope to
make the stuff and substance of this book.
2. "THE MOTHERS"
Among the influences, conscious or unconscious, actual Antecedent
or possible, which must or may have acted upon an Prosodies -
Englishman desirous of writing English verse in the twelfth
century, the antecedent prosodies of the languages with
which he was acquainted, or which had in this or that way
worked upon the language he was using, must, of course,
hold a great place, and for our purpose almost the greatest.
They may be said to be five in number (A) Anglo-Saxon,
(B) Latin (with a faint possibility of Greek), (C) French,
(D) Scandinavian, and (E) Celtic. The part played by
the first three is certain and all-important ; that of the
12 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
last two much smaller, and in any direct fashion rather
problematical, but scarcely to be quite neglected.
A. Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon. The assignment of the first place among these to
Anglo-Saxon * is not merely conventional, nor is it in any
sense perfidious. It is true that some of the most serious
errors (as they seem to the present writer) which have
ever crept into the discussion of English prosody, have come
from a too obstinate determination to serve that prosody
heir, at all costs and in all points, to Anglo-Saxon. It is
also true that, as I think we shall see, what has been by an
engaging absurdity called " the rhythm of the foreigner "
has in the main superseded the rhythm of this by no
means aboriginal native. But, in the first place, the lan-
guage which supplies the main stuff and substance of all
English speech, and which supplied all but an infinitesimal
proportion of it at the time when our enquiries proper
begin, cannot but have a prerogative position. And, as we
shall see, Anglo-Saxon supplied much more than the
materials ; it supplied an invaluable differentiating element
from " the rhythm of the foreigner " in perhaps the most
important of all points, the point which has given English
poetry most of its predominant and incomparable beauty.
As is pretty generally known, Anglo-Saxon prosody,
though in one sense by no means simple, is in another
simplicity itself. With rare and late exceptions, the whole
body of Anglo-Saxon verse reduces itself to a single form
which was practically identical in principle in all the
cognate languages English, German, and Scandinavian.
1 In the remarks which follow, the laws assigned to Anglo-Saxon verse are
drawn up so as to exhibit not the writer's private opinions, but the consensus
of the best modern scholars. The comments are those of one who does not
pretend to professional Anglo-Saxon "scholarship" himself, but who has
read all printed Anglo-Saxon poetry carefully. They are those of one who
has read Middle English and Modern English verse as to the manner born.
Although it is sometimes thought illiberal to lay stress on this advantage, I
believe it to be all-important. The Welsh critic who, the other day, observed
that a Welsh postman could correct the work on Welsh prosody of the best
Celtic scholar in France, may have shown something of the proverbial " cen-
figenousness " of his race in expression ; but I fancy he was right in fact.
INTRO D UCTOR Y 1 3
The staple line of this verse consists of two halves or
sections, each containing two " long," " strong," " stressed,"
" accented " syllables, these same syllables being, to the
extent of three out of the four, alliterated. At the first
casting of the eye on a page of Anglo-Saxon poetry
no common resemblances except these seem to emerge.
But we see on some pages an altogether extraordinary
difference in the lengths of the lines or, in other words, of
the number of "short," "weak," "unstressed," "unaccented"
syllables which are allowed to group themselves round the
pivots or posts of the rhythm. Yet attempts have been
made, not without fair success, to divide the sections or
half-lines into groups or types of rhythm, more or less
capable of being represented by the ordinary marks of
metrical scansion. 1
These, however, though in the sections, or in parts of
them, something like our rhythm-bars may be seen, never
for long together, and very seldom even as individual
wholes, give us rhythm corresponding to ours. The
difference between a passage of Langland and a passage of
Chaucer appears everywhere, and of course even more strik-
ingly, between a passage of any Anglo-Saxon poet and
one of any modern. A sort of monotone or hum, generally
of what we call trochaic type, less frequently of what we
call dactylic or anapaestic, will indeed disengage itself for the
attentive reader. But nothing more, look where he will
and school his ear as carefully as he may, in Caedmon and
Cynewulf, in Beowulf and Byrhtnoth, everywhere and in
everything. The sharp and uncompromising section, the
accents, the alliteration these are all that the poet has to
trust to in the way of rules sine queis non. But before
long the said careful reader becomes aware that there is a
" lucky licence," which is as a rule, and much more also ;
1 The standard authority on the subject is, of course, E. Sievers, Altger-
manische Metrik, Halle, 1893. Herr Sievers, with others many and
reverend, would make the correspondence of groups much more exact than
it used to be thought, and it is urged that some combinations of syllables
never occur. If so, so much the better for the theory of the present book,
which can, however, do without it. For an excellent summary account see
Mr. W. P. Ker, The Dark Ages, Edinburgh, 1904, p. 228 sq.
14 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
and that this licence itself by no means merely licentious
concerns the allowance of unaccented and unalliterated
syllables. The range of it is so great that on a single
page-opening, taken at random, you may find the lines
varying from nine to fifteen syllables, and, seeking a little
farther, come to a variation between eight and twenty-one.
Such contrasts are of course exceptional, but the contrast
as such, and its principles such as they are, are the rule
the fourth rule after a fashion, as we have said. Middle
pause, so strong as to be more than pause only, allitera-
tion, accent, and substitution of equivalenced groups
instead of rigid syllabic uniformity these are the four
pillars of the structure of Anglo-Saxon prosody.
B. Latin
Latin. There should be very little reasonable doubt that no
preceptist example in the prosody of Early Middle English
had half the force of that of Latin. That Latin was the
" Grammatica " l the pattern literary language of all
nations in the Middle Ages admits of no question. That
it was practically the only language in which these nations
had finished literary examples before them admits of as
little. But in regard to English, there is the important
additional fact that the first Englishman who attained a
distinct literary position had composed a treatise in versi-
fication which, according to his lights, embodied the
traditional ideas of Latin prosody in so far as they were
received and receivable by the time. Bede's Ars Metrica
was certainly the main, and not improbably the only,
treatise on the subject that any Englishman of fair
education was likely to know for some five hundred years
after the date of its composition. And it reflected through
Victorinus, Audax, Mallius Theodorus, and others, as far
back, at least, as Terentianus Maurus ideas derived from
the best classical times, mingled with others derived from
times which, in the common estimate, are not so good.
Any reader of this treatise, however, and any student
1 Cf. Dante, De Vulgari Eloquio.
CHAP, i IN TROD UCTOR Y i 5
of the subject, with or without a treatise to assist him, its divergent
but availing himself of the actual Latin poetry at his lessons -
disposal, must have been, whether he chose to admit it or
not, puzzled, and, unless he was a person of extraordinary
genius, might have been misled, by the fact that this Latin
poetry presented examples of verse constructed on two
almost wholly different systems. There was, on the one The earlier or
hand, the system of " classical " prosody, of which the best " classica1 '
1 J m . metre.
examples, from Virgil to Claudian, were perfectly well
known to even the darkest of the " Dark " ages. Although
a thorough and experimental acquaintance with this is
not so common as it would have been fifty or even
thirty years ago, it cannot be necessary, in the introductory
matter of a book like the present, to give a minute account
of it to any probable reader. Derived directly and as
a matter of acquiescent learning and deliberate imitation
derived from Greek, it presented a series of orderly arrange-
ments in certain prosodic forms, of syllables, the greater
number of which by far were definitely accounted before-
hand as " long " or " short " ; while of the rest almost all in
Latin, as compared with a somewhat smaller proportion
in Greek, had their length or shortness determined for
them by the circumstances of their position by the number
or character of the consonants which followed the particular
vowel in its actual collocation.
The units thus classified beforehand were to be arranged
in certain schemes of metrical adjustment. Some of these,
such as the Alcaic and Sapphic, admitted, in Latin, of no
variation, except by elision the technical disappearance
or occupation of a final syllable, under certain fixed rules,
before the initial one of the next word. The number of
syllables in a line was here always the same ; the order of
long and short syllables in other words, the arrangement
in " feet " was invariable likewise. Others, such as the
hexameter and some forms of the iambic trimeter, were
arranged on a principle of greater licence. Taking, generally
but not in detail, the equivalence of one long syllable to
two short as granted, " feet " collocations of one long and
a short, of one short and a long, of a long and two shorts,
16 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
of two longs, of three shorts, and of two shorts and a long
might, on conditions more or less rigid, be substituted
for each other. But these licences were in every case
curbed by rules, not so much arbitrary as deduced from
the necessities of keeping the general character of the
line ; and in no case, save in the comparatively rare one
of a " common " syllable, or in virtue of those changes of
position which were themselves rigidly defined, might the
intrinsic quality-quantity of a syllable, the character of
the prosodic integer, be tampered with.
The later Such were the laws of the severer muses of Latin
examples of which, as has been said, were before every
writer of any education from the first civilisation of the
outlying European peoples to the period at which our
book properly begins. But every such writer in every
such nation had before him, at the same time, examples,
in some cases even better known to him, of poetry written
in the same language, but governed by an entirely different
system of versification. In Italy itself the Graeco-Roman
prosody had been merely superimposed upon one based
on quite different principles. Not merely were the
collocations of longs and shorts in the so-called " Satur-
nian " metres (and perhaps in others) arranged on much
simpler and less elaborately varied principles, but the
inviolability of intrinsic quantity (which had already in
Greek been much less 1 than in literary Latin) was of
extremely little account. The stress or slur of the voice
the lilt of the accompanying music were allowed to
make long short and short long with almost entire com-
plaisance ; and to some slight extent this liberty was
allowed to encroach on regular metres, such as the iambic,
which approached nearest to the popular forms.
The results of this, revived and in turn imposed on
" metre " in a fashion which does not directly concern us,
our man of I 200 was constantly hearing in the services of
the Church, and, if he was a reading man, often meeting in
1 I know that some excellent scholars demur to this. But for me the
well-known locus of Martial (ix. [n] 12) settles the question, and I see no
reason to limit it to proper names. (See Appendix, " Common Syllables.")
INTRODUCTORY 17
manuscript specimens of sacred and profane verse. The
lowest term to which the line could be cut down the
syllable had an extraordinary promiscuity of values,
determined apparently by accent, by musical setting or
suggestion, and by many other things, besides or contrary
to the original prosodic quantification ; but the next
superior unit, the " foot," was in quite a different position.
It was clearly upon it that the scansion depended ; you
could take with it either no liberties at all, or liberties in the
older forms strongly determined by the laws of equivalence.
And this establishment and consecration of the foot
communicated an unmistakable rhythmical swing. Further,
in this later prosody there was present something which
was not usual in Classical nor, save late and rarely,
present in Anglo-Saxon prosody that is to say, Rhyme.
And it could not require any remarkable acuteness
to decide (whether consciously or unconsciously) that this
rhyme in the first place bound and clenched the rhythm,
emphasised and ensured its recurrence, in a very convenient
fashion ; in the second, that it accompanied line and rhythm
with an added music no less agreeable than convenient.
The exact origin and progress of the rhythmical reversion
and the rhyme-innovation are very speculative questions.
When, by the results of the vast extension of the later The clash of
Roman Republic and the earlier Roman Empire, Rome m
became the political and literary centre of the Western
world, the Latin language necessarily became the at least
secondary speech of education and means of conversa-
tion to nations whose languages differed indeed very
much from each other, but differed in most, if not in all
cases, even more from Latin. All, beyond question, learnt
the great examples of Roman poetry ; all naturally en-
deavoured to imitate them ; all, as a matter of inevitable
consequence, found the gravest innovations necessary. It
may have looked at first as if mere chaos and barbarism
would be the result ; as a matter of fact the earliest result
that we possess is very nearly chaotic, and is quite barbaric.
The hexameters of Commodian, an African bishop of the
earliest fourth century, are among the greatest curiosities
VOL. I C
1 8 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
of literature. 1 By entirely neglecting the classical qualities
of the words and syllables used, they can be got into
batches of spondees and dactyls which are numerically satis-
factory. But this neglect of quantity, whether intrinsic or
positional, as well as the other neglect of such laws as
that of elision, is an absolute necessity. With the right
quantities, and observing the right laws, Commodian's
lines become mere ruinous heaps, destitute not only of
any metre, but of any rhythm, mere handfuls not so
much of prose as of possible materials of prose. And
when the severer metres were attempted in this fashion,
something not unlike the same result continued to be
produced for more than another thousand years.
But Order, if not the first law of earth, as it is said to
be of Heaven, never takes very long to establish itself
even here below ; and it was quite impossible that nations
which were teeming with poetry, and which were naturally
tempted to express themselves poetically in what they
could not help regarding as the noblest of tongues the
tongue of their rulers, the tongue, before long, of the
dominant religion, the only tongue that enabled a man
to conceal or reveal his thoughts wherever he was
should content themselves with the mere " pigeon "-metre
of the African bishop. It is not the business of this
book to attempt a conjectural there can probably never
be a certain reconstruction of the steps of method, and
the selection of material, which led to the rhythmical
Latin prosody of the Middle Ages one of the most
exquisitely artificial-natural of all prosodic systems, and
one lending itself, with a divine indifference, to poetry and
to doggerel. As observed experimentally throughout the
productions of a thousand years, of which the hymns of the
Latin Church are the noblest, and the " Goliardic " poems
the most amusing examples, it has two main character-
istics, both of which must have presented themselves
1 Here is one :
Respuis infelix bonum disciplinae caelestis,
where the propriety of the quantification as far as the caesura sets off the
anarchy which follows it.
CHAP, i INTRODUCTORY 19
to the more or less distinct and distinguishing conscious-
ness of a fairly educated person in any European country
during the twelfth century, while both were kept by the
services of the Church in the ears, if not exactly in the
minds, of the most uneducated. The first of these was
the great phenomenon of rhyme ; the other was a modi-
fication, very difficult to express in scientific terminology,
but exceedingly easy to seize, and not very difficult to re-
produce in practice, of the exact quantitative measures of
classical poetry, selected, in the first place, with a mainly
instinctive but extraordinarily felicitous eclecticism, and
modified, in the second, after a fashion showing nothing
short of inspiration. 1
The exact origin of rhyme is another of those points Rhyme,
which Fate, or Logic, or, if anybody pleases, Pusillanimity,
dispenses us from attacking. The more probable, though
it is certainly not the favourite, opinion seems to be that
rhyme, of which symptoms, if not full examples, are found
in the early poetry of most parts of the world, and which
is not absent from formal Greek and Latin verse itself,
was kept out of this formal poetry by the simple fact
that its main function of "time-beating" of marking,
emphasising, and accompanying the poetic division was
in these cases made superfluous by the extreme accom-
plishment of the metrical system. It stands equally to
reason that, when it makes its appearance, this formal
accomplishment should in turn be revised, as in any case
it must evidently have been, owing to the different intona-
tion, or rather intonations, natural to the new models. 2
These intonations themselves must have had most to
do with the selection of the metres to be rhythmed, and
the particular alterations applied in the process of rhyth-
micising. But Church music and Church service, on the
1 Among the innumerable but here irrelevant points of interest may be
noted the way in which different nations suited accentual Latin poetry to their
own accent. See this, which many must have dimly thought, well and I
think first expressed, in Mr. Ker's Dark Ages, p. 202 sg. I believe he had
been led to notice it first, as I had myself, by Baudelaire's poem, Franciscae
meae laudes, modern as that is.
8 See note above.
20 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
one hand, and the aggregation of students from all parts
of Europe in the centres of study on the other, seem to
have effected a sort of common measure of prosodic
values ; l and while it is notorious that the exact nation-
ality of most of the comic, bacchic, and amatory poetry of
the two centuries just referred to is extremely dubious, it
is not really possible to discern any difference correspond-
ing to the known nationality of the authors of the great
hymns. It would probably be impossible to effect, and
would certainly be very dangerous to attempt, too many
mediate generalisations in reference to the alterations
preferred. The commonest feet (putting aside the com-
binations of four or even five syllables admitted by
ancient prosody), in that prosody itself, had been iamb,
trochee, and spondee among dissyllabic, dactyl, and
anapaest among trisyllabic feet. But the spondee,
though by no means, as some have thought, an unknown
modern foot (it would be interesting to know how any
correct pronunciation of " humdrum " or " randan " can
make either anything but a spondee), is not common 2 in
the modern tongues, and in mediaeval Latin, at any rate,
the trochee and the anapaest have a greater relative
prominence than in ancient. The systems, or schemes of
arrangement, were exceedingly numerous, and sometimes
of such complication that, without musical accompaniment,
they have an air of non- naturalness. But the most
ancient and the most popular are simple enough, such
as the universally used and extremely effective adjust-
ment of acatalectic and catalectic trochaic dimeters
Pone luctum, Magdalena,
Et serena lacrimas,
which is for some purposes no doubt better arranged in
one " fifteener " ; as its shortened variety of catalectic
and brachycatalectic which gives the still more popular
thirteener
Meum mihi est propositum in taberna mori ;
1 Again with exceptions.
2 Milton, however, was certainly fond of it, and so were others, as we
shall see.
CHAP, i INTRODUCTORY 21
as the galloping dactylic tetrameter
Fumus et mulier et stillicidia.
But both in these and in almost all others there are
noticeable two, perhaps three, things. The first is that
syllabic uniformity is more strictly observed than ever so
much so that even elision is distinctly eschewed. The
second is that these comparatively or wholly rigid syllabic
lengths are cut up into feet as rigid. The third is that
in the selection of the syllables that make up these feet,
classical quantity is ignored in degrees which may seem
to vary, but which in all probability are reducible to one
single norm that of an elastic, but by no means in-
definitely elastic, pronunciation.
In other words, and not to dwell on a subject which,
intensely interesting as it is, is not our subject, the supposed
educated Englishman of 1 100-1200, looking at his Ovid,
and at any poems that happened to be then written in
accent-Latin, would find that in both cases the move-
ment of the verse was separable into definite and the
same units, but that the parts which composed these were
apparently selected on quite different principles. He
would (or he might) notice that the rhythm of such a
line as
Miraque res, media subito tenus exstitit alvo
(Met. xiii. 893) was, as far as the first six words are con-
cerned, identical with that of
Cur mundus militat sub vana gloria
(always supposing that this poem was, as it may have
been, written by I 200). But if he was a really observant
person he would also observe that Ovid never uses, for
such a rhythmical or metrical effect, such combinations of
syllables as cur mundus or sub vana, and that while militat
actually does, and gloria in a different case may often do,
such duty with him, he would carefully abstain from
beginning the next word to militat with a consonant, or
making gloria an oblique case. The observer would, also,
22 THE PERIOD OF THEIORIGINS BOOK i
at least possibly observe that in his own pronunciation
and intonation these refinements were rather superfluous.
What practical conclusions he might draw will be matter
of future consideration for us.
B2. Greek (?)
Greek (?). If anybody at the same time had had any Greek
before him (which is improbable, but not quite impossible), 1
he would have found the same state of things prevailing in
a more aggravated dichotomy. Classical Greek literature
would have presented itself to him with an initial and
continuing superiority of freedom, in respect of common
quantity of syllables and of " equivalent " adjustment
of combined feet, but with a system on the whole as
regular. Modern Greek literature would have shown the
process which was going on in Latin, repeated, anticipated,
or paralleled (for the facts are extremely hard to decide
upon), in a way systematically similar, but very inferior
in actual result. There is not the slightest reason (such
as is sometimes alleged as due to the prejudice arising
from familiarity with classical models) why the hexa-
meters of Tzetzes, the iambics of Theodorus Prodromus,
and the accentual fifteeners of Manasses, should not be at
least as attractive and acceptable as the carolling and
chanting hexameters of Bernard of Morlaix, the solemn
iambics of a hundred hymn-writers, and the tripping and
laughing thirteeners of Mapes, or whosoever may have
stood for " Golias." They are, in fact, not merely not
acceptable, but ineffably disgusting. And though no such
phrase can be applied to the Greek hymns at their best,
yet they seldom rise to the splendour and the " cry " of the
Latin thereby exactly reversing classical experience.
From the point of view of mere prosody, however, this
does not matter. The help or the hindrance provided by
Greek would have been, in rare and doubtful cases, exactly
the same as that provided by Latin in cases innumerable
1 In the Dark Ages we find a good deal of rather " pigeon " Greek ; less
in the early Middle.
CHAP, i INTRODUCTORY 23
and indubitable. The student, or the listener, or the
reader would have been provided with schemes, forms,
practices, sometimes of a rigid, and always of a carefully
adjusted character.
C. French and Provencal 1
The third prosody, French, with which in some ex- French and
amples, at least, he had many chances, and at most some roven f a
certainty, of being familiar, presented qualities not new or
different, but differently combined and adjusted. There
was rhyme, either perfect or imperfect (assonance), which
distinguished it sharply from Anglo-Saxon ; and there
was also a recurrent and diffused rhythm which dis-
tinguished it therefrom at least as strongly. There was
as distinguishing it from at least the classical form
of Latin, and still more remarkably from all forms of
Anglo-Saxon an almost, if not quite, universal refusal
to admit any inequality or equivalence of syllables in the
line. Number of syllables seemed to count alone. But
there was, superadded to this, a sharp caesura such as had
existed in the classical, but did not always exist in the
later, Latin, and which corresponded to the " sections " of
Anglo-Saxon ; and there was an arrangement, not quite
to be paralleled in either of these languages, that of
buckling, by similarity of rhyme or assonance, a large
sometimes a very large number of lines into a sort of
largest integer (the laisse or tirade}, corresponding to the
smaller stanza-integers which were found in Latin verses
and poems of the modern type. Furthermore, in French
(and in its southern sister, Provengal, perhaps still more)
there was a fancy for elaborating lyrical forms of great
intricacy, making the Sapphics and Alcaics of the ancients
quite simple things in comparison, and for the device of
the refrain, so natural to uncivilised poetry, and so charm-
ing, where rightly used, in poetry civilised as well as
uncivilised.
1 The habit, common in linguistic scholars, of sharply separating Northern
and Southern French is not literary.
THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS
BOOK I
D. Scandinavian
Scandinavian. This prosody certainly had influence on the later
Anglo-Saxon verse, especially in the famous Rhyming
Poem, and from political and ethnological causes must
have exercised a good deal (perhaps unconsciously and
indirectly) on at least the northern parts of England. Its
basis had originally been identical with that of Anglo-
Saxon, or very closely allied to it. But it had even
earlier proved susceptible to the attraction of rhyme, which
Anglo-Saxon resisted with such curious stoutness ; it was
more definitely metrical in its rhythm, more regular, and
much more inclined to the stanza, which in Anglo-Saxon
we hardly find save, thanks to its refrain, in Dear. And
before very long it settled itself into the artificial forms of
what is called, by a very misleading and objectionable,
but now almost accredited title, " Court-Poetry."
E. Celtic
Celtic. Last, and least known to the present writer, but fortun-
ately of least probable effect, come the prosodies of the
" Celtic fringe." Irish and, still more, Welsh poetry is
famous for the extreme intricacy of its verse-laws, but
scholars now roundly declare that the oldest Irish we have
is based upon accentual Latin. And though it would seem
that the famous Welsh triad or triplet may be autoch-
thonous, the more elaborate forms, the " four-and-twenty
measures," probably owe their origin to the genius of the
race and language, no doubt, but to that genius working
upon Latin suggestions. If any formal influence was
exercised on Middle English (there can be no reasonable
doubt that some of the matter of Layamon and others
comes from Celtic sources), it must have been chiefly in
the suggestion of intricate stanza arrangements, and
especially in the internal rhymes quaintly interwoven, where,
however, an awkward reminder of Latin again comes in. 1
1 We will not here discuss the vexed question whether rhyme was given
by Celtic to Latin or by Latin to Celtic. I have very little doubt about it ;
but here it does not matter, for the Englishman of 1200 was certain to get
his notions of rhyme from Latin or French, not from Irish or Welsh.
CHAP, i INTRODUCTORY 25
Let us then briefly resume the influences which were Summary.
at the disposal of a student of English prosody (had such
a man existed), though it is not to be supposed that even
one such student did exist, dr. 1150-1200; which at
least must or may have insensibly worked upon almost
every practitioner of English verse at the time. He had
the debris of Anglo-Saxon prosody, presenting a scheme
which, whether at one time the " stuffings," the unaccented
makeweights of its sections, were subject to any system
of equivalence or not, had undoubtedly, in the majority of
its examples, ceased to regard the constitution of these
makeweights with any prudish or precisian scrupulosity.
The principles of this prosody were, in the first place, the
selection of certain strong syllables as pivots or pillars ;
and, in the second, the requirement that these pivots or
pillars should put on an outward garment of phonetic
similarity, either by vowel incipience generally, or by the
incipience of certain consonants in particular. There was,
for a third requirement, the necessity of a sharp pause in
the middle of the verse (or, as may be preferred, between
the constituents of each pair of verses), and there may
have been internal pauses within the division thus made.
The verse or couplet thus effected did not necessarily or
even commonly submit itself to any system of rhythm
recognisable in the other prosodies, but in a certain
number perhaps a very large number of cases there
was an approximation to the trochaic movement ; that is
to say, to the rhythm which has an initial arsis, length,
stress, accent, or what not, descends from this to a thesis,
shortness, slur, etc., and ascends again at the beginning of
a new " foot " with the same alternation.
Further, he might, at least, notice that the practice of
poetry in these measures had sensibly died down, and that
it had to a great extent passed into the composition of
rhythmical prose, on the same principles slightly relaxed.
On the other hand he had, in the quantitative Latin
of his reading, a system which, while it agreed with Anglo-
Saxon to some extent in the admission of equivalence,
differed from it in every other conceivable manner and
26 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
feature, and provided a definite metrical rhythm. He had,
in the accentual Latin of his reading and hearing, one
which, less complaisant as to equivalence, adjusted itself
much more easily and satisfactorily to his own language
and habits of speech. In French and in Provencal (if, as
he easily might from political connections, he knew any) he
had a prosody corresponding to this last, but even more
rigidly syllabic syllabic, indeed, first of all, but relieving
itself by a very free indulgence in elaborate stanzas of
different lengths of line. He found something like these
staves or stanzas in Scandinavian and Celtic, if he happened
to know anything about them. And in all the living
poetries, even in the later remains of moribund Anglo-
Saxon, much more in accentual Latin, French, Provencal,
Scandinavian, and Celtic, he found Rhyme.
Such were the gifts, the examples, the patterns with
which " the Mothers " provided him. The whole gist and
bent of this work is to set forth exactly what he and his
descendants have done with them.
CHAPTER II
FROM I 1 00 (?) TO I 2 I O (?)
Difficulty as to dates and documents Working solution and selec-
tion The Canute song The fragments of St. Godric The
Paternoster The Moral Ode The Orison of Our Lady
Layamon The Ormulum The lesson of their examination
The " foot " or " measure unit " Its internal and external
arrangement Resemblances and differences of the result as
compared with the mother-prosodies The importance and
influence of rhyme Illustrated from the Rhyming Poem and
Layamon From the Ormulum and the other pieces From
the Paternoster, Orison, and Poema Morale And generally.
THE theoiy of English Prosody depends, from the com- Difficulty' as
bined point of view, historical and critical, to a very large
extent on the inferences to be drawn from the practice of
the age which intervenes between the Conquest and the
great outburst of Romance about the beginning of the
fourteenth century. It depends, most of all, on certain
documents between iioo and 1250. In order to arrive
at the truth we ought, in the first place, to take these
documents without any preconceived idea of what we
are going to find in them ; and in the second, we ought to
have, what I have endeavoured to supply in the Introduc-
tion, a clear and impartial idea of what other documents
and models these poets might possess. But there is what
may be called an ante-initial difficulty of a further kind,
which is of the most formidable size and weight ; and this
is that the exact dates of these crucial documents a point
upon which, as must be obvious, almost everything turns
are in all cases impossible to ascertain with absolute cer-
tainty, and in a majority of cases impossible to ascertain
at all without relying on what is mainly guess-work.
27
28 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
Working It is particularly desirable, in any enquiry, to avoid
sdection* 1 " 1 raism g side-quarrels where it can be helped ; and the
present enquirer is especially anxious not to disturb the
very hot ashes of the Linguistic v. Literary debate, if he
can possibly avoid it. Nor is there, with rare exceptions,
any absolute need for such disturbance, though on those
occasions signa canant is, of course, the only motto. But
on this occasion the trumpets can be silent. In respect
of these earliest documents literary criticism proper has
little, if anything, to say ; and though there are in the
linguistically-based judgments some startling differences,
they need not be absolutely fatal. I suppose that even
the persons who pride themselves on the exactest so-
called, or so-itself-calling "scholarship " in Middle English,
will make no absolute quarrel with the selection of the
following, as probably or possibly dating between the
Conquest and the second quarter, perhaps the second
decade, of the thirteenth century. The list is as un-
contentiously drawn up as possible ; and while the order
of it is not intended to make any illegitimate assumption,
information as to dates and editions in each case is
given in the notes, so that every reader may reconstruct
that order by authority, if he pleases, or by actual
examination, if that more excellent way commend itself
to him. The pieces are five in number : *
1 I purposely exclude from detailed consideration the famous Grave Poem,
as definitely Anglo-Saxon, though late, and exhibiting in its rhythm currents
towards metre ; as well as the so-called " Prophecy of Here," and the curse
attributed to Archbishop Aldred, because the first makes noway and was not,
perhaps, intended for verse at all, while the second is a mere jingle. But as
it is important to put all documents before the reader, a part of the former
and the whole of the two latter shall be given in this note.
Grave Poem (Guest, ed. Skeat, 368 sg.) :
The wes bold gebyld : er thu iboren were,
The wes molde imynt : er thu of moder come,
Ac hit nes no idiht : ne theo deopnes imeten,
Nes gyt iloced : hu long hit the were, etc. etc.
Prophecy of Here (Hever(?), before n89(??). For this see H. Morley,
English Writers, iii. 200-201. I do not enter into this question at all):
Whan thu ses in Here hert yreret,
Then sulen Engles in three be y-delet :
That an sal into Yrland al to late waie,
That other into Puille mid prude bileue,
The thride in hire athen [awen ?] hert alle wreke y-dreghe.
CHAP, ii FROM 1100 (?) TO 1310 (?) 29
I. The Canute Song.
II. The fragments of St. Godric.
III. The rhymed Paternoster, with some other (chiefly
religious) pieces printed by Morris.
IV. Layamon.
V. The Ormulum.
Let us examine each of these directly before attempt-
ing to draw any general conclusions.
How old the universally known lines about Canute The Canute
and the Monks of Ely may be is a point that does not Song '
concern us. We know that the form in which they have
been handed down, 1 which does concern us, is not much
later than 1 167. It runs thus :
Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely
Tha Cnut ching rew therby.
Roweth cnihtes neer the land
And here we thes muneches sang.
Now it is difficult to believe that anybody who will
honestly submit himself to facts, and discard prepossession,
can compare this with any specimens of pure Anglo-
Saxon prosody, even with the Grave Poem, which is
probably as late as, or later than, this piece itself, and
not observe some striking variations. In the first place,
alliteration is singularly weakened. " Merie " and " mun-
eches," " Cnut " and " King," do the whole duty. In the
second, though accent plays a much greater part, the ear
of any delicacy will observe at once that it goes to con-
stitute not the line, much less the double line, but \hefoot
an internal subdivision not noticeable - in Anglo-Saxon,
or very rarely so noticeable, but always uppermost in Latin
and French. These foot-divisions are, as on all reasonable
calculation must be expected, rudimentary and half-formed.
Denunciation of Aldred on the Baron Urse :
Hattest thu Urse
Have thu Codes kurs.
Aldred died in 1069, and William of Malmesbury, who records the curse (it
was a somewhat unchristian death-bed one, on a Baron who had built his castle
too near a monastery), wrote in 1 125.
1 By Thomas the Monk of Ely (fl. 1175).
2 That is, not noticeable in the same sense, v. sup.
30 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
Something like the later English vacillation between iambic
and trochaic rhythm (or rather substitution of the one for
the other) is already apparent. In the third place, some-
thing like rhyme, or that half-rhyme which is known as
assonance, is distinctly perceptible.
The fragments Now to St. Godric, whose fragments are a good deal
of St. Godnc. i a t. er j n date of record, 1 but who probably wrote or spoke
them in no very different form from that in which they
appeared after his death in 1 170. They are these :
(i)
Crist and Sainte Marie swa on scamel me iledde .
That ic on this erde ne silde with min bare fote itredie.
(2)
Sainte Marie Virgine
Moder Jesu Cristes Nazarene
Onfo[ang], schild help thin Godric
Onfang, bring hegilich with the in Codes riche.
Sainte Marie, Cristes bur,
Maidenes clenhad, moderes flur
Dilie min sinne, rix in min mod
Bring me to winne with the selfd God.
(3)
Sainte Nicholaes, Codes druth,
Tymbre us faire scone hus.
At thi burth [?], at thi bare,
Sainte Nicholaes, bring us wel thare. 2
In plain words, and to put shortly the more important
side of the matter, in all these four pieces there appears
1 I made these remarks first on an exact transcript, which I owed to the
kindness of Dr. J. Lawrence, from MS. Reg. v. F. vii. (B. M.). But the more I
studied this, and, after it, the original MS., the more convinced I was of the
importance of the document, which is at latest of the thirteenth century, and
which has the music most fortunately preserved. My publishers were, accord-
ingly, good enough to obtain the consent of the Museum authorities for photo-
graphing it, that it might form the frontispiece to this volume. The tune is
difficult, I am told by experts, to be certain of, but the notes give an indica-
tion of syllabic value which cannot be overestimated. " Maidenes " and
"moderes" each has full trisyllabic status; and no matter what the tune
was, the prosodic foot-scheme is clear from these notes.
2 There are slight differences of interpretation, and very slight ones of
reading. But the former do not concern us at all, and the latter do not
affect the scansion.
CHAP, ii FROM 1100 (?) TO lSKfJ[ty f 31
that " foot-division " and composition, which it is practi-
cally impossible to apply with any consecutive metrical
result to Anglo-Saxon verse. You can make " feet " of
this latter, no doubt Guest's " sections " are often little
else. It is the great evidence of rockfast genuineness in
the " foot " that you can apply it everywhere, in metre
and in rhythm, in verse and in prose. But you cannot
everywhere make satisfactory and corresponding aggrega-
tion of feet Here you can. It is no valid argument
against the division which follows that it is not the sole
possible. As has been shown above, it is possible to
adopt startlingly different foot-division for a very great
deal of English poetry. But change this as you like, the
general effect will remain :
Merie j sungen | the muneches | binnen | Ely
Tha Cnut | ching | rew | therby.
Roweth j cnihtes | neer the | land
And here | we thes | muneches | sang. 1
Here we have (i) the inherited licence (which will
always remain, but be regulated) of inserting " un-
accented " but not " extrametrical " syllables ; (2) that
which will always remain unchanged, of composing a foot
out of a single syllable with strong stress, stop, or catch
of breath ; (3) the substitution of trochee for iamb, and
vice versa, with the possibility of anapaest all these things
being subject, though as yet " confusedly," to the general
scheme of the metre, which, as given above, oscillates
between that of
Pone luctum Magdalena,
and that of
Vexilla regis prodeunt.
So the first of the Godric fragments
1 Or, if anybody prefers it,
And he | re we | thes mune | ches sang,
which is, perhaps, better. And line two may be either four-foot, with
monosyllabic equivalence, or three-foot without ; while it is possible to start
on an anapaestic basis "Merie sun | gen the mune | ches bin|nen Ely."
See Appendix on " Feet" and note at p. 299.
32 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
Crist and | Sainte | Marie
Swa on sea | mel me | iledde
That ic | on this | erde | ne silde
With min | [?] ba | [?]re fote | itredie,
And the second
Sainte | Mari | e Vir [ gine
Moder Je | su Crist | es Naza [ rene
Onfang | schild | help thin | Godric,
Onfo | bring he j gelich mit the | in Go | des ric,
where, if it be preferred (and more probably), the last line is
double, the metre shortening from four feet to three feet.
Sainte | Mari | e Cris | tes bur
Maidenes | Clenhad | moderes | flur
Dilie | min sinne | rix in | min mod
Bring me | to winne | with the | selfd God.
And the third
Sainte | Nicholas, | Codes | druth,
Tymbre us | faire | scone | hus,
At thi | burth, j at thi | bare,
Sainte | Nicholas, | bring us | wel thare.
In all these, muffled echoes-before of the three great
ballad rhyme - " measures " " common," " short," and
" long " are audible, if only underground.
The only additional remark required is a sufficiently
important one that the foot-divisions in the Godric, as
compared with those in the Canute, pieces show a greater
tendency to contract or extend themselves in point of
syllabic composition, while remaining equally unmistakable
in integral substance in other words to equivalence and
substitution ; and, secondly, that in Godric ( I ) we seem to
have an example of alternate rhyme. Both these are
important, but the first the more so. It is perhaps also
capable of being contended that the trochee gives way
somewhat to the iamb.
Let us now pass to the third document, or rather
group of documents.
CHAP, ii FROM 1100 (?) TO 1310 (?) 33
Here the dates are even more puzzling, and the pieces The
themselves, though not extremely voluminous, are too large Paternoster -
to be given in extenso. For the purpose, however, selec-
tions will suffice amply. The most remarkable and
important of all is the well-known rhymed Paternoster,
which Dr. Morris printed in the first volume of his Old
English Homilies^ and which, though there is consider-
able variation in the estimate of its date, can hardly be
younger than the twelfth century. It begins thus :
Vre feder thet 2 in heouene is,
That is al soth ful iwis.
Weo moten to theos weordes iseon
Thet to Hue and to saule gode beon.
Thet weo beon swa his sunes iborene
Thet he beo feder and we him icorene
Thet we don alle his ibeden
And his wille for to reden.
On this the observations which present themselves
most readily and obviously are : first, that the iambic
cadence, 3 though by no means universal, is rather more
dominant than the trochaic ; secondly, that one or the
other is almost more prominent than ever ; thirdly, that
while, for obvious convenience of committing to memory,
the lines run to shortness, substitution of trisyllabic 4 for
dissyllabic feet is unmistakable ; fourthly, that rhyme
is more definitely and strongly marked than in either
of the previous examples or groups, and mere assonance
less, so that (to extend the examination) in the first
twenty lines there are only two instances of imperfect
consonance on and om y enne and unne.
1 E.E.T.S. 1868, i. 55 sq. As will be seen, it is the Lord's Prayer
" extra-illustrated."
2 It does not (as should perhaps have been observed before) seem necessary,
for the purpose of this book, to keep the " thorn-letter," etc.
3 Which sets itself at once to the ear in hardly altered modern English,
Our Fa|ther that | in hea|ven is
(without prejudice on the crux of "heaven ").
* Never, I think, more than /r/syllabic, except perhaps at the ends of lines
(place of licence in every prosody !). And even there, as in the icoreiie-
iborene instance, there is a great possibility of elision-contraction, if not even
of that stumbling into the decasy liable, every actual or possible instance of
which is to be carefully noted.
VOL. I D
34 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK r
The Moral Turning from this to the famous Moral Ode, or Poema
Morale, we come to an example of the very highest interest,
because of the existence of several texts, all of the
general period that we are now handling, but arranged
by philological authorities in different stages of anti-
quity. We may give the first four lines in three forms,
the first of which, from the Lambeth MS., Dr. Morris
regarded as the oldest and well before 1200, the second
from the Trinity MS. taken as still before that date but
younger, and the third from a Jesus (Cambridge) MS.
held to be of the middle of the thirteenth century.
(i)
Ich em | nu al]der thene | ich wes | a winjtre and | a lare,
Ich wel|de majre then|e ich ded|e mi wit j ahte | bon mare,
Wei long | e ich hab|be child | ibon | a wordje and | a dede,
Thah | ich bo | a winjtre aid | to jung | ich em | on rede.
(2)
Ich am nu elder than ich was a wintre and a lore,
Ich wealde more than idude mi wit oh to be more,
To longe ich habbe child iben a worde and a dade,
Theih ibie a winter eald to Jung ich am on rade.
(3)
Ich am eldre than ich wes a winter and ek on lore,
Ich welde more than ich dude, my wyt auhte beo more,
Wei longe ich habbe child ibeo, a werke and eke on dede,
Thah ich beo of wynter old, to yong ich am on rede.
In these three, or rather in the single poem, which
they vary so slightly yet so significantly, we see a
measure having more resemblance in general character
to the first Godric fragment than to any other pre-
viously given. Although there is a middle section quite
strong enough to enable it to be arranged, with the two
others, in couplets instead of single lines, yet one feels,
in reading, that such an arrangement would not be so
natural as that of the single long line with section or
pause. But the rhythmical character approaches that
of metre or foot-division more decisively than in the
Godric case : while it is of the first importance that,
the two earlier versions differing very slightly, the third
improves on both in metrical adjustment. The modern
CHAP, ii FROM 1100 (?) TO 1210 (?) 35
voice finds itself to be more at home, and is " brought
up " with only slight jolts now and then l instead of
trying in vain to adjust any lilt at all, as in the case of
most A.S. or O.K. rhythms. Though there are relics and
wrecks of alliteration, they are only wrecks and relics ;
and the rhyme is, for a piece of such almost certain
antiquity, observed with singular strictness, the liberties
taken with it being very few and very slight. 2
Let us turn from this to another well-known piece of The Orison of
which we seem to have no copy certainly older than Our Lad y-
1 200, but which cannot be much later than that date,
and is probably much earlier the Orison of Our Lady.
Cristes | milde | moder | seynte | marie,
Mines Hues | leome | mi leou|e lefdi,
To the ich buwe and mine kneon ich beie,
And al min heorte blod to the ich offrie,
Thu ert mire soule liht, and mine heorte blisse,
Mi lif and mi tohope min heale mid iwisse,
Ich ouh wurthie the mid alle mine mihte,
And singge the lofsong bi daie and bi nihte,
Vor thu me hauest iholpen aueole kunne wise,
And ibrouht [me] of helle into paradise.
Heo beoth so read so rose so hwit so the lilie,
And euer more heo beoth gled and singeth thuruhut murie,
Mid brihte gimstones hore krune is al biset,
And al heo doth thet ham liketh, so thet no thing ham ne let,
Thi leoue sune is hore king and thu ert hore kwene,
Ne beoth heo neuer i-dreaued mid winde ne mid reine.
Morris, Old English Homilies, \. 191-1 99,
complete ; part in Morris and Skeat, i. 129.
This is evidently a member of the same class as the
Ode, but with more variety of swing and range. Rhyme
has not yet broken up the long verse into two short ones,
but is observed with equally intentional accomplishment.
There are, moreover, two things noticeable in this piece.
1 The insertion of "eke" in the first and third lines of version 3 is simply
priceless ; it shows the increasing acclimatisation of the English ear to
the new rhythm, and its increasing demand for truth to it.
2 In 396 lines or 198 couplets of version i there are but few imperfect
consonances (hade, rede ; walde, holde ; welden, ihalden ; gilden, scaldcn ;
thonke, tnanke, etc. : added n's mage, agen ; libben, sibbe ; senden, ende
etc. ; juxtapositions of // and ch syllables, brochte, bohte, etc.). And these
slight liberties do not affect 10 per cent of the whole.
36 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
The first is that not merely the trochaic but the iambic
metrical arrangement settles in places towards, if not
actually into, the regular " heroic " or decasyllabic line
which had long been a standard in French. The second
is that the bars of the long lines more than once make
the same approach to the familiar and delightful ballad
stanza. It is taking hardly the slightest liberty to
modernise some of those given above, as
She bees l as red as rose,
As white as the lily,
And ever more she bees glad,
And sings throughout merry.
Thy loving son he is their king,
And thou, thou art their queen,
Nor are they never a vexed
With wind(e) nor with rain.
If the shade of Dr. Guest (or the living body of
let be who it may) will show me a decent handful of
double couplets in A.S. which provide anything like this
rhythm, I will bury this book as deep as Prospero's.
Layamon. To Layamon, who gives us the most important docu-
ment of the whole period, we shall have to return again
and again ; but the Brut may properly receive prelimi-
nary treatment here on the same basis as the others.
The problem in it is, and obviously must be, a more
complicated one than that of the short and quasi-lyrical
pieces hitherto dealt with. In the first place the poet
has a story to tell, and in the second place it is a very
long story ; but no more of this for the present. Taking
any page of the book at random, say ii. 5 1 , 2 let us
give the two versions supposed of c. 1200 and c. 1250.
A B
Eorles ther comen "\
riche & wel idone I r -,
o 11 L V wanting
& alle tha wise j L
the wuneden on Bruttene.
tha the king heom havede isaeid tho the king hadde iseid
& baed heom raeden him raed. he bad yam reade him read.
1 Orig. = " they be " in loc. : but this modernises rather less well.
2 Ed. Madden, 3 vols., London, 1847.
CHAP, ii FROM 1100 (?) TO 1210(1) 37
whaem he mihte bitaeche wan he mihte bi-take
al his kine-riche. al his kineriche.
For nefde he nenne sune for he nadde bote one dohter
the his land mihte halden. \ f ' 1
ne child bute ane dohter / L
the him wes swithe deore. that he lofuede deore.
& hire he wolde bitache and hire he wolde bi-take
al his kine-riche, al his kineriche.
& yefuen hire lauerd and yefue hire louerd
thene haehste mon of his aerd. than beste of this erth.
Summe him raeden anan Somme him radde on
that he heo geven than eorle that he hire gefue eorl Conan.
Conan.
he wes wis and riche "\ r n
him heo he mihte bitaeche. J I
The first thing noticed, of course, will be that the
rhythm is much less well marked, much less uniform, and
much less modern than that of the earlier examples. In
other words, it is much closer, very much closer, to the
A.S. form so much so that it has been possible for some,
without actual absurdity, to take it for such rhythm " a
little scratched," but " serving," while others, going yet
farther, have affected even to minimise the scratchings.
But this will nowise do. In the first place, there is the
perpetual, the haunting, the unblinkable obsession and
protrusion of rhyme. Of the twenty lines just quoted
(and many much more favourable examples might have
been pitched upon) twelve rhyme almost completely,
others have more or less attempt at assonance, while only
two couplets neglect rhyme and assonance altogether.
Further, alliteration lessens its appearances, and the lines
or half- lines (whichever it be preferred to call them)
are for the most part roughly parallelised in length and
rhythm, and essay this later characteristic in a fashion
almost as constant as it is admittedly rudimentary. That
every now and then we come across a line or couplet in
which all these characteristics are absent, and the old
alliteration, inequality of halves, and absence of rhythm
except a mere rough trochaic, are present ; that, for in-
stance, on another dipping at ii. 190 we find
That heo tha haethene hatien scolden,
38 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
need give no pause to us. On the contrary, we should
be extremely surprised if such things did not appear ;
and they are fully balanced, and their lesson completely
brought out, by such other things as the well-known
Tha answerede Vortiger
Of elchen vuel he wes war,
which are iambic couplets as complete as any Frenchman
of the time could have turned out. 1
The And, lastly, we must give a citation from the other
great document of the time great in point of size and of
curiosity, if not exactly in point of literary merit the
Ormulum? Here there is no need to pick or choose on
the one hand, or to sample at random, for fairness' sake,
on the other the whole being rigidly uniform. The
opening passage in Morris and Skeat will do perfectly
well :
And nu ice wile shaewenn yuw
summ-del withth Godess hellpe
Off thatt Judisskenn follkess lac
thatt Drihhtin wass full cweme,
And mikell hellpe to the folk,
to laeredd and to leewedd,
Biforenn thatt te Laferrd Crist
was borenn her to manne.
1 The above fragmentary Sors Layamoniana, accepted with rigid probity,
is quite sufficient for the purpose, though selection would give fifty better
places. It may, however, be desirable to assure the suspicious that the
remarks in the text, here and elsewhere, are not based on any "dipping,"
haphazard or deliberate, but on a reading of the entire Brut (and of large
parts of it over and over again), as thorough as could be given by the Middle
English scholar, whoever he be, who has kept himself most unspotted from
the world of modern English literature. On this reading I could base, if I
chose, an analysis as meticulous and as voluminous as that of the most dogged
German "enumerator." But I have no desire to thrust the processes of my
workshop before the reader. The more thoroughly and unweariedly those
processes are carried on, the more strongly do they establish the facts that
the imposition of the mould of rhymed metre is evident throughout the first
version, and still more evident in the second. Another fact is that the form
of the mould seems to vary between eight- and jz'jr-syllabled lines ; according
as the poet had, in his uncertain and diverse mind, the longer or shorter forms
of the A.S. distich-line, or perhaps as he was influenced by some knowledge
of the French Alexandrine and its child, the six-syllable couplet of Philippe
de Thaun and others.
2 Ed. Holt, 2 vols., Oxford, 1878.
CHAP, ii FROM 1100 (?) TO 1210 (?) 39
Ace nu ne geyynethth itt hemm nohht
to winnenn eche blisse
Thohh thatt teyy standenn dayy and nihht
to theowwtenn Godd and lakenn ;
Forr all itt iss onnyasness Godd
thohh thatt teyy swa ne wenenn,
Forrthi thatt teyy ne kepenn nohht
noff Crist, noff Cristess modern
And tohh-swa-thehh nu wile ice yuw
off theyyre lakess awwnenn,
Hu mikell god teyy tacnenn uss
off tire sawle nede ;
Forr all thatt lac wass sett thurrh Godd,
forr thatt itt shollde tacnenn
Hu Cristess theowvv birrth lakenn Crist
gastlike i gode thaewess,
Withth all thatt tatt bitacnedd wass
thurrh alle theyyre lakess.
Orm's at first sight portentous spelling (which is
explained by himself, and after him in all adequate
accounts of English literature) does not concern us more
than in so far as it helps to ascertain a very useful thing
the length or shortness of a very large proportion of
English vowel-sounds at this time. It even establishes the
very important prosodic fact (ignorance of which has proved
a constant stumbling-block later, especially in the disputes
about English hexameters and the like) that doubling the
consonant after an English vowel need not, though it may y
make that vowel long in value. 1 Another point which
may be just worth noting in relation to Orm is that, as
anybody who cares to look at the poem will see, a vast
majority of the fifteenth syllables are made up by the
final e, which is indeed the case with the final syllable of
all Early Middle English verse. On the one hand this
fact explains the triumph of the fourteener after the
dropping of the e. On the other it throws light on the
well-known and, to some people, puzzling or even offensive
addition, in doggerel English ballad verse of later times, of
1 This is a good place to guard against a confusion (so common that it
supplies perhaps the only considerable argument against the use of the
word) between sound-" length" and quantity- 11 length." As will be shown
more fully later, the first usually produces the second, but the second does
not necessarily imply the first.
40 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
a sort of " gasp-syllable," as in The Well of St, Keyne?
That the e is also the parent of the forms " paly," " hugy,"
and so on, which also have irritated the ignorant, and
which certainly at times have been " affectations," may
be added.
Here, for once, it is all plain sailing or at least one
would think it so, if it were not that the incalculableness
of mankind is nowhere shown more clearly than on this
question of prosody. We have at last an undoubtedly
metrical arrangement, in long lines of fifteen syllables, or
shorter ones of eight and seven alternately, couched in
a monotonous iambic cadence, not attempting rhyme, but
submitting itself in the most unhesitating and undeviating
manner to the strictest requirements of metre ; rejecting all
substitution of two syllables for one ; and in regard to
individual syllables, though attending to quantity and
(not with absolute strictness) to accent, yet, wherever it
can, putting short or unstressed syllables in the places
where the iambic requires them, and long or stressed ones
in the others. As to Layamon, we shall have to return
to the Ormulum, for there are some very interesting
questions, such as whether its metre can be regarded as
the same as, or as closely connected with, that of the
Moral Ode ; 2 but to dwell on these now would be improper.
Walter's brother has finished all that we require in this
place, the general, prima facie, " jump-to-the-eyes " pro-
sodic character of an English poem at the junction of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. And taking these
together with the characteristics furnished by the others,
we may surely feel ourselves justified in " collecting "
certain fairly inferential, if not actually demonstrable,
results, even before we arrive at the Interchapter on this
period.
1 Not as written by Southey, but as usually sung and printed for singing :
A well there is in the West Country,
And a fairer never was seen-a !
There is not a wife in the West Country
But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne-a !
2 Syllabically. there is no doubt of the connection perhaps ; in matter of
cadence there is, I think, more.
CHAP, ii FROM 1100 (?) TO 1210(?) 41
For the facts and documents thus, I believe, fairly, and
in their necessary proportions fully, exposed, do make it
possible to base on them an impartial examination of
the state of English prosody as it actually reveals itself
between, in round numbers, noo and 1200. Not one
single known or reasonably attributed piece of the time
but has been given in whole or in part ; and the phenomena
which have been elicited from them are those which do
naturally and simply emerge. What are they?
The first, the greatest, the most pervading, as one The lesson
would think beyond all possible, as one may surely say examination,
beyond all reasonable, doubt or question is rhythm of a
kind roughly similar to that of English poetry as it has
been known ever since ; and not roughly, but sharply,
unmistakably, almost totally, dissimilar to that of Anglo-
Saxon poetry. We may make this out polemically
later : let us make it out constructively and directly
here. 1
And let us in the first place ask, Can we get any The "foot"
common measures of prosodic valuation, lower than the ^ it m
line, but constituting the rhythmical -metrical quality of
line, couplet, and rudimentary stanza, out of the matter
before us ? The answer, as it happens, can be given in
the very words, without even disallowing a haggle or
proviso which they contain, of the most learned opponent
that the system of pure historical prosody has ever had,
and one of the most obstinate, ingenious, and resourceful
that it can ever hope or fear to have the words of Guest
himself. " It is not " (E. R. p. 1 6 1 ) " till a period com-
paratively modern that the common and triple measures
disentangle themselves from the heap, and form as it
were the two limits of English rhythm." Now this period
has been reached in the examples recorded just previously;
1 Before doing so it is perhaps necessary, and may certainly be desirable,
to put on one side a question which has often been discussed, which is per-
haps quite worth discussion in its proper place, but which does not fall to be
considered according to the plan of this book. And this is the influence of
music in the affair. Very likely this influence was great, perhaps it was
almost supreme ; but it does not for our purpose matter. It is again, like
the origin of metrical value already referred to, a " previous question." But
we may perhaps make it a subsequent one, and deal with it later.
THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS
Its internal
and external
arrangement.
and it had not been reached in the period of Anglo-
Saxon poetry. We may find them here and there in "the
heap " of that time, but they are accidental, they are very
probably delusive, and even if not, they can never be
arranged on any continuing method or system. Whether
those who assert that Anglo-Saxon verse was, though
doubtless, as Guest says, " sung to the harp," sung to a
sort of recitative with stress-syllables only, are right, does
not matter ; that is another of our " previous questions,"
though it may be an actual one with other people.
Securi judicamus that in every example quoted above,
except those survivals in Layamon (of which we would
not get rid for anything, though it may be suspected that
the other party would be only too glad to get rid of the
rest), the " common and triple measures " have emerged, 1
have " disentangled themselves from the heap." To
refuse to call the results of the emergence dissyllabic and
trisyllabic feet appears to me almost pure unreason, but
we could call them x and y without hurting our case.
We have, then, our dissyllabic and trisyllabic " feet,"
and the next question is, On what principle are they
arranged ? The answer to this must be twofold
dealing on the one hand with internal, on the other with
external arrangement. Internally, the arrangement of
the dissyllabic foot (" common-time unit ") is, as a rule,
either short-long or long-short, more rarely long-long,
hardly ever short-short The internal arrangement of
the triple-time unit or foot, which is much less commonly
found, is usually short-short-long, less commonly long-
short-short, very rarely at this time short-short-short,
and practically never two longs and a short arranged in
any way.
The external or combined arrangements vary extremely
in appearance and in correspondence, doubtless with the
varying length of the versicles which they replace. But
they may safely be said to hover round, for preference, an
1 The triple is no doubt less common than the common, and emerges
most distinctly in the latest examples, such as the Jesus version of the Moral
Ode, But it is there in the Orison of Our Lady, and even in the Godric
fragments.
CHAP, n FROM 1100 (?) TO 1210 (?) 43
arrangement, single or reduplicated, of four feet which are
most commonly all of the common-time dissyllabic type.
And we also notice that again whether as a result of con-
scious or unconscious following of the unmetrical versicle
and its variations or not a curious system of equivalence,
in a clumsy, tentative, unmethodical manner, is making its
way. Not merely are the various types of the common or
dissyllabic, of the triple or trisyllabic unit interchanged,
but within limits, especially at the beginning, middle, and
end of a verse, a monosyllable will do for a dissyllable.
The result of these various arrangements is already, Resemblances
though in a most rudimentary condition, a prosodic onhe'fesuit 065
system which, though it partakes of the Anglo-Saxon, the as compared
double Latin, and the French systems in all cases more
or less, and may owe something to Scandinavian or Celtic prosodies.
less directly, is so different from any of the three first
individually, that it is equally absurd to endeavour to
subject it to supposed " native " laws, or to stigmatise it
as " the rhythm of the foreigner."
It resembles Anglo-Saxon in a certain liberty of
syllabic measurement and in a strong prominence of
accent, but differs from it entirely in rhythm, has dropped
most of its alliteration for the purposes for which allitera-
tion was formerly used, and has definitely assumed rhyme
as a practically indispensable, or largely predominating,
attendant and ornament.
It resembles Classical Latin in allowing substitution of
trisyllabic for dissyllabic feet, but is quite unlike it in
general rhythmical arrangement, in particulars of foot-
composition, and in rhyme ; while it resembles Low Latin
in rhyme, and to some extent in rhythm, but differs from
it in a much greater licence of syllabic variation.
In this last respect it differs still more from French, as
well as in its concomitant variety of foot-distribution, but
it resembles French in at least some of its simpler forms
of verse-, as distinguished from foot-scheme, and in rhyme.
Collecting in a wider sweep, we shall find two things The import-
present in all but one of our examples (one of them being ^"flue^e of
present in that also), which distinguish the whole group rhyme.
44 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
from Anglo-Saxon verse. These two are rhyme, and the
presence of a definite metrical rhythm, as yet rough, rudi-
mentary, and faltering, but quite unmistakable to any one
with an ear, and a thorough trained familiarity with
English pronunciation. 1 The connection between these
two whether it exists and what it is is a point not
merely of the greatest interest but of very great import-
ance. There can be no question of bias in favour of
rhyme on the part of Guest when he says that this is not,
as is sometimes asserted, a mere ornament : " it marks
and defines the accent, and thereby strengthens and
supports the rhythm. Its advantages have been felt so
strongly that no people have ever adopted an accentual
rhythm without also adopting rhyme." But perhaps it
may be doubted whether this statement, though quite
guilelessly 2 on the part of its author, does not put the cart
before the horse, to say no more. If accentual rhythm,
as Guest himself held, denotes something which governs
the study of O.K., M.E., and Modern English at once,
how is it that almost the entire poetical period of the
first half a millennium or so passed with hardly the
slightest signs of rhyme appearing? How is it, further,
that in the famous Rhyming Poem, with an abundance
and superfluity of rhyme itself, the rhythm is perfectly
different from that which dominates all our examples ?
How is it, lastly, that English, while retaining this rhythm,
has not indeed in all its forms, but in one of the very chief
of them, in " blank verse " been able to discard rhyme ?
The circumstances pointed at in these queries, the
unbiassed examination of the documents of the period
before us, and the whole course of the present enquiry,
will be found, as it seems to the present writer, to support
a theory somewhat different from Guest's, even in first
appearance (though it agrees cordially with his in
acknowledging the importance and time-marking effect of
rhyme), and leading up to another theory of the whole of
1 I do not mean " phonetics."
2 Unless he meant (as he may have, from what follows) to include
"head-rhyme," i.e. " alliteration," in which case the statement is not quite
devoid of guile.
CHAP, ii FROM 1100 (?) TO 1210 (?) 45
Middle and Modern English versification, which is directly
opposed to his. The theory may be thus stated : Rhyme,
when accepted by any language, gradually but necessarily
breaks up prosody by versicles or sections merely, and
substitutes prosody by feet that is to say, by minor
internal divisions, which are batched and brought to
metrical correspondence by the rhyme itself.
If this is true, we shall find an explanation of what is
unexplained and inexplicable on the theory of continuous
and indifferent accentual versification in O.K., M.E., and
Modern English the appearance in the two latter of a
rhythm which inevitably suggests, if it does not impera-
tively require, such a foot-division. That rhyme might
have been strong enough to effect this, even without the ,
assistance of the rhythms of Latin and French and of
music, is a proposition which those who accept that just
stated may receive favourably, but which they are not in
the least bound to accept at any peril to the general
theory. And that anything, except that theory, can
survive an impartial comparison of the Rhyming Poem and
Layamon, the present writer is convinced, experimentally
and definitely, to be impossible.
The former l taking, to give Guest the fullest advan- illustrated
tage, his own divisions for guide gives us, in most of the ^J!L
lines, hardly any rhythm (as that word is familiar to us) Poem and
at all. By dwelling strongly on the rhymed syllables, La 3 ramon -
and hurrying or drawling on the rest in the "patter"
manner, it may be possible to get a dim and far-off music, .
while some lines, no doubt, lend themselves occasionally
and incidentally to something of the same kind, as do
others in everything back to Caedmon himself. But it is
still, in general system and effect, merely versicular, merely
recitative, with rhymes painfully added, and giving no
1 Glasd | waes ic gliw|um : glengjed hiw|um
Blissa bleo|um : blost | ma hiwjum
Secg | as mec seg | on : sym | bel ne | aleg on
Feorh | -giefe gefeg|on : fraet | wed waeg urn
Serif | en scrad | glad | : thurh | gescad | inbrad
Waes | on lag | u-stream | e lad | : thaer | me leoth une | biglad.
These are Guest's divisions, not mine. I should make none but at the : .
4 6 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK r
more rhythmical accompaniment than the stump or clatter
of a clog does.
Turn to Layamon, as above quoted, and you find the
further process illustrated in a fashion almost incredibly
clear and satisfactory all the more so that the good priest
appears to have been a person by no means made very
poetical by the gods. In one set of places you have
the versicular, the recitative arrangement unaltered. In
others you find the imperfect and rudimentary construc-
tion of the rhyme showing itself in almost all conceivable
stages and forms, from the mere lame halting jingle of
the Rhyming Poem itself to something approaching a
regular step. And then you find, not any great variety
of rhythm indeed, but the complete iambic dimeter, the
complete " four-accent " line (to give the hostile nomen-
clatures no advantage over each other for the moment),
finally reached, though the poet, willy-nilly, falls away from
it, again struggles back to it, reaches it, and da capo.
From the The lesson of all the other documents agrees exactly,
the^her* & with tne exception of one ; and that exception probat
pieces. regulam confirms the rule by putting it to the test after
the best manner of its kind. The Ormtilum shows us the
rhythm without the rhyme ; and it is observable (exactly
as we should ' expect) that, in the absence of rhyme, the
poet is only able to achieve a peculiarly monotonous and
unmusical rhythm, and can only keep that up by observ-
ing (whether on French or Latin or even Northern * models
does not in the least matter) an inviolable uniformity of
syllabic arrangement. In the others the illustration con-
tinues directly, instead of confirming in its dissidence, the
lesson derived from the contrast of Layamon and the
Rhyming Poem. They are all more or less lyrical, and
they were probably all either deliberately composed for
popular use or accidentally preserved by popular selection.
In this latter case (the case of probably the earliest, the
Canute song, and, though in a less degree, of the Godric
1 I have put this in merely " to oblige," though some lovers of the North
will not be grateful, /do not think Northern (i.e. Scandinavian) models had
anything to do with it.
CHAP, ii FROM 1100 (?) TO W10(?) 47
fragments), what we may call the accompaniment of the
rhythm is as is natural in all folk-song, and as is seen to
the present day in nursery rhymes, and in the half-inarticu-
late scraps of " sing-song " which children compose for
themselves much more noticeable than any exact corre-
spondence of verbal arrangement, though that arrangement
does exist. Two syllables for one or one for two, three
feet or three and a half for four, these " break no squares "
(as a younger but still old English phrase has it) between
the rhythm and its practitioners. The type is fairly kept,
but an extreme licence of coming short of it, or going
beyond it, is instinctively assumed. We do not feel, as
we do in Layamon, that the poet has any conscious
theory of prosody more or less dimly before him nay,
that he has two such theories and is oscillating between
them for want of skill so much as that he lets his
instinct guide him roughly, but not at random.
In the more complete, substantive, and literary ex- From the
amples of the Paternoster, the Orison, and the Moral P Q% t *^
Poem, the two first beyond all question intended to be Poema Morale.
used by the vulgar, the last almost equally so the
lesson is more complicated, but it points all the same
way. The rhyme, and the foot - divisions producing
metrical rhythm, are better marked ; the poems as wholes
have acquired form ; but there are still large variations,
and it is very uncertain how far these variations are
consciously and schematically intended by the poet, as
they seem to me to be, not very much later, in Genesis
and Exodus. The new-born delight in rhyme is, in its
exercise, forcing and squeezing the versicles more and
more into balanced foot-divisions ; but the old reluctance
to be tied down to a fixed number of syllables survives.
We can hear, not so very far off, the echo beforehand of
the instances when it will be possible for Coleridge, in
two successive lines on the same norm, to write
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock,
and to follow it with
To whit to whoo.
48 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS ? BOOK i
without impropriety or ill sound. Even now we
can, as was shown above in reference to the Orison,
occasionally discover something like a rudimentary selec-
tion (conscious or unconscious) of different values of this
kind, so as to make, not a mere repetition but a sym-
phonic scheme, not a succession of lines but a " van-
valued " couplet, not a succession of identical couplets but
a stanza.
And Still further examination not much further in the
generally. Qne cage b r j n g s us to yet two other facts of the very
highest importance. The first is that these varieties,
these substitutions, are reducible to certain prosodic forms
such as those above referred to, in which one long, strong,
stressed, accented (or anything-else-you-please) syllable
is generally present, 1 while in some cases there is no
other, in many cases one other, in fewer two others, of the
short, weak, unstressed, unaccented kind ; that these are
evidently regarded (subject to restrictions as yet impossible
to define, but easy to perceive) as equivalent to each
other ; that one, so to speak, will pass current for another.
Also, yet once more, and though we have by this time
plunged up to knee and almost up to neck in burning
questions, we now come to perhaps the most burning of
all whether we can discover any foot-divisipn containing
more than three syllables. Dr. Guest here would not
have quarrelled about the fact, as his rule that each
couple of accented syllables must be separated by one or
more unaccented, but by not more than two, shows ; but
he would not, of course, have granted the foot-division.
The facts, however, not merely grant this, but impose it,
wriggle as hard as the accentual scanner may. And I
am myself prepared to agree with Guest, and to disagree
with such authorities as my friend and predecessor Pro-
fessor Masson, in thinking that no English trisyllabic foot
can have more than one long syllable in it, that English
1 I doubt whether at this time it is possible to find a tribrach, whence, no
doubt, Dr. Guest's explosion of ! at the suggestion of its occurring at any
time. The prerogative of accent was too recent ; but it was sure to be
disregarded in time.
CHAP, ii FROM 1100(?) TO 1210 (?) 49
tetrasyllable feet do not exist at all, 1 and that it is rather
doubtful whether there are such English feet as amphi-
brachs. These points, however, we shall constantly take
up, and illustrate as usual from the facts. For the present
we shall regard as proved, to every impartial ear and
eye, that rhyme, or music, or the imitation of French
and Latin, or cross-breeding, or all together, had, by the
inexorable and indisputable testimony of documents, sub-
stituted, between 1000 and 1200, for prosody by versicles
with accent, but without appreciable metrical rhythm of
the modern kind, a prosody by " feet," with rhyme, arranged
on a distinct and interchangeable system, with a result of
metrical rhythm not distinguishable, except in accomplish-
ment, from that of Lord Tennyson or of Mr. Swinburne.
1 In poetic rhythm, that is to say. In prose they certainly do. But on
all this see Appendix on " Feet."
VOL. I E
CHAPTER III
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
The documents Layamon B The later Moral Ode The Bestiary
Sinners Beware, etc. The Love -Rune The Owl and the
Nightingale Tendency to syllabic rigidity The correctives
of this Versicular survival: Proverbs of Alfred Modified in
Proverbs of Hendyng Genesis and Exodus The Northern
Psalter Robert of Gloucester The earliest Romances :
Havelok King Horn The earliest English fabliaux.
The THE documents anterior to the thirteenth century, or (to
documents. take the s ii g htly later date, which is not material to us,
of 1210) to its second decade, are of the highest interest,
but they should have been sufficiently examined. Those
assigned to the thirteenth century itself are of interest
hardly inferior, as well as much more numerous, and must
be examined now. One group is dated by philologists
before 1250; another before 1300. Let us follow this
division without questioning 1 and see what it gives us.
Of the first group the most important documents
are :
1 It is an obvious objection, " If you do not feel competent to date them
for yourself, what is your competence for the present examination ? " But the
answer is as obvious as the objection, and much more cogent. These dates
have been arrived at by a process and on principles quite unliterary and purely
philological. They may be they probably are in some cases incorrect ;
but at any rate they are untainted by even the slightest theory about the
literary, or the prosodic, character of the documents themselves. Hence, as
granted, they are, if not concessions to the adversary, at any rate things not
vitiated by any preconceived theories on the part of the granter. From the
purely literary and critical point of view there are, as a rule, no premises for
coming to any but the widest conclusions about the positive dates ; we shall
see that examination from such a point of view finds no difficulty with the
relative dates linguistically given, but, on the contrary, confirms them.
50
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 51
The later version of the Brut.
The later versions of the Moral Ode.
The Bestiary.
The Proverbs of Alfred.
The Owl and the Nightingale.
Some short pieces of very uncertain date may intervene
between these and the second group, consisting of
The Proverbs of Hendyng.
The Chronicle and Saints' Lives of Robert of Gloucester.
The Northumbrian Psalter.
The two probably oldest romances, that is to say
Havelok.
King Horn.
Let us now examine what all these actually, and not
on theory, give us.
The later version of Layamon need not occupy us Layamon a
long, and a passage from it has been already given.
It is one of those copies which are so frequent in the
Middle Ages, and which, by multiplication without much
improvement, have perhaps brought discredit on mediaeval
literature. It would seem to have been executed by rather
a stupid copyist, who was quite destitute of the flashes of
original talent which many of his fellows possessed ; who
often (as many, if not most of them, it must be confessed,
did) spoilt his text ; who does not seem to have had any
distinct or direct idea of improving it ; but who was driven,
by the mere advance of the Time-Spirit, to make some
things which, whether we are to call them improvements
or not, are alterations, and alterations of a definite drift.
He is, so to speak, always staggering towards more rhyme.
Here are examples taken, as usual, with as little selection
as possible. At ii. 251 (Madden) we find:
A B
That comen tha brothere That comen the brothers
beien to-some. beine to-gadere.
This may not look very promising, but a moment's con-
sideration will show that the copyist, with " brethren " and
" together " in his head, was blundering at a rhyme instead
of acquiescing in the frankly unrhyming terminations of
52 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
the earlier couplet. Elsewhere the often noticed change
(ii. 157) of " wel idon " into "great win," so as to rhyme
with "Apolin," which had previously been left unpaired,
is but one of many. In general rhythm the advance is
slight, but what has been made is significant. Multiply
and tighten your rhyme, and you must, as has been said,
make plain your rhythm.
The later The lesson of the later versions of The Moral Ode
Moral Ode. (p ar tly drawn already) is just the same, only more so.
There is not much room for improvement in rhyme, even
the earliest form being well advanced that way ; but
even here there are small touches. Forms are altered
slightly to get the rhyme more exact, the final " n " being
specially often dropped with this view. But the attention
of the rehandler here was evidently directed rather to
the rhythm itself, which he makes more swinging and
smoother, after a fashion which may have been un-
conscious on his part, but of which no reader with an
ear can pretend unconsciousness. The instance of this in
the first two lines of the Jesus version was pointed out
above, the " eke " being an " eke " in the Scotch sense
an addition to improve and strengthen the effect. Now he
adds, now he takes away ; not always, perhaps, achieving
much, but nearly always, it would seem, aiming at
something. And it is not a little noticeable that he
sometimes, e.g. at 1. 152, seems deliberately to drop
alliteration. 1
The Bestiary. With the Bestiary* we come to fresher, more compli-
1 Thus
Afre he wolde her in wo and in wane wunien
becomes
Eure he wolde in bonen beon and in godnesse wunye.
2 Text in Halliwell and Wright's Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 208 sq., or
Morris's Old English Miscellany, p. I sq. Extract in the latter's and
Professor Skeat's Specimens, i. 133 :
The leun slant on hille, After him he filleth,
And he man hunten here, Drageth dust with his stert
Other thurg his nese smel Ther he [dun] steppeth,
Smake that he negge, Other dust other deu,
Bi wile weie so he wile That he ne cunne is finden,
To dele nither wenden, Driueth dun to his den
Alia hise fet-steppes Thar he him bergen wille.
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTUR Y 53
cated, and more interesting material. To a careless eye
its rhythm may seem a mere " heap " to use the
Guestian word. The most obvious, and for some time
the only obvious, point is that of a sort of six-syllable
line, which on the one hand combines itself awkwardly
into very rough Alexandrines, and on the other seems
but a slight advance, if any advance at all, on the old
coupled versicles. That the six-syllable distribution is
not merely haphazard is a notion which may find some
comfort and confirmation in the facts, that though the
Bestiary may be a translation from the Latin hexameters
of Thetbaldus, the translator (almost, if not quite certainly)
had before him the earlier Bestiaire in French of Philippe
de Thaun, which is written in correct six-syllable couplets,
or split Alexandrines rhymed internally at the caesura. 1
We can thus see that the same sort of conscious or un-
conscious struggle is going on in the mind of the compiler
with reference to the hexasyllabic couplet as was going on
in Layamon with reference to the octosyllabic that, so to
speak, the old asyllabic and ametric versicle was sounding
in one ear and the new tight couplet in the other.
The suspicion is strengthened when we come to
observe the part that is played by the great innovator
and psychagogue, Rhyme. In the first stanza or laisse
given below a merely modern reader might be excused for
thinking that there is no rhyme at all ; there are actually,
out of fourteen verses, no two consecutive ones that have
anything like full rhyme, nor in the second of eight, nor
in the third of four. It is not till the close of the first
"signification" till lines 38 and 39 that we come
1 Thetbaldus (Morris, Old English Miscellany, p. 201):
Nam leo stans fortis super alta cacumina montis,
Qualicunque via vallis descendit ad ima,
Si venatorem per notum sen tit odorem,
Cauda cuncta Unit quae pes vestigia figit.
Philippe de Thaun (Wright, Science during the Middle Ages, London,
1841, p. 77):
Uncore dit Escripture Desfait sa trace en terre,
Leuns ad tele nature, Que horn ne 1' sace querre ;
Quant Tom le vait chazant, Ceo est grant signefiance,
De sa cue en fuiant Aiez en remembrance.
54 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
to a frankly rhymed but very unequally lengthened
couplet. 1
But if we look a little closer and further, several
things strike us. Even in the opening there is a floating
Lycidas-like rhyme of the -ille sound. The second laisse
of the " signification " starts with three exactly rhymed
couplets (was, was, lai, dai, sivo, tho\ and then shows
unmistakable symptoms of alternate rhyme (porden, is ;
folde, sep ; wille, work, wille}, the whole constituting
something like a roughly rhyme-bound stanza of thirteen
lines. The second "chapter," as we may say that of
the Eagle goes right off, after one unrhymed line, with
seventeen couplets of irreproachable consonance, and very
fairly exact length of line, and follows this with a
" signification " of thirty-two, arranged in alternately
rhymed quatrains, in which only two or three rhymes
fail of strict exactness. 2 The third chapter, " the Serpent,"
relapses ; but throughout the poem (which consists of
just over 800 lines) we find a constant nisus towards
rhyme, not merely in couplets, but in stanza-arrangement.
Nay, when we look back to the opening, and on again
to those parts of the sequel which seem regular, we
discern this nisus more and more clearly. Actual rhymes
crop up at odd places as if the poet, unable to find them
where they ought to be, was determined to catch and
keep them when they did present themselves. Asson-
ance a thing never much practised in English, but the
natural resource of the unskilful rhymer, more particularly
in times when he must have had reams of assonanced
French poetry before him is very prevalent in these
same places. In short, the drift is unmistakable, and it
washes him sometimes into perfect carol-cadence. 3 For
1 Marie by name,
The him bar to manne frame.
2 And one of these, " Satanas " and " Crist," is very likely intentional.
3 The lilt of this is remarkable :
Al | is man | so is|tis ern,
Wiil|de ge|nu 11s | ten,
Old | in hljse sin|nes dern,
Or he | bicum eth cris | ten.
" Good King Wenceslas " seven hundred years ago !
Beware,
etc.
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 55
the blind, or almost blind, gropings of Layamon we have
the perception at least of " men as trees walking," and
perhaps something more, at times something much more.
Of the other poems printed by Dr. Morris in An Old
English Miscellany, " The Passion of Our Lord 5>1 is in the
long, swinging metre emphatically rhymed at the end and
strongly divided at the middle, to which, as we have seen,
the author of the Moral Ode was settling, and to which
his successive copyists drew nearer and nearer, as the
national ear cleared and the national tongue grew more
obedient thereto. But Sinners Beware 2 gives us a new sinners
thing. Here is probably the first attempt to imitate
(from Provengal or from Latin ?) a measure producing
the famous, and for some seven centuries never forgotten,
romance-stanza, of six lines rhymed aabaab. The foot
arrangement is, as we should expect, less advanced. Instead
of the regular 886886 we get a rough 6 or 7 through-
out the half-Alexandrine having naturally, in these early
times, an irresistible influence over novices in foot-prosody.
But, in what we may call a sort of transposed value, the
rhythm is very well kept ; the rhymes are achieved almost
miraculously well, and the whole is of more than fair
accomplishment. In fact the writers of the time were
evidently taking heart of grace, and losing their stammer
altogether. The Joys of the Virgin* attempts another
stanza, abababab, still on a basis of six- or seven-syllable
lines, but often reaching the full eight, and observing the
rhythm-value right cunningly.
1 Ihereth nu one lutele tale that ich eu wille telle,
As we vyndeth hit iwrite in the godspelle,
Nis hit nouht of Karlemeyne ne of the Duzeper,
As of Cristes thruwinge thet he tholede her.
How far are we from " The Queen was in the parlour " ? and how far from
Caedmon ?
2 Theos Holy Gostes myhte, :i Levedy for thare blisse,
Vs helpe and rede and dihte, That thu heddest at the frume,
And wisse us and theche. Tho thu wistest myd iwisse,
To wyten us wyth than unwihte, That Jhesus wolde beo thi sune,
That bi daye and bi nihte, The hwile we beoth on live thisse,
Thencheth us to bi-peche. Sunnen to don is ure wune,
Help us nu that we ne mysse
Of that lif that is to cume.
THE PERIOD OF THE' ORIGINS
BOOK I
The Love-
Rune.
The Owl
and the
Nightingale.
This is also the metre of the Love-Rune} a descant of
heavenly as opposed to earthly love, which certainly gives
the best poetry of the whole batch, and shows how little
to seek in these new measures English poets by this time
were. In this piece and in others of the group, whether
by the same hand or not, the last obsession of the
unrhymed and unmetred versicle, which was at the moment
holding its dead hand on the spirit of the later version
of Layamon, has disappeared entirely. Such constraint as
there is, is of a different kind. The danger which had
shown itself nearly half a century earlier in the Ormulum
which was to show itself again and again till the
eighteenth century was almost closed but which was
kept off, first by the ballad writers and the authors of such
pieces as E.I.O. earlier, and the Nut-brown Maid later,
by the great dramatists and the song-men of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, and by the followers of Prior in
the eighteenth itself the danger that English poetry should,
like French, be tied down to the iamb was beginning. It
could not be helped, it was the natural reaction. But
it was merely the exaggeration of a great and beneficent
alterative which had given us the rhythm, not of recitative
or of sing-song, but of real, metrical, musical poetry.
In The Owl and the Nightingale 2 we come to one of
1 Composed by Thomas of Hales, a Minorite, at the instance of a certain
girl dedicated to God. The second stanza may serve as a specimen :
Mayde her thu myht beholde, Theos theines that her weren bolde,
This worldes luve nys bute o res, Beoth aglyden so wyndes bles,
And is by-set so fele-volde, Under molde hi liggeth colde,
Vikel and frakel and wok and les. And faleweth so doth medewe gres.
It is inexpressible what a joy the first occurrence of such rhythms as
" Vijkel and frak|el and wok | and les," of such an internal rhyme as
' ' Under molde hi liggeth colde," gives one. The very bones of an Englishman
under the cold mould itself ought to start and tremble at the hearing of them.
2 Ed. Wright, Percy Society, London, 1843. Also by Stratmann later
(Krefeld, 1868), and a long specimen in M. & S. The best piece for illustra-
tion is perhaps the following accusation of the Owl :
Wi nultu singe an other theode,
War hit is muchele more neode ?
Thu neaver ne singst in Irlonde,
Ne thu ne cumest nogt in Scotlonde :
Hwi nultu fare to Noreweie ?
And singen men of Galeweie ?
Thar beoth men that lutel kunne
Of songe that is bineothe the sunne ;
Wi nultu thare preoste singe,
And teche of thire writelinge ?
And wisi heom mid thire stevene,
Hu engeles singeth in heovene ?
Thu farest so doth an ydel wel,
That springeth bi burne that is snel,
And let for druge the dune.
And flohth on idel thar a-dune.
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 57
those " sports " or exceptions which, as the Ormulum had
done fifty years before, prove the rule and enlighten the
way for us. We have seen how Layamon and others
were constantly making for (and sometimes actually
achieving for a couplet or two, but then as constantly
missing or " messing ") the regular unequivalenced iambic
dimeter couplet which had already established itself (with-
out equivalence) as the most popular metre of French
for all but epic purposes, while it was adjusting itself to
these also in the form of Romance. The characteristics
of this metre in French are rigid syllabic symmetry,
regular rhyme in couplets, caesura almost invariably in
the middle, and a fully classical elision of final vowels
before initial vowels in the next word. The author of
The Owl and the Nightingale, be he Nicholas of Guildford
or another, has attained this metre as nobody before him
has. If he does not fulfil all the rules just given with
unerring exactness and I am by no means sure that
such transgressions (they are not many) as do appear are
not more apparent than real his obedience is a prevail-
ing rule, his disobedience an unimportant exception.
Whoever he was he must have been a person of literary, Tendency
if not of definitely poetical, ability, superior to that of most *ilfdj|y bl '
of his contemporaries, and he has made a very good piece
of work of this poem. It shows us the immense advance
which had been made in imposing the mould of metre
of regular rhythm on the loose and shifting cadences of
Anglo-Saxon poetry. But it warns us, as the Ormulum
had warned us, of the danger of turning this mould into
a cramp, and of fettering English in that strict syllabic
uniformity which has been so great a hamper to French.
Of this danger, however, it would have been, and but The correctives
for certain later phenomena would still be, " seeing ghosts
by daylight" to feel very much alarm. There were,
indeed, at the time three great preservatives from it.
One was the considerable amount of resisting force in the
old sing-song, the old versicle-recitative a force which
was, as we shall see, to accomplish a great though partial
reaction later. The second was the hold which the true
THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS
BOOK I
Versicular
survival
Proverbs of
Alfred.
though new English principle of equivalenced scansion
was beginning to take on the ears and tongues and minds
of men. The third was a fancy germane to that for the
rigid couplet, but indirectly serving as antidote to its
bane for imitations of the regular but very intricate
and " symphonic " stanza-measures which had for some
time been popular in Latin, Provengal, and French. The
first of these influences we may see exemplified in a pair
of most interesting works (renewing for us that oppor-
tunity of comparison, of the same or extremely similar
matter at a slight distance of time, which we have had
before), the Proverbs of "Alfred" and of " Hendyng."
The second is put on record for ever though the teach-
ing of this record men have been singularly slow to learn
in Genesis and Exodus. The third (best shown in the
famous group of Lyrics, of which Alison is the queen) is
quite obvious, and most interestingly and valuably obvious,
in a couple of poems, " A Song to the Virgin " and " A
Song on the Passion," which Dr. Morris published in his
Old English Miscellany?
The Proverbs of Alfred* are among the documents
most tempting to desertion of our proper line and dis-
1 Pp. 194 and 197. The first is parcel-Latin, especially in its short lines
" Tarn pia," " Maria" etc. The second is pure English, and very beautiful.
But though Dr. Morris put them within the thirteenth century, they seem
to me almost beyond its prosodic accomplishment. I have, therefore, put
them "on the bridge" between thirteenth and fourteenth, i.e. on p. 86.
2 In An Old English Miscellany and (partly) in the Specimens.
I.
At Seuorde
sete theynes monye,
fele biscopes,
and feole bok-ilered,
Eorles prute,
knyhtes egleche,
XXII.
Thus queth Alured.
Ne gabbe thu ne schotte,
ne chid thu wyth none sotte,
ne myd manyes cunnes tales,
ne chid thu with nenne dwales.
Ne never thu ne bi-gynne
to telle thine tythinges.
At nones fremannes borde
ne have thu to vale worde.
Thar wes the eorl Alurich,
of thare lawe swithe wis,
And ek Ealured
Englene hurde,
Englene durlyng ;
On Englene londe he wes kyng.
Mid fewe worde wismon
fele biluken wel con.
And sottes bolt is sone i-scohte
for thi ich hold hine for [a] dote,
that sayth al his wille
thanne he scholde beon stille.
For ofte tunge breketh bon
theyh heo seolf nabbe non.
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 59
quisition on their probable history. It is even not a
desertion of that line to say that there is strong proba-
bility of their being in origin, if not coeval with the King
himself, not so very much after his time, and so necessarily
bearing trace of prae-metrical antiquity. But the oldest
form which we have in Middle English is not put at much
earlier than the middle of the thirteenth century. This
form bears a certain resemblance in prosody to part of
the Bestiary, and to the more unkempt portions of the
Brut. Its beginning is purely versicular, with some by
no means regular alliteration, no rhyme, and, for the first
half-dozen lines at least, neither regular rhythm nor that
fore-echo, as we have called it, of rhyme, assonance. These
two latter things appear in the seventh and eighth lines,
but actual rhyme not till the eleventh and twelfth, with
only occasional and faltering returns of it for the first
sixty or seventy.
Indeed, taking the various divisions, each of which
begins with " Thus quoth Alfred," one is very much
inclined to suspect that they represent different workings
up of the older material, which was no doubt uniform
that some have passed through the hands of a writer or
writers familiar with the new rhymed couplet, while
others have not. Take, for instance, the twenty-second
section this, by the way, contains a proverb the occur-
rence of which both in Shakespeare and Bacon has been
taken by certain persons to prove their identity, from
which, of course, it will follow that both were Alfred,
and that Alfred, or at least his thirteenth century adapter,
was both. Omitting the usual ushering versicle, the seven-
teen lines of this present rhyme only once (in " begin "
and " tydings," not quite perfectly), while the dimeter
rhythm, acatalectic, catalectic, or brachycatalectic, if not the
XXIII.
Thus queth Alured. hit schal wende thar to.
Wis childe is fader blisse the betere hit schal iwurthe
If hit so bi-tydeth euer buuen eorthe.
that thu bern ibidest, Ac if thu him lest welde
the hwile hit is lutel werende on worlde
let him mon-thewes lude and stille
thanne hit is wexynde ; his owene vville.
6o
THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS
BOOK I
Modified in
Proverbs of
Hendyng.
Genesis and
Exodus.
full syllabic value, is fairly maintained. Take up the next,
XXIII., and rhyme only emerges now and then, while the
rhythm is uneven and often imperceptible.
Then turn to the Proverbs of Hendyng} which may be
not more than a generation, and cannot, it would seem,
be more than half a century, younger than the version of
" Alfred." The matter is the same, but the form is
absolutely different. The whole is thrown into the six-
line stanza above described ; with the Proverb itself, and
" Quod Hendyng " added, as what we shall later find
called a " bob," after the introductory verses. The rhyme
is quite exact ; the stanzas are properly arranged on the
norm of 886 (7) 886 (7) with that licence of contraction
and expansion of " foot " of which we have already
spoken and shall speak more. In the one instance
the clay has received only the slightest and most waver-
ing impressions from the mould ; in the second it is
turned out in almost sculpturesque precision.
Genesis and Exodus 2 is, I do not hesitate to say, the
most interesting Middle English poem, from the point of
view of our present enquiry, which has yet been dis-
covered. It contains more of the kernel of English
prosody, properly so called, than any single poem before
Spenser ; and upon it, as upon no other, can the battle, not
of accentual v. quantitative, but of accentual v. foot-division
metre be fought out.
My friend Professor Skeat, in that famous or should
be famous disquisition contributed to Dr. Morris's edition
forty years ago on the subject, which was (except Guest's
remarks) the first, and on which no advance has generally
1 I have these in Reliquiae Antiquae and in the JElfric Society's issues.
Plentiful extracts are in M. & S. The following may serve :
Mon that wol of wysdam heren,
At wyse Hendyng he may lernen,
That wes Marcolues sone ;
Code thonkes and monie thewes
Forte teche fele shrewes ;
For that wes ever is wone.
2 Ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., London,
at p. xxxix.
Wis mon halt is wordes ynne,
For he nul no gle begynne
Er he have tempred is pype.
Sot is sot, and that is sene,
For he wol speke wordes grene
Er then hue buen rype,
" Sottes bolt is sone shote,"
Quoth Hendyng.
1865. Prof. Skeat's Metrical Note is
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 6 1
been made, starts with a formulation of what I venture to
think the wrong system. He bases it fairly enough, accord-
ing to his invariable custom, on the far more generally
known passage of Coleridge in reference to that unconscious
revival, which he thought a new creation, of the metre in
Christabel. "The essence of the system of versification which
the poet has adopted is, briefly, that every line shall have
four accented syllables in it ; the unaccented syllables
being left in some measure, as it were, to take care of them-
selves." This is a declaration, in fact, of the " accentual,"
the " beat," the " stress " system, against which it is one of
the purposes of these volumes to wage truceless war. It
was probably (though there are gainsayers, from a point of
view which does not concern us, even of this) the principle
of Anglo-Saxon versification : it is not the principle of
English.
These, it may be said, are brave words ; but where are
your proofs ?
I must have managed matters very badly if my proofs
have not been accumulating from the beginning of this
book. We have seen that during the Anglo-Saxon
period, until its very close or near it, every line liad to
have not necessarily four, but some, and generally three
or four, accented syllables, and that, according to some
opinions at any rate, the unaccented syllables were " left
to take care of themselves." Whichever view be true, it
is undeniable, except by denying the authority of the ear,
in which case cadit quaestio, that we can get, except rarely
and in a staggering fashion, no rhythm out of Anglo-
Saxon poetry save a grave and not ineffective sort of
recitative by no means disagreeable, by no means un-
musical, but falling short, in a manner as distinct as it is
irreconcilable, of our requirements of poetic music. We
have seen how this poetry was confronted more and more
as time went on with others, all of which possessed this
music after a fashion, but that these were apt to submit it
to restrictions, especially of the syllabic kind, which always
brought the danger, and sometimes incurred the result, of
monotony. In almost every instance (save the Ormulum
62 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
and The Owl and Nightingale} that we have hitherto sur-
veyed, we have found clash and compromise between the
two systems, the resultant of the conflicting forces being
a rhythm more or less resembling that of French and
Latin, but adopting escapements, easements, variations,
identical in principle, though not in combination, with
those of some classical verse, and retaining at least a
semblance of the syllabic freedom, the unaccented expan-
sibility, of Anglo-Saxon.
Now, to analyse Genesis and Exodus itself. Here is
the actual opening :
Man og | to luven | that rijmes ren
The wisjseth wel | the loge|de men
Hu|man may | him | wel loken
Thog he | ne be lejred on | no boken.
Luven god and serven him ay
For he it hem wel geld en may,
And to alle cristenei men
Beren pais and luve bi-twen.
Than sal him almightin luven
Her bi-nethen and thund abuven,
And given him blisse and soulis reste[n]
That him sal eavermor lesten.
There is nothing here that we have not in individual
cases seen before ; but the whole is infinitely more easy,
accomplished, and masterly. It is, in fact, Spenser's
Oak and Briar, and Coleridge's Christabel itself, more
than three hundred years before the one, and more
than five hundred before the other.
I desire to enter into no offensive polemic with
Professor Skeat, but I shall be content to leave to the
reader to decide, at least when he has seen their future
application, which is the sounder set of principles
(A) As Professor Skeat says :
That the unaccented syllables may be left to take care
of themselves.
That to make iambic and trochaic lines convertible is
to induce " all sorts of confusion," though it will be observed
Professor Skeat elsewhere makes a trochaic scansion of
Boadicea " exactly the same " as an iambic one.
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 63
That you can scan a line best by beginning at its
end, since the accented syllables [the debauched villains !]
instead of " drifting " about, will always be placed at the
end of a foot, where they can be policed if necessary.
That " it does not much matter whether each foot has
two or three syllables in it " [or four ? or five ?].
Or (B) as I should say :
That the norm of the line is always a certain number
of " feet."
That though the constitution or arrangement of these
feet may be uniform, the greatest melody is reached by
variation of them.
That these variations need not always, though they
generally do, contain one long syllable, and that the
length may be brought about by different causes.
That such variant measures are always pretty closely
equivalent.
That though they may be indulged in very largely, it
is not a case of " going as you please," of " leaving things
to take care of themselves," but that a too free indulgence
in trisyllabic feet where the base is dissyllabic, or vice versa,
will ruin, or at least damage everything. 1
On this piece, as it seems to me, hang all the law and
the prophets as regards Early Middle English prosody. 2
It is not, as in some of the cases which we have had
before us, a document unimportant in bulk ; it is not, like
others, one which speaks with uncertain voice ; it is not,
like others again, or some of the same, a document where
the artist is hardly an artist at all, where he is fumbling
and botching with his implements, and shifting his eyes
constantly from this pattern to that. It is a substantive
poem as long, in number of lines, as half the Odyssey or a
third of the sEneid, and telling a complicated and varied
story, if not with original invention, with complete freedom
of handling. There cannot be the slightest doubt in the
1 Coleridge did make this mistake in parts of Christabel.
2 In the author's own words, though he little thought of the applica-
tion
God schilde hise sowle fro helle bale,
The made it thus on Engel tale.
64 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
main about what the artist intended to do, different as
may be the analyses of that intention ; and there cannot
be any that he succeeded perfectly in doing it. The
poem is as regular in its apparent irregularity as The
Owl and the Nightingale, its most interesting contem-
porary and contrast, is in its unmistakable regularity.
Open it where you will and you will find the same unity
in diversity, the springy limber dimeter shortening itself
now and then by catalexis or anacrusis, lengthening itself
before long by the substitution of anapaests for iambics,
but never to such an extent as to endanger the general
rhythm of the line. 1 And everywhere, if you will keep your
ears open and your eyes on the Genesis and the Owl
together, you will see that between them, as wholes, there
is really the same unity in diversity, the same constitution
of the same general rhythm by foot-division, though in
the one case the poet chooses to confine himself to a
single norm of the foot, and in the other gives change
for that norm.
Both these inestimable documents are dated by linguistic
scholars (whose dicta in this examination we are, as has
been said, all the more glad to accept because there can
be no suspicion of collusion or connivance) at the very
middle of the thirteenth century. The three groups,
of even greater interest of matter, to which we are coming,
are, for this reason or that, postponed to the end or near
it, a postponement which, as it is made neither by us nor
in our interest, but entirely confirms the lines of our
general theory, we also accept very cheerfully indeed.
Their attraction is different ; but it is in all cases extra-
ordinarily great from the general literary point of view,
The Northern and hardly less from the prosodic. They are, if we may
repeat to save referring, the Northumbrian Psalter, 2 the
1 Here, as in the Orison and other places, decasyllabics, not due to tri-
syllabic substitution, appear as
Nu, bi the feith ic og to King Pharaon (2187),
He herde hem murnen, he hem freinde forquat (2053).
2 For this in various forms see Horstmann, Works of R. Rolle of Hampole,
etc., London, 1896, ii. 129 sq. Extracts in Morris and Skeat.
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 65
writings of or attributed to Robert of Gloucester, with a
fringe of similar work, and the pair of earliest known
romances, Havelok and Horn^ to which may be added
one or two others of a fabliau kind. Hardly any one,
who takes a sufficient interest in prosody to induce him
to read this book, can fail to see the peculiar import-
ance of an early version of the Psalms in any modern
language. In the first place, the combined religious
and poetical power of these wonderful compositions
necessarily attracted the attention of the devout and
the impressionable in every nation, as it was introduced
by Christianity to the Jewish Scriptures ; in the second,
the use made of them in the services of the Church
intensified and extended this familiarity ; in the third,
their matter irresistibly invites lyrical expression ; and
in the fourth, what may be called the catholic-canonical
text of them, the Vulgate translation, though not metri-
cal, has marvellous rhythmical and literary quality.
In modern English the unapproachable beauty of the
Authorised Version and Book of Common Prayer pre-
sentation of them, in rhythmical prose, has acted as
a preventer of metrical renderings of any value ; but in
other languages the names of Marot, Luther, Buchanan,
leap to the memory.
The special preciousness of this document consists in
the fact that we have here a direct opportunity of com-
parison between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. There
was such in point of subject in the Genesis, but in point
of subject only. Here we have beyond all doubt the
same identical Vulgate text, rendered by the verse-
smiths of the two periods. Let us take a passage the
ending of Psalm v. from the " Benedictine " A.S. version
and from our present text. It is still, let us hope, super-
fluous to add or prefix the modern English version of
Verba mea auribus, " Ponder my words, O Lord ! consider
my meditation," etc.
1 There are some reasons from the point of view of literary history for in-
cluding Sir Tristrem with these, but not from that of linguistics or that of
prosody.
VOL. I F
66 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
Word thu min onfoh, wuldres ealdor,
And mid earum gehyr, ece drihten !
Ongyt mine clypunga cuthum gereorde,
Beheald min gebed holdum mode !
Thu eart min cyning and eac ece god.
Grein-Wiilker-Assmann, Bibl. der A.S. Po.
iii. 329, Leipzig, 1898.
Myne wordes, lauerd, with eres byse ;
Understande the crie ofe me.
Behald unto my bede stevene,
Mi kynge and my god ofe heuene.
MS. Vesp. D. vii. ed. Horstmann, R. Rolle
of Hampole, ii. 134, London, 1896.
Is it not, even from this one pair and parallel, inconceivable
how any man can maintain, or ever have maintained, that
the two poetries are constructed on the same prosodic
principles ?
The unknown author or authors of this our earliest
English version adopted the measure which, as the last
two crucial examples will have shown, was the dominant
one in his time, or a little before it. And this is natural,
for no translator of the Psalms was likely to use an un-
familiar or a complicated form. That he took it in the
form of the Genesis, not in the form of the Owl, would be
almost a foregone conclusion from the fact (taking it to
be one) of his northern domicile and dialect But though
both he and the author of Genesis were following the
Bible, and following it no doubt from the Vulgate, the
more lyrical character of the Psalms almost necessitated
closer adherence to the sub-divisions of the original. He
religiously adapts to each "verse" either a couplet or a
quatrain, and this necessarily imposes certain conditions
(which might occasionally be called clogs) upon him. But
it at the same time makes for an even greater, though
perhaps a less artistic, variety in the bulk and structure
of his verses themselves, and induces him sometimes not
merely to avail himself to the utmost of the liberty of his
metre, but to go beyond it. We have seen that as early
as The Orison of Our Lady, and even through the mastery
of the Christabel metre possessed by the translator of
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 67
Genesis, there breaks something very like decasyllabic
measure, which may be (this is necessarily a question to
be postponed) the actual beginning of that great staple
form in English. The appearances multiply here. But
apart from this, and from the direct contrast with
A.S., the Psalter has no special interest for us, and
no new interest at all. It is valuable as confirming the
existence, popularity, and growing variety of the four-foot
couplet metre, with equivalent substitution, in English.
We have, however, seen that there was another metre Robert of
which had also " disentangled itself from the heap " very Gloucester -
early, and which had qualities likely to rival in popularity
those of the iambic couplet, while some of these were
specially adapted to certain classes of subject This is
an adaptation of the old double versicle to the new
prosody, which, though containing a pause in the
middle to testify to its origin, does not separate itself
into two lines so naturally as it falls into one ; and, on
the whole, even when compared with the other at its
finest, sweeps as well as swings. It is, in fact, the
metre of the Moral Ode rehandled. The rhythm of its
line is still, in at least frequent tendency, rather trochaic
than iambic, but it admits, and indeed courts, ana-
paestic substitution, and is often iambic frankly. Its
superior advantages for narrative, especially when it is
compared with the stricter and more impoverished form of
the dimeter couplet, are obvious ; and in particular it is a
very effective metre for recitation the monotony and
sing-song which beset the stricter couplet, and are not
always quite shaken off by the looser, being almost
entirely absent from its sweeping volume. The qualities
which have made The Revenge and A Ballad of East and
West the common prey of elocutionists are apparent
already in the rough moralisings of the Ode ; they are still
more apparent in the Chronicle which Robert of Gloucester
certainly wrote in the last quarter of the thirteenth
century, and in a bulky collection of Saints' Lives,
immensely popular, constantly rehandled, altered, and added
to the work, doubtless, in all their forms put together of
68 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
a very large number of writers, but in some of the earliest
cases at least very probably, if not almost certainly, Robert's. 1
The differences to be found between these examples
of the metre produced in the last twenty years (in all
probability) of the thirteenth century and those famous
ones produced certainly in the last twenty years of the
nineteenth, putting aside the " unpolished " (as Addison
would have said) state of the language and some minor
results of practice and patterns, are really very small.
The older poet is too careful and too much troubled
about his middle pause ; he does not vary its character
skilfully enough, and is apt, in his fear of overrunning,
to pull up with a hard and throttling tug which involves
a corresponding jolt at the start of the second half.
This obsession of the pause, which certainly did exist in
Old and to some extent in Early Middle English, which
Guest and others would have ruthlessly transferred to
modern, is a relic, of course, of the old versicular scansion.
This would have become mere chaos without it ; and, so
long as it held sway, there was always a danger of that
relapse, into versicular scansion itself, which at last actually
happened, though partially and for a time only.
Further, the writer does not manage his substitution
with the facility and art of his fellow-practitioner in the
other form, as shown in Genesis and Exodus. If he
wants more syllables he uses them, but he does not
seem to be aware of the " lift " that they give to Pegasus.
Still, all the " bones " (to use a vernacular phrase) of the
full swinging ballad metre, in formation or use, are there,
though they rattle a little and are rather dry, and un-
clothed with the soft, bright flesh that is to come on
1 Of these later. For the Chronicle see Hearne's ed. ; considerable extracts
are in M. & S. Here is the vigorous rendering of William the Conqueror's
retort to King Philip's gibe :
Bi | the uprising of Jhe|su Crist, | if God | me wole gra|ce sende}
Vor | to make | mi chir |chegong, | and bring |e me of | this bende,
Suche wi|ves icholjle mid | me lede, | and such | ligt at | ten ende,
That an | hundred | thousend | candlen, | and mo icholle ] him tende,
Amidde | is lond | of Fran|ce, | and | is pru|te ssende
That a so|ri chirche|gong ichol|le him make, j ar ich thanjne we[nde].
This metre will occupy us constantly in the future, in itself and as "resolved"
into the ballad form.
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 69
them. And once more the foot division is perfectly
clear though not perfectly achieved. Accentually, Robert
has little if anything to learn : it is in the turning of his
" beats " into " feet " that he has much.
With the final group, the interest still mounts in point
of matter, for we are at last in the presence of the
greatest literary creation of the Middle Ages, and of
one of the great literary creations of the world, that is to
say, of the Romance. There is every reason to believe,
from allusions indeed it is fairly certain that pretty
numerous specimens of this great kind existed before the
end of the thirteenth century, while, as we shall see, the
main bulk of the best examples that we have were
certainly in existence before the fourteenth was very far
on its way. But there are two which for this reason
and that (not the least important of the reasons being
in all cases prosodic) are generally regarded as having a
better claim to the early date than any other, and these
are, as has been said, Havelok the Dane and King Horn.
It would be out of our way to go into the interesting The earliest
and not improbable speculations tending to show or to
argue that though both of these, and especially Havelok,
were taken directly from the French, their mediate
French originals had older English or Scandinavian an-
cestors in their turn. As always, let us stick to our texts.
Havelok is written in the iambic dimeter couplet,
which we have already seen in full swmg. It has not
the scrupulous exactness of The Owl and the Nightingale,
and indulges very commonly indeed in seven -syllable
lines, while on the other hand it also indulges at times
in the frank trisyllabic substitution of the Genesis. If
the man who wrote it had been a dull fellow the piece
would have been very rough and heavy. But fortunately
he was possessed of a great knack of phrase and of narra-
tive power, and these lighten and stir up his rough verse. 1
1 The Princess Goldborough has been given against her will to Havelok,
who is taken for a kitchen knave.
On | the nith
Sojry and sor
als Golde|borw lay, For | she wen|de she were \ bi-swike
wful was | she ay, That | she were ye|ven un|kyndelike.
70 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK i
King Hom. Horn shows us something different. We have seen,
on several occasions and in reference to several different
poems, that there was for some time a certain hesitation
whether the versicle-pair of Anglo-Saxon would settle down
in English into a hexasyllabic or an octosyllabic couplet.
The latter is much better suited to the genius of the
language, and it had the valuable support, not merely of
its French congener, but of the most usual base of Latin
hymn lines. But the frequency of extremely short
versicles in A.S. may have made for the hexasyllable,
which in its turn was stoutly supported by the French
Alexandrine with its strong centre-break, and perhaps to
some extent even by the Latin hexameter. The octo-
syllable prevailed, and happily ; but its little sister always
had a sort of sneaking charm for the English ear, and
held her place in combined and alternated metres, if not
exclusively.
In Horn it is still making a bid for the principal
place, but in an irresolute fashion. So great indeed is
this irresolution that the " beat-men " have endeavoured to
claim King Horn as an example of " four-beat " octo-
syllabic couplet verse itself. This cannot be granted,
though there are octosyllabic lines and even octosyllabic
couplets in it, just as there are decasyllabic lines and
even decasyllabic couplets in the other class. The swing
of the pendulum in this line or couplet corresponds indeed
exactly to that in its rival with proportionately smaller
range. There are even lines of four syllables that is to
say, of five, allowing for the final e and there are lines
of eight, but very few, I think, of nine. Those of six and
seven are the most common, and where the hexasyllabic
lines do not include an e in the ending there is generally
O nith | she saw J there-in|ne a lith, He beth heyman, er he be ded. "
A swi|the fayr, | a swi|the bryth, One hise shuldre of gold red
Al | so brith, | al | so shir She saw a swithe noble croiz,
So | it were | a blase | of fir. Of an angel she herde a voyz,
She lokede north and ek south ' ' Goldeborw, let thi sorwe be,
And saw it comen ut of his mouth For Havelok that haveth spuset the,
That lay bi hire in the bed. He kinges sone and kinges eyr,
No ferlike thou she were adred. That bikenneth that croiz so fayr."
Thouthe she, " Wat may this bi-mene? Havelok, ed. Skeat, E.E.T.S.
He beth heyman yet als y wene 11. 1247-1268.
CHAP, in THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 71
a monosyllabic foot. In other words, the hexasyllabic
norm is unmistakable. 1
To these we must add the two extremely interesting The earliest
fabliau-viQC&s of Dame Siriz and The Vox and the Wolf. Fl?. hsh
* J ' Jaoitaux.
both given to readers for the first time by Thomas
Wright, and both apparently dating well within the
thirteenth century. The Vox is in octosyllabic dimeter 3
of an unusually springy and limber character, with
abundant monosyllabic feet in the first place and a fair
amount of trisyllabic substitution. Dame Siriz has still
greater prosodic attraction, for it is a mixture of this same
couplet (rather less springy but even more freely handled) 4
with nothing less than the " Romance six," the great
Sir Thopas metre. In this the lines are treated with the
same licence of contraction and expansion as in the
couplet, and the lesson of the two is that of all the rest.
1 The anagnorisis will serve as a specimen. Horn, disguised as a beggar
and with blackened face, has dropped Rimenhild's ring in a cup of liquor she
sent to him, and tells her that he himself is dead.
Rymenhild sede at the furste To herte knif heo sette
" Herte ! nu thu berste, Ac Horn anon hire lette.
For Horn nastu namore He wipede that blake of his swere,
That the hath pined so sore." And sede " Quen so dere
Heo feol on hire bedde Ihc am Horn thin owe
Ther heo knifes hidde Ne canstu me nogt knowe ?
To sle with hure King Lothe Ihc am Horn of Westernesse
And hure selve bothe, In armes thu me cusse ! "
In that ulke nigte, Morris and Skeat (who give the
If Horn come ne migte. whole), i. 275, 11. 1205-1224.
2 The first in Anecdota Literaria, London, 1844, P- 2 $?> an d in Latin
Stories, Percy Soc. 1 842, p. xvi. sq. ; the second in Reliquiae Antiquae,
London, 1843-5, " 2 7 2 S 3- (^ * s extraordinary but not unsatisfactory to
possessors of this latter delightful book, that it has never been reprinted.)
3 Text as in authorities. Some emendations are obvious but immaterial.
A vox gan out of the wode go He ne held nouther way ne strete
Afingret so that him wes wo ; Fer him wes loth men to mete
He nes nevere in none wise Him were levere meten one hen
Afingret erour half so swithe. Than half an oundred wimmen.
4 The 3rd and 6th lines of the stanzas are often monotnetrical (" withouten
grief"), and the couplet verses are sometimes brachycatalectic, "As a wun|che
that | is wo." But it also ought to have its specimen :
" Welcomen art thou, leve sone ; With muchel hounsele ich lede mi lif,
And if ich mai other cone And that is for on suete wif
In eni wise for the do, That heighte Margeri.
I shal strengthen me ther-to ; Ich have i-loved hire moni dai ;
For thi, leve sone, tel thou me And of hire love hoe seith me nai,
What thou woldest I dude for the." Hider ich com for-thi.
' ' Bote leve Nelde, ful evele I fare ; Ed. cit. pp. 6, 7.
I lede mi lif with tene and kare ;
INTERCHAPTER I
IN the foregoing Book it has been the writer's purpose,
and his endeavour, to examine, with all the thoroughness
and freedom from prejudice which he could muster, the
actual, historical, documentary facts and circumstances of
English prosody in its transition period from Anglo-
Saxon towards, if not yet wholly to, the beginnings of
Early Modern English verse. We have seen, in the first
place, what systems of rhythmical or metrical arrangement
an English poet of this time must, may, or can have had
before him when he began to write. And we have seen
the attempt being to omit, as a whole or in sufficient
sample, no single document of the slightest importance
what, in these two dim but momentous centuries from
1 100 to 1300, English poets, with more or fewer of these
models before them, did actually produce. We have
taken these productions absolutely without prejudice ; we
have laid down no arbitrary or borrowed rules and laws
for them. We have not declined to accept such a fact
because it is at variance with our theory of prosody, or
such another because it is at variance with our theory
of pronunciation. We have added nothing to the evi-
dence, as we have excluded and suppressed none of it.
We have given the anomalies and the " heaps " of
Layamon the same attention as the ordered punctuality
of Nicholas, the fixed syllabic precision of the Ormulum
no less weight than the swinging equivalence of the
Genesis and Exodus. And we have only sought, by the
combined exercise of the ordinary methods of com-
parison and inference, to find out what they all have to
say.
72
BOOK i INTERCHAPTER I 73
The first thing that they have to say they say plainly
that Anglo-Saxon prosody is moribund if not actually
defunct. On what principle that ear can be constructed
which does not detect, between the rhythm of almost
everything from Caedmon to the Rhyming Poem, and the
rhythm of almost anything from the Ormulum to
Havelok, a radical, a vital, an irreconcilable difference, I
at least have failed to discover. The two deeps call to
each other, and the voices of the two are as distinct as
sounds can make themselves. As has been said (perhaps
ad nauseam, but repetition is necessary), the rhythm of
Anglo-Saxon poetry is a sort of half -prose recitative.
The alliteration, the rudimentary parallelism of the
versicles, and a certain grave, not inharmonious, but
entirely unmetrical accompaniment furnished by the
accents, give all that it boasts all that it even seems to
wish to boast. Regular metrical time, tune, " number,"
it never possesses for any considerable period ; and its
momentary hints of such things are uncertain and frag-
mentary. Something like the trochaic beat is occasionally
perceptible certainly it is more often perceptible than
any other ; but this is arranged in no correspondences ;
it has neither continuance nor reflex action ; it is only a
sort of " under-hum," a sort of singing in the ears, rather
than any tune. One perfectly understands how it passed
into the pleasantly rhythmed prose of ^Elfric ; one is not
prepared to follow those who recognise in its obscure
cadences the source, still undried, of further prose
rhythms of English down to the present day. But with
the music of our poetry it has little more to do than the
strummings of a child have to do with a finished
symphony.
On the other hand, in all the poetry of our present
period the rhythms that we know, though less perfect,
are as unmistakable as they are in the poetry of the
nineteenth century to an English ear which has kept
itself true to English vocalisation, however familiar it
may have become with others. That it may be possible
to disguise and muffle this music by paying too sedulous
74 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK
heed to theories of accent and of pronunciation I do not
deny. Great is the power of theory ; and of course, if
you take it for granted that everything must then have
been different that " vowels were interchangeable and
consonants do not count " much may be done. But is
it not, one asks in all modesty and sincerity, rather odd
to summon the foreigner's vowel and other pronuncia-
tion in order to get rid of his rhythm ? Is it not a rather
more reasonable theory that we Englishmen talk very
much as our ancestors talked when first the blend of
" Saxon and Norman and Dane " historically established
itself in our race and, to say the very least, historically
coincided with these first appearances of our poetry ?
We are affectionately bidden to unlearn the impressions
of our ignorance. Would it not be at least as reasonable
to bid us, or some of us, distrust the impressions of our
acquired and superinduced hypotheses ? And may not
those who have at least an equal literary acquaintance with
all periods of English literature, who regard Genesis and
Exodus and Geraint and Enid on lines of impartial
friendship, and know the fourteenth century romance as
they know the sixteenth-seventeenth century drama and
the eighteenth-nineteenth century essayor novel may they
not (after a good many years of reading and thinking)
have something to say ?
At any rate to some such students there is no
longer any doubt possible on the matter. From the
wooden but unmistakable time-marking, unrhymed still, of
the Ormulum, through the less wooden but almost equally
regular and rhymed couplet work of The Owl and the
Nightingale, to the beginnings of stanza, the rhythm at
least is perfectly clear, and its lesson is perfectly clear
likewise. Nor is the same rhythm, though worked out
on less rigid laws, any the less marked in the larger and
more imposing body of work from the Orison of Our
Lady and the Moral Ode through Genesis and Exodus
the highest point of prosodic interest if not of either
prosodic or literary accomplishment to the " swingers "
of Robert of Gloucester and his fellows, and the libertine
i INTERCHAPTER I 75
octosyllables and hexasyllables of Havelok and Horn.
The poetic muse of English has " come to town " not yet
in " velvet gown," in " rags and jags " comparatively
speaking. But it has come ; and the reverse of a plague
with it.
But the most important, the most satisfactory, and (to
those who will open their eyes) the most convincing set of
documents is that the chief constituents of which are the
Godric fragments, Layamon, and the Proverbs of Alfred.
If after, and in especial immediately after, the versicular
and non-metrical scansion of Anglo-Saxon, we had found
metrical scansion as perfect as that of The Owl and the
Nightingale, and nothing but either this or the older
scansion itself, it would certainly have given us serious
pause. And we should have been obliged to admit that
there was something of a case for the suspicion of a
deliberate, non-natural, head-and-shoulders hauling-in of
"the rhythm of the foreigner" that this last was as
much superinduced on the different, the resisting, the true
prosody of English as the Greek prosody of literary Latin
was superinduced upon the Saturnian aboriginal. But
the actual phenomena are as different as possible from
this. They arrange themselves into four groups, and
these four groups by the confession (nay, by the inde-
pendent, previous, and entirely disinterested testimony) of
men of the purest philological science, not tainted with
any literary heresy at all, succeed each other in regular
chronological order, or, where they overlap, display ten-
dencies, " slopes," nisus, of an unmistakable character.
The first is, for us, prehistoric it consists of the Anglo-
Saxon versification itself ; and of that we have said
enough. The second is the work of the twelfth century,
now more immediately under consideration. Of this the
Godric fragments, whether actually due to the saint or
not, must be twelfth century; the Proverbs of Alfred, it
is agreed by almost everybody, represent twelfth-century
work, if not something much earlier ; and nobody puts
Layamon later than the very beginning of the thirteenth.
Every one of them tells the same tale, from the half-score
76 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK
or score verses of Godric, to the fifteen or thirty thousand
of Layamon, through the couple of dozen stanza-paragraphs
(as we may almost call them) of the Proverbs. That tale
is not so much the story of men who are deliberately
endeavouring to conform to a particular prosodic system
as that of men who are writing with two entirely different
systems in their ears and before their eyes ; who have lost
complete executive grasp of the older ; who have not
gained complete executive grasp of the younger ; but who
exemplify first the one, then the other, accordingly as the
respective tendency is uppermost. The scanty ejaculations
of the Durham hermit cannot of course show us much ;
but they show what one might venture to call an " ettling
at " the two great distinctive characteristics of the new
prosody regular rhythm and more or less regular rhyme.
There is little room in them for flux and reflux. But
there is fair room for this in the Proverbs, and almost the
amplest possible for it in the Brut. Everything happens
almost uncannily as it ought to happen. Especially in
Layamon, which probably represents the work of a single
man better than the Proverbs (for these may very likely have
been taken from the older forms separately by different
persons) is this the case. The almost or quite perfect
rhymeless, accented, alliterated, versicle-pairs at the ex-
treme right, and the almost or quite perfect rhymed and
rhythmed couplets at the extreme left, are connected by
a centre of all kinds of hybrid or transition forms ; here
versicles fallen into disarray on their own system, and not
reformed on any other ; there couplets which only want
the last touch to get them in order, and in the centremost
centre of all, admixtures of the two systems in almost
every possible variety of composition. It is scarcely too
wild a flight to call the work of Layamon the workshop,
the experimental laboratory, of true English prosody.
The lessons of its contents are so clear that one might
think it impossible to read them in any but one way.
There is not a page of the fourteen hundred it is hardly
extragavant to say that there is not a line of the two and
thirty thousand which will not give a text for our sermon.
i INTERCHAPTER I 77
Yet if any doubt remained, the two other bodies of
instances are at hand to correct it. As has been said in
a somewhat different form and connection already, the
third of these bodies, the most important constituents of
which very probably extend at pretty even distances
over the whole of the thirteenth century itself, are the
Ormulum, The Owl and the Nightingale, the Proverbs of
Hendyng, and some others. These show us something
that looks at first sight like the completed result of the
labours of the workshop fixed metrical rhythm without
rhyme, and attained by strict syllabic invariableness in the
first ; regular couplet rhyme and measure in the second ;
regular stanza of almost fixed syllabic line-construction in
the third. But if we had had these only, we should have
overshot the true mark. We might still have been led into
the error an error recurring constantly during the story
we are endeavouring to tell, and not perhaps dead yet,
that the prosody of English is a fixed syllabic prosody,
that it is altogether, or almost altogether, limited to
" common time," strictly observed.
But the fourth group, the largest by far, the most
various, the most interesting as literature, and the most
pervading in date and otherwise, at once saves us from
this error as to the result, and throws a flood of fresh light
on the processes. The Orison, the Moral Ode, nearly all
the minor poems, Genesis and Exodus, in greatest pride of
place, the long " swingers " of late thirteenth-century
narrative, the couplets of Havelok and Horn, the couplets
and stanza-sixes of the two fabliaux, take up the lesson of
what we have called the centre of the Layamon army, the
first drafts and failures and fragments of the workshop of
the Brut. We learn from them that there was something
in the English genius which held it back from, which dis-
inclined it to, the regular syllabic uniformity of French,
even when tipped and adorned with rhyme, much more
when unadorned therewith. After the nearly perfect
rhymed couplets scattered here and there in Layamon,
after the (as such wooden perfection goes) perfect syllabic
" blanks " of Orm, there could clearly be no difficulty for
78 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK
any Englishman who set his mind to it in doing what
Nicholas of Guildford actually and constantly did, what
others did more or less. A slip or two here or there might
be as probable as pardonable, but so wide and as it were
systematic an array of slips could not be accidental.
Clearly something had survived from the old versicular
prosody which the national ear, modified as it had been,
was not prepared to abandon. And this something, as
the patient examination of the facts should clearly show,
was the preference of apparently, though by no means
really, irregular length of line to the cast-iron uniformity
of the French, and to some extent of Low Latin likewise.
This might be done by omission of syllables, or even of
whole feet (anacrusis and catalexis) at the beginning or end
of lines, or it might be done by the substitution of tri-
syllabic or in some cases even apparently monosyllabic feet
for dissyllabic. But it was done quocunque modo.
Even yet, however, it may not have been made quite
clear exactly what in the writer's mind is the result which
he thinks so clearly achieved, and exactly what he thinks
to have been the methods and processes by which it was
attained. Of these latter it is probably impossible to
speak more advantageously than by the way (sometimes
reviled but constantly useful) of metaphorical comparison.
I am entirely unable to see, in the verse of the two
centuries which we have been surveying, either a mere
modification, with rhyme added, of the prosody discover-
able in Anglo-Saxon, or a desertion and an apostasy to
" the rhythm of the foreigner." It seems to me, on the
evidence of the facts only and wholly, that just as Saxon
and Norman and Celtic constituents, with political and
ecclesiastical influence from Rome, were blending and
coalescing to form the English nation, so corresponding
influences (though in each case the Celtic might not make
much show) were blending and coalescing to make English
language in the first place, and English prosody in the
next. And it seems further that, perhaps because there
was least to do, perhaps because the poetic impulse is
one of the earliest that shows, that, if not in perfection,
i INTERCHAPTER I 79
yet definitely and recognisably, the last change was effected
somewhat earlier than the others.
To shift the handling, the view which is taken here
is as of a plastic mass of decomposed or decomposing
Anglo-Saxon verse-material, upon which are brought to
bear, like multiplied potters' thumbs or like the tools of a
lathe, the influences of Latin, of French, and perhaps of
other languages, together with that infinitely more power-
ful though far more subtle and incalculable one of the
race-spirit, which is forming and changing itself coincidently.
That the finished results of this process disengage them-
selves slowly is no wonder ; the real wonder is that they
disengage themselves so soon, and that their forms when
once really taken are so lasting. The differences, be it
said once more, of English verse of 1000 and English
verse of 1300 are differences of nature and kind ; the
differences of English verse in 1300 and 1900 are mere
differences of practice and accomplishment.
What, yet once more, are the former differences ?
As to the first, the most obvious, and in a sense per-
haps the most important, rhyme there is not much real
quarrel. Even Dr. Guest, as we have seen, admitted (with
perhaps a faint sigh) that all nations with accentual
prosodies accept rhyme sooner or later. It is true that at
intervals there have been revolts against this Queen-grace
of poetry a long and dangerous one in the sixteenth,
and to some extent in the seventeenth century ; a flicker
of rebellion at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning
of the nineteenth ; even a slight flash of that flicker lately.
But only the first of these has been important even in
appearance, and even that was in reality a vain thing
as impotent when boldly faced as the lions on the stair
at Carbonek. So pleasant to the very eye, so delightful
to the ear, so potent even upon the structure of the verse,
so inexhaustibly fertile in fair offspring, is this youngest
child of all the Muses, that, by a consummate irony, she
has compelled her very blasphemers, such as Campion and
Milton, to give some of the most charming examples of
her power themselves.
8o THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK
Yet, great as is the power of rhyme as a time-beater,
sufficient though it would probably have been to get us
out of the half-formed versicle into the regularly moving
verse, the example of French is enough to show that it
would not by itself have given us the extraordinary
elasticity and variety, the bird-chorus of trilling song
which distinguishes English poetry, and which we begin
to hear if only so very faintly at our actual period.
Rhyme will cut the lengths of verse for you, and cut
them fairly (perhaps exactly) even : and, what is more, it
will create in the ear a craving which can only be satis-
fied by making these lengths coincide to some extent in
internal distribution, by providing a certain succession
of duller beats which shall lead up to the final ring-
beat of the rhyme itself. But here (as we see in Low
Latin as well as in French, and in all the Latin languages
more or less) the positive and irresistible power of
rhyme ceases. It may be able to do more ; but it is
by no means certain that it will exert this additional
faculty.
Here, however, there was something in the old material,
something antecedent to rhyme, which persevered, and
which, uniting itself quite happily and harmoniously with
the influence of rhyme itself, gave us what the French
have lacked all through their literary history, and will
perhaps never fully attain. This was whether in changed
or in unchanged form is a point on which doctors differ,
but on which their difference does not affect our views
or arguments that peculiarity in Anglo-Saxon prosody
which interspersed the accented pivots, pillars, or whatever
you like to call them, with varying numbers of unaccented
syllables. This peculiarity in the old prosody and its revival
in the new, its partial disappearance again and its fresh
revival, not only in spite of mere disuse but of repeated,
well-meant, even still continuing, attempts to suppress and
extirpate it, show that the national ear, the national taste,
the national desire and appetence must have attached
some special sweetness and excellence to it. And in spite
of the contrary principle prevailing in the chief literary
i INTERCHAPTER I 81
examples before the experimenting poets, it held its own
for the time at any rate.
But how did this new prosody execute its moulding
and grouping ? In what form ? Under what laws ? It
is here that the rub lies.
One theory, which could not be introduced under better
auspices than that of the author of the quotation partly
given before, and more than once referred to, is this. The
essence of the system of versification is, briefly, that every
line shall have four, or five, or six, or seven (the number,
as the supporters of this theory would cheerfully agree,
makes no difference) accented or stressed syllables in it,
the unaccented syllables being left " in some measure, as
it were, to take care of themselves." Let us not for one
moment put, or attempt to insinuate in any way the putting
of, an unfair emphasis on these last words. " In some
measure, as it were," is a proviso of weight, and it is per-
fectly well known to students of the subject, that Dr. Guest
invented one of the most elaborate systems in the world,
by which the occurrence and combination of the accented
and unaccented syllables is subjected to a rigid mathe-
matical calculus of variations. These, the ingenious author
thought, might be tried in extenso by a painful poet, and
the successful ones retained, the unsuccessful ones elimi-
nated. But, putting this aside, there is one thing which
not only appears from the above-quoted statements, but
obviously lies at the bottom of every statement of the
accent-men, the beat-men, the stress-men, or whatsoever
name they prefer, and this is that they concentrate
their attention on the accented or emphasised syllables.
By these they count ; these are the important things, the
front-fighters ; the rest are a mere numerus, less or more
irregularly drilled.
According to the other way of looking at things, the
accented syllables, the " long " syllables as we prefer to
call them, are only a constituent part, and not even,
as will be shown presently, a necessary constituent part
of a body, which in these chances and changes has arisen
to be the real constitutive element, the real integer, in
VOL. I G
82 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK
English poetry a body which we call, merely for conveni-
ence, uniformity, and readiness of intelligence, the " foot,"
being quite as ready to call it the " hand " if anybody
prefers it. 1 These feet, we admit nay, we voluntarily
and vigorously assert did not exist in Anglo-Saxon. But
they existed notoriously in classical prosody, and they
really exist in French, though the rigid syllabic quality of
that language, its tendency to rhetorical emphasis instead
of poetical measure, and its peculiar atony, obscure them.
Further, they are not merely observable, but, according to
the demonstration just given, they cannot be missed, in the
English poetry of the time which we have been surveying.
They are present, as it were, " confusedly " and " dis-
persedly," though in different degrees of confusion and
dispersion, in Layamon and the earlier fragments ; they
leap to the eye, in their wooden manner, like piano keys
in Orm ; and in proportion to the accomplishment of the
authors, they are visible more or less in every piece that
has hitherto come under our notice. Further, in at least
some, if not in most, of these pieces, they observe corre-
spondences, and present values, which, though by no means
the same in symphonic adjustment, are very close in
internal arrangement to those of classical feet. To trans-
pose to this subject Dr. Guest's remark upon rhyme, we
may say that no language which, without confining itself
to strict syllabic counting, adopts metrical arrangement,
can avoid falling into them. And their main laws are as
follows :
Every English verse which has disengaged itself from
the versicle is composed, and all verses that are dis-
engaging themselves therefrom show a nisus towards
being composed, of feet of one, two, or three syllables.
1 And having no insuperable objection even to "isochronous interval,"
though this, it is true, is subject to the remark of the irreverent undergraduate
who had been reading Mill on Hamilton. He had, he said, no objection
to speak of a " Permanent Possibility of Inamoration," but he thought it
simpler to call it a "girl." Only, these "isochronous intervals " must be
charged with articulate or inarticulate sounds, or with silences corresponding
thereto.
i INTERCHAPTER I 83
The foot of one syllable is always long, strong,
stressed, accented, what-not. 1
The foot of two syllables usually consists of one
long and one short syllable, and though it is not
essential that either should come first, the short pre-
cedes rather more commonly.
The foot of three syllables never has more than one
long syllable in it, and that syllable, save in the most
exceptional rhythms, is always the first or the third.
In modern poetry, by no means usually, but not seldom,
it has no long syllable at all.
So much for the feet themselves ; now for the system
of their selection and juxtaposition.
The foot of one syllable is practically not found
except
a, In the first place of a line.
6, In the last place of it.
c, At a strong caesura or break, it being almost
invariably necessary that the voice should rest on it
long enough to supply the missing companion to make
up the equivalent of a "time and a half" at least.
d, In very exceptional cases where the same trick
of the voice is used apart from strict caesura.
The foot of two syllables, and that of three, may,
subject to the rules below, be found anywhere.
But:
These feet of two and three syllables may be very
freely substituted for each other.
There is a certain metrical and rhythmical norm of
the line which must not be confused by too frequent
substitutions.
In no case, or in hardly any case, must such com
1 Except, to speak paradoxically, when it is nothing at all. The pause-
foot, the "equivalent of silence," is by no means an impossible or unknown
thing in English poetry, as we shall see later.
84 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK
binations be put together so that a juxtaposition of more
than three short syllables results.
And, similarly, the licence of monosyllabic begin-
nings, terminations, or pauses must be sparingly used.
The facts and documents already furnished will, or
should, enable any tolerably attentive reader to judge for
himself how far these principles are actually illustrated in
the period at which we have arrived. I shall only say
that I am prepared to apply them, with the cautions
prefixed, to every passage.
Let there be put in this place, as a final consideration
or group of final considerations for men of understanding,
no more than the following :
On the one side in the theory of Guest l as a daring
and admirably supported extreme of consistent audacity,
and in many shades of bargain and compromise, receding
from it towards the centre from which we diverge in the
other direction there is a system of English prosody,
which in the extreme makes some of the best results of
modern English poetry acts of high treason towards the
theory of English poetry itself, and which in the less
extreme varieties represents that poetry as having passed
through stages antipathetic, if not directly contradictory,
to each other in the most important points. These systems
do not merely require the ordinary postulate of develop-
ment ; they are not satisfied with the recognition and
explanation of erroneous theory on the part of critics,
and with the admittance of practice in accordance with
these theories. They make the whole history of prosody
for the last eight hundred years a thing not merely of
shreds and patches, not merely of maxima and minima,
but of disorder and chaos, of sixes and sevens. According
to them, if you attempt (which hardly any one of them
1 I am, of course, well aware that nobody, or hardly anybody, avows
Guestianity now ; that it is, in fact, used by the beat-men as a convenient tub
for the whale, a readily sacrificed child for the wolves. It is none the less
the only systematic and (the a priori method being granted) satisfactory deal-
ing 'with the facts on their side, or indeed on any, up to the present day, and
.as such may fairly be utilised.
i INTERCHAPTER I 85
except Guest's own has attempted) to make a continuous
history of the subject, you must grant that at one point of
that history two and two made four, and that at another
two and two made five. They invoke science to their
aid ; but they throughout violate that first principle which
constitutes the charter of science the permanence and
inviolability of law.
In the system which has been sketched, and which,
the Fates and the Muses permitting, will be filled in here,
there is nothing of this sort. It is natural, it is historical,
it blinks nothing, conjectures nothing, argues nothing out
because it is inconvenient ; judges by the fruit only, and
rules no fruit bad because it does not adapt itself to pre-
conceived theories about the tree. Even in regard to the
antecedent stage of English literature the Anglo-Saxon
period it attempts no " black mark." It simply recog-
nises what the purest linguist cannot deny, that at that
time the constituents of English language were not fully
mustered or incorporated, and draws the conclusion that it
would be idle to suppose any similar muster and incorpora-
tion of the principles of English prosody. From the time
when the elements of the constituency were fully present
it is prepared to deal with everything, for the simple
reason that it insists on adapting itself to everything
that exists to everything, at least every good thing,
that presents itself. It does not, like Guest, say that
some of Shakespeare's and Milton's most beautiful things
are contrary to principle, and that the most effective
rhythms of Burns and of Coleridge " have very little to
recommend them." It does not, like Atterbury, dismiss
the best work before Mr. Waller as downright prose tagged
with rhyme. It does not, like the rasher critics and
poets of the Romantic outburst like Mr. Arnold even,
who was hardly a conscious Romantic brand Dryden
and Pope as classics of our prose. It does not, like some
of the early and not so very early critics of Tennyson,
consign his most exquisite harmonies to the uncovenanted
mercies of " Chinese poetry." It does not, like respected
persons of to-day, rule out things as not Chaucer's because
S6 THE PERIOD OF THE ORIGINS BOOK r
they disagree with its own inventions as to Chaucer's
prosody. Its motto is, " Let every good thing come in.
And if I cannot make a theory which will square with the
goodness of all of them, you shall, with my free consent,
call what I do make a bad theory."
But while sufferance of the entrance of all good things
is one great principle of this system, it is not in the least
obliged to commit itself to a chaotic and libertine promis-
cuity. On the contrary, it insists that certain principles
of true English prosody manifest themselves, as we have
tried to show, at the earliest time when any such mani-
festation was possible, and that they persevere throughout
the history that while no other system adapts itself
with such complaisance to the goodness of all good
English poetry, none shows with greater force and finality
the badness of such English poetry as is bad. To justify
this boast must be the task of the rest of the book ; let
it suffice here to have laid, and in so far as seemed decent
to have defended, the laying of the foundations.
NOTE (v. sup. p. 58). Here are, side by side, stanzas of the two pieces,
from MS. Egerton, 613 :
Of on that is so fayr and bright, Somer is comen and winter gon,
Velud marts stella. This day beginniz to longe,
Brighter than the day is light, And this foules everichon,
Parens et puella. J ove hem wit songe ;
Ic crie to the thou se to me, So stronge kare me bint,
Levedy, preye thi sone for me. Al wit joye that is funde
Tarn pia, In londe,
That ic mote come to the, Al for a child
Maria I That is so milde
Of honde.
Not far from Alison and Tristrem, these ! We shall have further oppor-
tunities of noticing the effects of such scraps of foreign tongues.
BOOK II
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I
THE METRICAL ROMANCES
Scale and matter of the period The general prosodic phenomena
of metrical Romance The Auchinleck MS. The octosyllabic
couplet poems Those in " Romance stanza " Origin and
character of this Other stanzas : Sir Tristrem Others
Lybius Disconus, etc.
ACCORDING to the older suppositions Chaucer was born Scale and
not long after the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth m e ^ r of the
century ; according to the newer and now accepted one,
at the close of its fourth decade. But little of his work,
and none of the most characteristic part of it, is assigned
by any one to a period much before the last quarter, or
at all before the last third. The earliest form of his
great contemporary and opposite Langland's work is not
put before the seventh decade, and Gower's English verse
of importance must be still later. Practically, therefore,
before we come to these great substantive figures we
have, from our last date 1298, a full lifetime of
threescore and ten years, in which English verse was
exercising itself, so as to be ready for them when they
appeared. This period gives us hardly any workers even
known by name, and perhaps not one of individual
character, except Richard Rolle of Hampole. But it
gives us an immense quantity of work of the most
various kinds, now fully available for study. And to this
we must turn.
It is curiously double in character. On the one hand
we have, in the great bulk of romance during the first
quarter of the century, in the almost perfectly formed
89
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
BOOK II
The general
prosodic
phenomena
of metrical
Romance.
The
Auchinleck
MS.
lyrics of MS. Harl. 2253, and in the Cursor Mundi, the
completion of that assimilation of as much French and
Latin prosody with the older elements as English
would stand, and that production of a new blend not
a mere mechanical mixture but a genuine new kind
the steps of which have been traced in the foregoing
Book. On the other, we have the singular and most
interesting reactionary phenomenon of the resurrection of
alliterative prosody.
The metrical romances present by far the largest
section in point of bulk, and (though hardly in any
individual instance) in general substance and class the
most interesting part, of earlier fourteenth-century verse-
literature. How rapidly they grew is, as even cursory
students of the subject know, well shown by the presence
of a very large number of them in one particular collec-
tion, the Auchinleck MS., which belongs to the first half
of the century. 1 The Middle Ages were indeed distin-
guished by this rapid dissemination and abundant pro-
duction of certain works in classes ; but the production at
least was, no doubt, facilitated by the fact that in this
branch of literature (nor in this only) the English forms
were in some cases demonstrably, in nearly all probably,
adaptations, though sometimes pretty free adaptations, of
French. This fact has its special importance for us in
the other fact that the great popularity of the iambic
dimeter in France reflected itself on our own production.
But at the same time it shows that the English copying
was not slavish. For instance, the prosodic classification
of some of the best known and most interesting Auchinleck
romances is as follows :
Octosyllabic or Iambic Dimeter couplet : Sir Degore,
King Alisaunder, The Seven Sages, Arthur and Merlin,
Richard Cceur de Lion, Florice and Blancheflour, Guy of
1 It is to be regretted that this MS., which exists in the Library of
the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh, has never been printed exactly as a
whole. For prosodic, as for other literary purposes, reproductions of single
MSS. are much more valuable than so-called "critical editions," which are
in most cases "faked" according to this or that theory, and in all
represent a blend of no ancient or certain authority.
CHAP, i THE METRICAL ROMANCES 91
Warwick (part), Bevis of Hampton, Otuel, Lay le Frain,
Sir Orpheo.
" Romance stanza " of six lines, sometimes amplified
on the same rhymes aabaab to twelve or more : The
King of Tars, Owain Miles, Amis and Amiloun, Guy of
Warwick (part), Roland and Vernagu, Horn Child and
Maiden Rimnild.
Other stanzas to be specified presently: Sir Tristrem.
In the octosyllabic group we find, as we should The octo-
expect, nothing quite so rough as Havelok or so osten- couplet poems,
tatiously brachycatalectic as Horn ; but, as we should
expect likewise, we find considerable variation, not only in
individual accomplishment but in tendency either to the
nearly French form of The Owl and the Nightingale, or
to the specially English form of Genesis and Exodus.
This latter is particularly noticeable in the interesting
group of romances which, from this and other character-
istics, but perhaps on somewhat insufficient grounds, have
been thought to be by one author Alexander, Arthur and
Merlin, Richard Cceur de Lion, The Seven Sages. And of
these, by accident or not, it is most noticeable in a poem
specially English, not merely in subject but in tone and
temper, in Richard Cceur de Lion where there are passages
which read as if they had come from the hands of Scott
or of Coleridge. No new licences are admitted. In-
deed, as we showed, the previous century had practically
exhausted possibilities in this kind. But the practice is
extended somewhat, and regularised still more, till it
ranges through varieties of the norm which may be
sampled below. 1
1 In two hundred lines of The Seven Sages, Percy Soc. version, 11. 1800-
2000, there occur these :
He | and hys | brother |
(brachycatalectic with monosyllabic first foot).
Is lyf | and on | wilk wyse |
(brachycatalectic simply).
The emperour toke with thaym a man anon
(either five foot, or normal with very free trisyllabic substitution).
For a continuous example the following may serve :
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
Those in We have seen so much less of the six-line romance
stanza 1 """ stanza 886886, aabaab, that rather more may be said of
it. The original selection, adoption, or construction of it,
whichever term be preferred, is interesting from several
points of view. It is probably not unphilosophical to see
in it something of a compromise, in respect of preference
of the base-line of eight or six. It would be more
interesting still if we had facts sufficiently dated to
be sure whether it or the apparently simpler ballad stanza
Origin of 8686, abab, is the older. 1 " Apparently simple " only,
for the origin of neither is so clearly likely to have
preceded the other as it may seem, to one who only
looks at the prima facie complexity of the two. Instead
of rhyming the versicles of the long line (whence the
couplet itself comes), rhyme the first and second versicles
of two long lines, and you have the ballad metre at once,
when it is remembered that there is a tendency from the
very first to shorten this second versicle. But, on the
and character other hand, take the continuous couplet, feel a sense of
monotony in it, and add a shorter line unrhymed, and you
have just one of those processes which we see going on
The kyn | ges dough | ter lay in | her bower,
With | her may | denys of | honour ;
Mar | gery ) her nam | e hyght ;
Sche lo|vyd Ry| chard with alle | her myght.
At the | midday, | before | the noon,
To the prisoner | sche wen|te soon,
And | with herje mayd|enes three.
"Jayler," | she sayd|e, "let | me see
Thy prisoners | now has|tyly ! "
Blithe | ly he sayd|e, " Syk|yrly ! "
Forth he | fette Rych|ard a|non ryght,
Fair he | grette | that la|dy bryght,
And say|de to her | with her|te free,
What is | thy wil|le, La|dy, with me?"
Whenne | sche saw
Her lo|ve sche cast
him with ey|en twoo,
upon | hym tho,
And sayd, | " Rychard, | save God | above,
Of all|e thyng | moste I | thee love ! "
Metrical Romances of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth.
Centuries, ed. Weber, Edinburgh, 1810, vol. ii. ; Richard
Casur de Lion, p. 37, 11. 879-896.
[In more cases it is possible, and even probable, that the scansion was by
a monosyllabic foot at first and a trisyllabic to follow "What | is thy
wille," etc.]
1 "Older" in English, I mean. See next note and Appendix on
' Metres."
CHAP, i THE METRICAL ROMANCES 93
abundantly in the Layamon "heap." Then, instead of
leaving the inserted lines in the air, rhyme them on the
couplet principle, and the thing is done. Its advantages
are seen in our very earliest example, which in perfection
is probably Hendyng, and the added and more artful
music is exactly what would be likely to attract the
hearers of recited poetry, as all the romances no doubt
originally were. It is, moreover, sufficiently easy of com-
position, and it lends itself without the slightest difficulty to
the needs of the improvisatore or the reciter from memory. 1
On the other hand, it has drawbacks of its own, which,
even without nearly a century of practice by good writers
and bad, were sure to strike such a wit as that of its
parodist Chaucer. It is not so merely monotonous as
the octosyllabic couplet, but it has its own disease of
sing-song and jog-trot. It requires very skilful manage-
ment to make it a good vehicle for narrative, and
(especially when expanded into twelves and eighteens, as
is common) it can be appallingly heavy. But it seems (as
indeed the selection of it for Sir TJwpas would once
more prove) to have been very popular ; and it is in a
certain, though only in a certain, fashion a prosodic
advance. It is so even upon its simplest terms, its mere
schedule and scheme ; but it is much more so if the
poet attempts to get, and succeeds in getting, the various
and adjusted cadence of the different lines, which is
possible if he combines his rhymes well, and avoids these
worst dangers of the mediaeval singer stuffing and
padding, surplusage and verbiage, merely to get rhyme
and to fill in stanza. It is sometimes really, and even
very, effective. 2
1 Of course the construction of these, as of more complicated forms,
was greatly aided by, or if any one prefers it largely due to, Latin and
French examples, to the versus caudatus, the rime couee in this case.
But one of the most important things which have emerged to me in this
enquiry is that all the greater metrical forms are at least partly the result of
spontaneous effort at something new, not mere "dumped foreign produce.
As it is with the forms of story told, so it is with the forms of the verse
that tells them ; they are not stolen ready-made, they grow. To please
some persons of worship, however, I shall endeavour to give more atten-
tion to this subject in the appendices of the present volume.
2 Compare it in Hendyng (perhaps c. 1270), in a good middle example
94 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
Other stanzas : Still more dwelling is necessary on the more elaborate
stanza forms. What may be their oldest example, 1 Sir
Tristrem, is already written with some exactness on a
very complicated model. The staple, as in Horn, is the
six -syllable line, with the iambic rhythm much more
clearly expressed and closely observed. There is a little
trisyllabic equivalence, and the usual " canting over " of
iambic into trochaic, or erection of the first syllable of
iambic into a foot, occurs now and then. But as a rule
the lines are exact enough to their norm.
Instead, however, of their being arranged in simple
couplets, each rhyming but not intruding or extending
its rhyme on anything else, an elaborate and uniform
stanza appears. There are eleven lines in each, and the
rhymes of these are arranged in an invariable order,
ababababcbc.
But there is something else to notice. In all our couplet
metres, except that of The Owl and the Nightingale, we
Guy of Warwick (Auch. MS., perhaps 1340), and in Sir Thopas (1390-
1400) :
a. Mon | that wol | of wys|dam heren,
At wy|se Hen|dyng he may ler[n]en,
That wes | Mar col | ues sone ;
Go | de thonk | es & mon | ie thewes
For | to te | che fe | le shreues,
For that | wes ev|er his wone.
b. Them | perour ros | amor | we y-wis,
And at | thi chir | che he herd | his messe,
In the first | tide of | the day
And in |to his hall|e he | gan gon
And af|ter the stew|ard he ax|ed anon,
And the pil|grim without | en delay.
c. Lisjteth, lor|des, in good | entent,
And I | wol tell | e verrayment
Of mirth | e and of | solas ;
Alof
a knight | was fair | and gent
In bat aille and | in tourneyment,
His nam|e was Sir | Thopas.
For Chaucer's economy in equivalence and yet his use of it v. inf.
1 This debate is out of our line. If our Sir T. was the poem which
Thomas of Erceldoune very probably wrote, it must be anterior, and perhaps
a good deal anterior, to 1300. But few people now think that it is ; and both
the complication and the exactness of the form are against it. But it must be
earlier, and may be a good deal earlier, than 1350, from its occurring in the
Auch. MS.
CHAP, i THE METRICAL ROMANCES 95
have seen that great occasional liberties were taken with
the length of lines, the four-foot not unfrequently shrink-
ing to three, and the three- to two, with half-way houses
in each case. But these drops have hitherto been con-
structed on no system. Here 1 the ninth line that of the
first c rhyme consists, and consists uniformly and regu-
larly, of only a single foot of only two syllables (three
with the final e as usual).
And here we have, possibly for the first time, except, as
has been said, in the eight, eight, six, eight, eight, six of the
Proverbs of Hendyng, our first regular stanza. The effect
is not very good ; the short lines, as has been said, do not
suit English as a staple ; the rhymes come with excessive
frequency ; and the stamp and twirl of the final triplet,
though an added grace, is a grace of a somewhat boarding-
school fashion. Such as it is, however, we see it, and we
know whence it comes. It comes from the elaborate
stanza fashions of Northern and Southern France (it is
not ours to attempt to settle whether the former were
derived from the latter or not), and its object, conscious or
unconscious, is twofold. The poet on the one hand de-
sires to put himself under even stricter tutelage and super-
vision to get farther from equivalence and syllabic variety
than Nicholas of Guildford had done ; and he desires
not quite according to knowledge perhaps to get more
of the new musical accompaniment of rhyme. The " bob,"
or short-line pivot, became extremely popular, especially
in mixed metrical and alliterative verse.
It is, indeed, a commonplace that stanzas are not as
a rule extremely satisfactory vehicles for narrative ; but
1 The king | had a douh | ter dere,
That mai| den Y|sonde hight,
That gle | was lef | to here
And ro|maun|ce to rede | aright.
Sir Tramjtris hir | gan lere,
Tho, | with al | his might,
What al|le poin|tes were
To se | the sothe | in sight,
To say,
In Yr|lond nas | no knight,
With Y|sonde | durst play.
Sir Tristrem, S.T.S., ed. M'Neill, 11. 1255-63.
96 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
they occupy a most important place in the general exer-
citation of our poetry in regular and complicated measures,
and they are most interestingly connected, not merely with
this, which is possibly their earliest extant example, but
with three groups of poetry not inferior in interest to
themselves the lyrics already more than once referred to;
the extremely curious batch of alliterated romances, etc.,
which find themselves unable to rely on alliteration only,
and take, in various measures, rhyme- and stanza-arrange-
ment for corroboratives ; and lastly, the systematic verse-
forms of the early drama. All these will be treated later.
Others. Moreover, they themselves, amid their various minor
resemblances, differences, and consequent classifications,
exhibit two principles of grouping which are by no means
to be passed with slight attention. Some of them affect
the " bob " form which we have seen in Sir Tristrem, and
which is almost universal in the alliterative stanza class.
Some, on the contrary, and most of those which are not
alliterated, adopt a more uniform arrangement through-
out such as the distribution by threes of roughly equal
length and identical rhyme with a fourth differing in both
respects, 1 which is the natural carrying out of the common
romance stanza just noticed, while that stanza itself is some-
times varied, as, for instance, into 888484, aaabab.
The stanza of Lybius Disconus has marks of earliness
1 Hardely, | with-out|en delay,
The sex j to horn | hase ta|kyn up|pe Kay,
And then|ne Sir Baw|dewin | con say,
" Wille | ye a|ny more?"
The tother | unsquar|utte him | ther tille,
Sayd, " Thou | may weynd | quere | thou wille,
For thou | hase done | us noghte | but skille,
Gif we | be wowun j dut sore."
He brayd | aure to | the king,
With-owt|un any | letting,
He asshed | if he | had herd | any | tithing
In thayr | e hoi | tus hore ?
The knyght|e stedit | and stode,
Sayd, "Sir, | as I come | thro yon|dur wode,
I herd | ne se | butte gode,
Quere I | schuld fur | the fare."
Avowynge of King Arthur, ed. Robson,
p. 78, stanza xlii.
The Black burne MS., from which Robson's Three Romances are taken,
gives a very rough, but all the more useful, text.
CHAP, i THE METRICAL ROMANCES 97
in its composition twelve sixes rhymed like the eight-
and-six twelve-lined romance stanza, aabadbadbaab} It
might indeed be regarded as a mere variation of the latter,
made by some experimenter of more restlessness than
genius ; but there is at least equal, if not greater, probability
in the conjecture that it is an attempt to do for the hexa-
syllable, while it still maintained something of a fight for
primacy, what was being done for the more prevailing line.
This stanza is not, for a short space, entirely devoid of
attraction ; but it soon becomes tedious, while the overdose
of rhyme, in proportion to the syllables, also makes itself
speedily felt. The lines are fairly regular in length, but
adopt the usual licences to some extent. In two of the
so-called Thornton Romances (later in transcription but not
probably so in writing), as in the Avowing of Arthur, we
find a sixteen-lined stanza displaying the above glanced-at
arrangement, in quatrains consisting of a mono-rhymed
triplet and a fourth line, rhymed differently but continu-
ously throughout the stanza. The length of the com-
ponents of the triplet varies in a fashion suggesting no
great skill on the part of the authors. In Sir Percevale
it is generally octosyllabic, with considerable waverings
and shrinkages ; in Sir Degravant generally hexasyllabic,
with considerable bulgings ; in the Avowing almost frankly
chaotic. But the odd lines 4, 8, 12, and 16 are always
pretty exactly sixes. 2
1 Tyll hyt | fell on | a day
He met|te Elene that may,
Wythin|ne the cas|tell tour :
To hym | sche gan | to say,
Syr knyght, | thou art fals | of fay
Ayens | the kyng | Artour.
For love | of a | woman
That of | sorce|ry kan,
Thou doost | greet dys| honour.
The la|dy of Syn|adowne
Lang | lyght yn | prisoun,
And that | ys greet | dolour.
Lyb, Disc. ed. Ritson, Metrical Romances,
London, 1802, ii. 6l, II. 1435-1446.
2 The child | e hadde won|nede in | the wodde,
He | knewe no|ther evyl|le ne gude,
The kynge | hymself|e un|derstode
He was | a wild|e manne ;
VOL. I H
98 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
On the whole, the interest of these metrical romances,
very great as it is from the general literary point of view,
is considerably less from the prosodic. They carry on
for us indeed, and enforce in the most unmistakable manner,
with an imposing bulk of matter, and with sufficient variety
of detail, the general demonstration of the last Book. We
see in them, beyond all possibility of reasonable miscon-
struction, that English verse has definitely taken its " ply "
in the direction of regular metrical arrangement and
rhythm, constituted, as far as the two main influences go, by
rhyme, and by the employment of definite but variable
and exchangeable metrical units which may be called
" feet " or anything else. We see the forms constructed
on these principles multiplying, but always illustrating the
general system in their multiplication. We owe to them
So faire | he spak|ke hym | withalle,
He lygh|tes dou|ne in | the haulle,
Bonde j his mere | amonge | thame alle,
And to | the bor|de wanne !
Bot | are he | myght e | bygynne
To | the me | te for | to wynne,
So comes | the re|de knyght|e inne
Eman|gez thame | righte thanne,
Pre
Bio
kande on | a re|de stede,
de re|de was | his wede,
He ma|de tha|me gam|ene fulle gnede,
With craft | es that | he canne.
Sir Percevale, Thornton Romances (Camden
Soc., 1844), pp. 23, 24, 11. 593-608.
The knyth | hoves in | the feld
Bothe weth | ax and | with sheld ;
The eorl | us dough | dere beheld
That | borlich | and bolde
ffor he | was ar|med so clene,
With gold | azoure | fulle schene,
And with | his trewe | loves betweene,
Was | joy to | behold.
She | was | com | lech | y-clade,
Tfw]o rych | e banrett | es hur lade,
Alle the | beaut[e] | sche hade
That | freely | to folde ;
Wyth love | she wen|dus the knyght,
In hert | trewly | he hyeght,
That he | shalle love | that sweet wyght,
Acheve | how | hit wold.
Sir Degravant, Thornton Romances,
p. 196, stanza xxix. 11. 449-464.
CHAP, i THE METRICAL ROMANCES 99
unquestionably, in virtue of their bulk, their number, and
their extreme popularity, a great debt for helping to estab-
lish the new true blended system. But their importance,
from any but this point of view, is a little injured by the
fact that they almost invariably have direct French originals,
and still more by the fact that, with the exception of the
guessed-at author of the group above referred to, and per-
haps one or two more, nobody of very remarkable talent
seems to have been concerned in their production, while
even this poet can hardly, without very lavish use of
words, be called a genius. They are still, so to speak, in
statu pupillari\ but they are passing through a good
curriculum, and their practice of it establishes that cur-
riculum further.
CHAPTER II
ALLITERATIVE ROMANCE AND THE ALLITERATIVE
REVIVAL GENERALLY
The reappearance of alliterative measure Its character ; interim
comparison of Layamon and Langland The wholly unrhymed
poems : William of Palerne, etc. Character and influence of
their versification The poems with rhyme and stanza Gawain
and the Green Knight The Awntyrs of Arthur The Pistyl
of Susan The Pearl Merits and dangers of the blend
Character of the reaction generally.
The reappear- METRICAL romance is, as we have seen, pretty plain sail-
auuerative * n > anc * merely continues the lessons of the previous
measure. Book. With the other or alliterative division, as with the
whole body of alliterative verse-work to which it belongs,
the case is decidedly different. In the first place there is
the unsolved and probably insoluble problem of its his-
tory and genesis. Those fortunate and patriotic persons
who can afford to see nothing but accentual rhythm, with
a little rhyme added, in the verse of the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries who serve it straight as heir to Anglo-
Saxon prosody may have no difficulty here ; to those
who accept the facts, the difficulty, though likewise to be
accepted, must seem very considerable. For a century,
beyond all doubt and by distinct evidence, the set of the
tide has been towards the disuse of alliteration, at least as in
any sense a constituent of measure, towards the cultivation
of distinctively metrical rhythm, and towards the constitu-
tion of this by the increasingly constant use of rhyme, and
of metrically varied but harmonised time-units or feet.
Nor does this tendency by any means disappear ; on the
contrary, as we have seen at the beginning of this Book
100
CHAP, ii ALLITERATIVE ROMANCE AND REVIVAL 101
and shall see again in the latter part of it, the chief stream
shows not the slightest alteration of direction, character,
depth, or volume. In main channel it flows with ever
more decided direction of current, in greater volume,
rapidity, and force of flood. But now there arises a
singular eddy or backwater, which continues in evidence
for a whole century most strikingly, for two centuries more
or less. What obstacle, what new confluent determined
its first appearance, we really do not know in the very
least. The one certain fact in connection with the matter
is that this revived alliterative prosody, whether pure or
blended as in many if not most cases it is with metre
and rhyme is distinctly more noticeable in the North-
Midland and Northern parts of the country, including
Scotland, than in the Southern. Even so we have little
or no evidence of it before the second quarter of the
fourteenth century. The undoubtedly Northern Cursor
Mundi does not show it at all ; and a not impossible
guess has been ventured that it may have had some-
thing to do with the great intellectual and religious stir
effected about that time by the Yorkshire hermit, Richard
Rolle of Hampole. 1
However this may be, the actual phenomena of the its character-
phenomenon are sufficiently interesting ; and we shall find m ^ Q m "
as we examine them that, like those others which we have Layamon and
already examined, they work together for good in them- an s land -
selves, they work together for right as far as we are con-
cerned. The first and most notable thing is that the old
versicular arrangement, at a great distance from anything
that seems to us poetical rhythm, makes no attempt at
reappearance. Even Langland himself, the greatest
genius in personal qualifications, and the greatest rebel
to such characteristics of the newer prosody as rhyme,
achieves, and apparently aims at, no such reaction as this.
1 It has been suggested to me that, in my own terms, the ' ' mass " was in
parts " unthumbed " (v. sup. p. 79), and that these are specimens of it.
The suggestion is ingenious and fair. But there is the broad fact that nobody
has yet produced an English poem of the slightest importance, in alliterative
measure, dating even probably between 1210 and 1340. And hypotheses non
jingo : especially de non existentibus.
102
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
BOOK II
The wholly
unrhymed
poems
William of
Palerne, etc.
He probably was born not very far from the district where
Layamon had lived and written a hundred and fifty years
before, and a comparison of the two is full of invaluable
teachings. Langland never admits he was no doubt
definitely aware of, and on his guard against the lapses
into rhymed couplet which are so frequent and so instructive
in his predecessor. But he never gets he never, we can
hardly doubt, attempted to get anywhere so near to the
original rhythm of Caedmon and (if there was such a
person) Cynewulf ; it is much if he sometimes reminds us
of the rhythmed prose of yElfric. And as we shall see
when we come to examine his work directly, he betrays
compromises and condescendences of his own which are
equally valuable. But he lies for the moment some way
in front of us, and we have first to deal with the allitera-
tive romances and the alliterative religious pieces, some of
which pretty certainly, and most of which in all probability,
came before his very earliest work.
To appreciate this earlier crop we must take together
romances and some non- romance poems : William of
Palerne , Gawain and the Green Knight, the Awntyrs of
Arthur, but also the three remarkable poems, called
Patience, Cleanness, and The Pearl, that accompany Gawain
in its MS., and the Pistyl of Susan.
Of these only William of Palerne, Patience, and Clean-
ness dispense with rhyme altogether. There is no reason
to suppose a common authorship of these pieces, but their
versification is extremely similar. In none of the three is
there any rhyme final, internal, or alternative, and though
not invariably, yet generally, the old rule of two alliterative
syllables in the first half of the line and one in the second
is kept as the distinguishing prosodic mark. On the other
hand, the lines are kept fairly of a length, with very strong
middle pause ; though the second half is, as a rule, shorter
than the first, it is not as much so as had been common
of old. 1 What is more remarkable still, and indeed most
remarkable of all, is that each of the lines falls, as a rule,
1 I speak with the limitations acknowledged elsewhere ; but after repeated
samplings, everywhere in A.S., of the most normal lines.
CHAP, ii ALLITERATIVE ROMANCE AND REVIVAL 103
roughly into the rhythm of a four-footed anapaestic metre,
and, not only this, but each ^<2^-line, somewhat more
roughly but still discernibly, into that of a two-footed
anapaestic, the first half inclining to the prominence of a
redundant final syllable, the second to the absence of that
syllable, but in both cases with abundant exceptions. 1
The poets, moreover, though they never fail to preserve
the rough anapaestic lilt, avail themselves very freely of
what we have called the " patter " licence, which had dis-
appeared from metrical verse. You must sometimes
the rhythm will force you, if you have an ear, to do so
run four syllables into a foot, besides allowing " catches "
or anacruses at the beginning and extrametrical syllables
at the end. 2
Rough, however, and licentious as this verse may character and
seem, it has its own laws, it obeys them, and, like all J^ 6 ^
measures, mice, and men in such conditions, it is respect- ficatkm.
able and satisfactory. It is the matrix, some may say, of
1 A third difference, for the tendency of Anglo-Saxon rhythm, where there
is any, is trochaic predominantly.
2 This is, perhaps, a good place to say that, according to my view, no
extrametrical syllables can be allowed except at the end or (and here rather
doubtfully) the middle. Any scheme which recognises these escapements else-
where is self-condemned. I subjoin a passage from William of Palerne and
two from Cleanness :
Hit bi-fel in that forest there fast by-side,
Ther woned a wel old cherl that was a couherde,
That fele winterres in that forest fayre had kepud
Mennes ken of the cuntre as a comen herde ;
And thus it bitide that time as tellen oure bokes,
This cowherd comes on a time to kepen is bestes
Fast by-side the borwz there the barn was inne.
The herd had with him an hound his hert to light,
Forto bayte on his bestes wanne thai to brode went.
The herd sat than with hound aghene the hole sunne,
Nought fully a furlong fro that fayre child,
Clougtand kyndely his schon as to here craft falles.
That while was the werwolf went a-boute his praye,
What behoued to the barn to bring as he might.
E.E.T.S., W. of Palerne, p. 6;
Morris and Skeat, ii. 138-139.
" Wende, worthelych wyght vus wonez to seche,
Dryf ouer this dymme water if thou druye fyndez,
Bryng bodworde to bot blysse to vus alle ;
Thaz that fowle be false fre be thou euer."
Ho wyrlez out on the weder on wyngez ful scharpe,
Dreghly alle alonge day that dorst neuer lyght ;
104 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
much future " tumbling " doggerel, but it is also the matrix
of the great anapaestic tetrameter or dimeter which has
given English poetry, from the seventeenth century to the
present day, so much of its most stirring and effective work ;
and it has had other worthy developments. It possesses a
pleasant " derry down " movement for narrative, and it is
capable, as the author of Cleanness shows in the great exalta-
tion of honest physical love, quoted below, of rhetorical
adaptations to which it is hardly ridiculous to apply the
term magnificent. Yet to all fairly attentive and fairly
ingenuous observers it must be obvious that it still owes a
great deal to the rival which it would seem to be trying to
supplant, in equality of total measurement, in correspond-
ence of parts, and, above all, in rhythm. In it first do we
clearly see that substitution of anapaestic for trochaic
movement which has been referred to, and which testifies
to some remarkable change either in the mechanism of
the national language or (which is indeed the same thing
from another point of view) in the receptivity of the
national ear.
The poems Great, however, as are the confessions and compromises
and stanza 6 even in this most " stalwart " form of the reaction, those
And when ho fyndez no folde her fote on to pyche,
Ho vmbe-kestez the coste and the kyst sechez,
Ho hittez on the euentyde and on the ark sittez ;
Noe nymmes hir anon and naytly hir stauez.
Cleanness, ed. Morris, p. 50, 11. 471-80 ; Morris
and Skeat, ii. p. 159.
I compast hem a kynde crafte and kende hit hem derne,
And amed hit in myn ordenaunce oddely dere ;
And dyght drwry therinne, doole alther-swettest,
And the play of paramores I portrayed my selven ;
And made ther-to a maner myriest of other,
When two true togeder had tyghed hem-selven,
Bytwene a male and his make such merthe schulde come,
Wei nygh pure paradise moght preve no better.
Elles thay moght honestly ayther other welde,
At a stylle stollen Steven, unstered wyth syght,
Luf-lowe hem bytwene lasched so hote,
That alle the meschefez on mold mought it not sleke.
Cleanness, ed. Morris, p. 57, 11. 697-708.
I venture to think Dr. Morris's punctuation and side-notes slightly mistaken
in assigning the last lines to what follows, not what precedes. They are
evidently based on Canticles viii. 6, 7, and relate to honest love.
CHAP, ii ALLITERATIVE ROMANCE AND REVIVAL 105
of the other four are greater still. Taking the four poems
(two romances and two religious pieces) which have been
named we find the following results.
The best and most attractive of all from the literary Gawain and
point of view the most original as far as is yet known
of all English romances Gawain and the Green Knight,
shows us at once one of those extremely interesting blends
or coalescences in which the secret of the whole matter lies,
and the ignoring of which by students has been at the root
of the failure hitherto to take a catholic view of English
prosody. The greater part of it consists of lines not
distinguishable from those just considered in the three
earlier cases. But, instead of being ranged continuously,
these lines are separated, at intervals of no regular length,
by the " bob and wheel " arrangement before referred to,
the bob being of two syllables, and the wheel an irregular
but unmistakable ballad-quatrain of 8686, or a quatrain of
sixes rhymed alternately. Moreover, the bob rhymes with
the second and fourth line of the quatrain. It should
perhaps be said that alliteration appears in the wheel as
well as in the laisses or batches of the main verse, but
rather less regularly. 1
1 Gawain has been hospitably received at a castle. His hosfs wife tempts
him.
Thenne ho gef hym god-day and wyth a glent laghed,
And as ho stod, ho stonyed hym with ful stor wordes,
" Now he that spedes uche spech, this disport yelde,
Bot that ye be Gawayn, hit gotz in mynde. "
" Quer-fore ! " qwod the freke, and freschly he askes
Ferde lest he hade fayled in fourme of his castes.
Bot the burde hym blessed, and bi this skyl sayde,
" So god as Gawayn gaynly is halden,
And cortaysye is closed so clene in hymselven,
Couth not lyghtly haf lenged so long wyth a lady,
Bot he had craved a cosse, bi his courtaysye,
Bi sum towch of summe tryfle, at sum talez ende."
Then quod Wowen, " I wysse, worthe as yow lykez,"
I shall kysse at your comaundement, as a knyght fallez,
And fere [?] lest he displez yow, so plede hit no more."
Ho comes nerre with that, and cachez hym in armez,
Loutez luflych adoun, and the leude kyssez ;
Thay comly bykennen to Kryst ayther other ;
Ho dos hir forth at the dore, withouten dyn more.
And he ryches hym to ryse, and rapes hym sone,
Clepes to his chamberlayn, choses his wede
Bozez forth, quen he watz boun, blythely to masse,
io6 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
The Awntyrs In the Awntyrs of Arthur, the Pistyl of Susan, and
The Pearl, however, we find that the poets are not satisfied
with even this compromise. They adopt, and indeed
exaggerate, alliteration ; and their staple line, though still
more " uniformed," is still that of the unrhymed pieces ;
but they call to their aid a regular stanza with a fixed
number of lines not less regularly arranged in rhyme.
The Awntyrs, as the stanza quoted below will show at
once, must have given the poet a great deal of trouble to
write ; for he has to work out a stanza as complicated as
the most complicated in the mere metre-poets, and he has
the burden of alliteration as well. Eight lines of the
formation just discussed, but very close to one another in
syllable -length, and sometimes settling to an almost
accomplished Alexandrine, are rhymed abaabb with scrupu-
lous care, and followed by a ninth with a fresh rhyme-sound
c. There is no " bob," but the wheel (usually 6664, and
rhymed sometimes bbbc, but always in triplet and single)
follows duly, the whole making a thirteen-lined stanza
extremely curious and interesting to compare with the
seeming chaos of a not so much earlier time. 1
And thenne he meved to his mete, that menskly him keped,
And made myrry al day til the mone rysed,
With game ;
With [?] never freke fayrer fonge,
Bitwene two so dyngne dame
The alder and the yonge,
Much solace set thay same.
G. and G. K., ed Morris, p. 41, 11. 1290-1318.
The final quatrain, it may be observed, hovers round its norm (whether
this be 8686 or 6666) in a very interesting and Layamonian manner. Often
enough to look as if it were meant, there is alternation of masculine and femi-
nine rhyme, and sometimes, as in the " wonder" and " blunder" of the very
first laisse, the feminine rhyme is a real "double."
1 In the tyme of Arther thys antur be-tydde,
Be-syde the Tarnewathelan, as the boke tellus ;
That he to Karlylle was comun, that conquerour kydde,
Wythe dukys, and with dosiperus, that with the deure dwellus,
For to hunte atte the herd, that lung hase bynne hydde ;
Tyl on a day thay hom dyght into the depe dellus,
Fellun to tho femalus, in forest was fredde ;
Fayre by fermesones, by fry thys, and felles,
To the wudde thay weyndun, these wlonkes in wedes ;
Bothe the kyng and the qwene,
And other doghti by-dene ;
CHAP, ii ALLITERATIVE ROMANCE AND REVIVAL 107
The beautiful Pistyl of Susan is also in a thirteen-line The Pistyl of
stanza of similar general composition, but with slight
differences, the most obvious and certain of which is the
disappearance of the ninth long line and the reappearance
of the single-footed " bob." Moreover, the triplet in the
" wheel " less often than in the Awntyrs follows the b
rhyme, and has one of its own, d}
But the climax of wayward intricacy is reached in the The Pearl.
most charming of all the religious poems of this time, the
so-called Pearl. If, as is almost certain, 2 this is the
lament of an actual father over the death of his little
daughter Margaret, it is a wonderful instance of pain
finding not merely solace, but poetic accomplishment, in
the " sad mechanic exercise " of the most complicated
verse -forms. There is less variety of line -length, and
intricacy of line-combination and rhyme within the stanza,
than that to which we have been for some time accustomed.
In fact, the poet has come back to the octosyllable, with
some but not much licence of shortening and equivalence,
and he arranges these lines in twelves, rhymed ababababbcbc.
The alliteration is very rich, for short as are his lines he
Syr Gawan, graythist on grene,
Dame Gaynore he ledus.
A. of A., ed. Robson, p. i.
1 have purposely chosen this the roughest (from the Blackburne MS.) of the
versions in print. Those from the Douce and the Thornton, printed by Mr.
Amours for the S.T.S. , are before me; but they require no comment of
importance prosodically.
1 Als this schaply thing, yede in hire yarde
That was hir hosbondus, and hire that holden with hende,
1 ' Nou folk be faren from us, thar us not be ferde ;
Aftur myn oynement warliche ye weende ;
Aspieth nou specialy the yates ben sperde,
ffor we wol wassche us I-wis bi this welle strende."
ffor-thi the wif werp of hir wedes un-werde ;
Undur a lorere ful lowe that ladi gan leende
So sone.
By a wynliche welle,
Susan caste of hir kelle ;
Bote feole ferlys hire bi-felle
Bi Midday or none.
Vernon MS. Poems, E.E.T.S., ii. p. 630, St. 10.
Four other versions, as well as the Vernon, may be found in Mr. Amours'
Alliterative Poems ; but, once more, they need no prosodic notes.
2 It has been denied, of course, but the matter does not concern us
so as to require argument.
io8 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
never fails to get, into what corresponds to but half of the
old versicle-pair, the three alliterations which had sufficed
for the whole, and he sometimes manages four. Yet he
is not a mere slave to this alliteration, and will sometimes
drop it altogether. 1
But he is not satisfied with even these refinements.
The refrain occurs, as is well known, in one of the probably
earliest of Anglo-Saxon poems, the Complaint of Deor,
but if there were other examples (as no doubt there were)
we have lost them ; and in Early Middle English poetry
the refrains of such pieces as the Proverbs of Alfred and
of Hendyng have a mere value of meaning, none of poetry.
In The Pearl, on the other hand, this feature is introduced
with much deliberation and with an extremely beautiful
effect. The curious thing is that the burden is seldom or
never repeated exactly. But a line, similar sometimes in
greater part, sometimes only in its last words, 2 binds a
certain number (generally, but by no means invariably,
five} of the above described douzains into a real living
unity. It will be observed by a careful reader that as the
rhyme of the last line has already occurred in the tenth,
this " stanza of stanzas " necessarily has, running through
1 Fro spot ray spyryt ther sprang in space,
My body on balke ther bod in sweven,
My goste is gon in Godez grace,
In aventure ther mervaylez meven ;
I ne wyste in this worlde quere that hit wace,
But I knew me keste ther klyfez eleven ;
Towarde a foreste I bere the face,
Where rych rokkez wer to dyscreven ;
The lyght of hem myght no man leven,
The glemande glory that of hem glent ;
For wern never webbez that wyvez weven
Of half so dere adubbement.
The Pearl, ed. Morris, p. 3, st. 2.
Mr. Gollancz's text is also before me.
2 Thus the refrain given recurs as
In respecte of that adubbement.
And here and se her adubbement.
Lord ! dere wats that adubbement.
and
So dere watz hit adubbement.
All the refrains of the batches have this diversity in identity, only the last
word being de rigueur, though sometimes much more is repeated.
CHAP, ii ALLITERATIVE ROMANCE AND REVIVAL 109
the whole, not merely the rhyme of the refrain, but that
of the lines rhyming to it, while the alliteration itself is
also to some extent repeated necessarily at regular intervals.
In mere description the result may seem likely to be
laboured or heavy, but nothing can be farther from the
actual fact. The Pearl is a sort of carillon not indeed
of joyful but of melancholy sweetness a tangle, yet in no
disorder, of symphonic sound, running and interlacing
itself with an ineffable deliciousness. It is perhaps the
only poem except the metrical Lyrics (themselves alliter-
ative to some extent, yet strictly metrical} which, in this
early period, shows the full possibilities of musical beauty
in English verse.
But we must not be carried away by the beauty of the Merits and
more beautiful constituents of this batch, two of which, be l an ?f rs ,? f
the blend.
it remembered, are generally if not, perhaps, convincingly
attributed to the same hand, while all three have been set
to its credit by the extremer fury of the agglomerator.
There is not much beauty, though there is a good deal of
rough vigour, in the Awntyrs ; and the deficiencies and
dangers of the general scheme can escape no careful
thought The charms of a very elaborate formal arrange-
ment, when it is completely successful, are unmistakable
by him whose ears Apollo has touched without lengthening.
But the dangers of such an arrangement are equally clear.
We see them on the one side in the practice at this time,
or a little later, of the Latin races themselves, of the
Italians in sonnet and sestine, of the French in ballade
and Chant Royal. The form alone is too often eloquent,
and its eloquence is apt to grow thinner and thinner. By
our own race the form itself is so apt to be neglected,
that if attention to it is regarded as the principal thing, no
great harm is often done.
This morality, however, is not the most important that character of
can be drawn from the phenomena. The really useful lesson the rea< = tlon
* J generally.
is that by this time in the very moments of the alliterative
reaction the charms of rhyme were felt to be too great
to resign. The charms of stanza- arrangement claimed
and effected a similar hold, and the most instructive
1 10 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
and imperative of all " instructions to the committee,"
the necessity of line- and even of foot-arrangement, 1 forced
itself, in the teeth of the principle of reaction itself, upon
the practice of the reactionaries. It is as if a great
rebellion of bowmen had, a little later, been organised
against gunpowder ; and the rebels had armed themselves
with arquebuses and firelocks. The "rhythm of the
foreigner " has triumphed : the actuality and the eventu-
alities of common and triple time have not only " emerged
from the heap " or lump, but have leavened the very
recalcitrant residuum of the lump itself.
On the other hand, that the whole movement was
in more than the literal sense retrograde is, I think, un-
deniable ; though it had a real value as a protest, and as
maintaining certain principles of English verse which were
in danger of being obscured or even lost. These it did
maintain, in the teeth of the tendency, constantly recurring
in our prosodic history, to subject English to the bondage
of syllabic uniformity, and by championing, if to an
exaggerated and fantastic degree, the intensely English
habit of alliteration itself. But had it triumphed it would
have been a disaster ; and even as it was, it very seldom
contributed really satisfactory work to the body of Eng-
lish poetry. In the Debatable Lands of satiric and
didactic verse, when the practitioners were persons of
genius like Langland and Dunbar, the simple forms
proved effective enough, and gave us Piers Plowman and
The Two, Maryit Wemen and tfie Wedo. But most forms
have a habit of proving effective in the hands of persons
of genius ; and satire and didactics are but debatable
lands, or kinds, in poetry. Of the ornater and more com-
plicated species, and their perils, we have just spoken,
while both simple alliterative verse, and alliterative verse
1 Very unequally, and therefore I have abstained, in this chapter, from
marking the feet. In The Pearl these feet are indeed unmistakable, but in the
unrhymed parts of all the others, and even in the rhymed parts of some, though
a vague general principle of cadence and time-units is clear enough, the com-
position of these units is of an accentual and go-as-you-please character.
As such it led easily to the rambling or scrambling doggerel which succeeded
it, and which was found a natural refuge during the paralysis of metre in the
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
CHAP, ii ALLITERATIVE ROMANCE AND REVIVAL in
compounded with stanza and rhyme, were subject to one
fatal and essential drawback and danger, 1 the ever-present
necessity three, four, sometimes even five times in a
verse of choosing a word, not because it was right in
sense or delightful in sound, but simply because it began
with the same letter as others. Against this even genius
fights helplessly too often ; by anything short of genius
it is invincible.
1 Rhyme itself is, of course, not quite free from this danger, and has at
times succumbed to it. But the peril is as nothing compared to that to
which alliteration is constantly exposed. Some readers may like to go
directly from this Chapter to Chapter V., in which the remaining alliterators,
including Langland, their greatest, are dealt with. Of the poems which,
whether in or out of Scots, have been claimed for " Huchowne " (v. inf.
p. 187), Golagros and Gawane, as well as the certainly later Booke of the Howlat
of Sir Richard Holland, and the anonymous and spirited Rauf Coilyear,
approaches the Aivntyrs and Susane very closely in prosodic character, and
the former most closely. All three are in the thirteen-lined alliterative stanza,
rhymed, with wheel but no bob. And all are in Mr. Amours' book.
CHAPTER III
MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY BEFORE OR
CONTEMPORARY WITH CHAUCER GOWER
Robert of Brunne -His metrical jumble Lyric : MS. Harl. 2253
Analysis of its metres Alison The Cuckoo Song, note Lesson
of these Especially as to Equivalence and Foot-division The
Percy Society " Religious Poems " William of Shoreham
Wright's " Political Songs " The Cursor Mundi Minor poems
of the Vernon MS. " The Dispute between a Good Man and
the Devil " " The Castle of Love " Hampole Minot Gower
His octosyllabics His other verse His general quality.
THE very large body of metrical verse which we find in
the fourteenth century, and which culminates in the work
of Gower, just as the alliterative section does in that of
Langland, presents no new problems of much importance,
unless it be that of the rise of the decasyllabic couplet.
But, abundant as it is, few specimens of it are quite
beneath notice as examples of the spread, combination,
and varying of true English prosody.
Robert of Very early in the century the work of Robert of
Brunne. Gloucester is continued, after an interesting fashion, by
his Christian -namesake, Robert Manning or Robert of
Brunne. The best known and best work of this writer,
the curious sacred miscellany of Handling Sin^ is in octo-
syllables, very fairly regular, though occasionally concen-
trating themselves as low as to a pretty exact hexa-
syllabic couplet. But his English translation 2 of the
1 E.E.T.S., ed. Furnivall, 1901-3. The dating at the beginning of
That tyme
That I began thys English rhyme
is interesting.
2 Ed. Hearne, Oxford, 1725 ; London, 1810.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 113
French chronicle of Peter of Langtoft, with additions
of his own, has greater metrical interest. The French
original was written in the then regular metre of the
chansons de gestes or family-romances, the Alexandrine,
mono-rhymed in batches or stanzas of great but irregular
length. Manning seems to have been afraid to translate
these long lines into the octosyllabic couplets, which he
understood fairly well, and which he actually employs in
his own Prologues : and he tells us, in the first of these,
that if he had made it in ryme couwee, or in strangere, or
in interlace, or in baston} many would not have understood
it. He therefore attempts to follow Robert of Gloucester in
the use of the long swinging line ; but he makes a great
mess of it. Those who are contented with four or some
other number of accents pour tout potage metrique, may,
for aught I know, be able to find them in his metre.
Counting in their fashion, I should myself say that it was His metrical
a jumble of anything from four to seven, with hardly any, J umble -
and no constant, rhythm. Regarded as a sort of blind
tentative at metre, it is much more interesting, because,
like Layamon a hundred years earlier, it gives us all sorts
of half-finished and probably not even half-designed forms
Ovidian rough drafts as resultants of his metrical un-
skilfulness, and of the various things that were haunting his
ear. Sometimes a fourteener of the Robert of Gloucester
type emerges 2 ; not at all uncommonly Alexandrines 3
like the original. But what is most interesting is the
constant settling down and contraction of the verse to
1 For couwee see note, p. 93 ; strangere is uncertain ; interlace is obvious ;
baston (see Rel. Ant. ii. 174) is a six-lined stanza as follows. It consists
of four long and two short lines :
Hail be ye potters with yur bole-ax,
Fair beth yur barmhatres, yolow beth your fax,
Ye stondith at the sthamil, brod ferlich bernes,
Fleiis yow folowithe, ye swolowith ynow.
The best dark of all this tun
Craftfullich makid this bastun.
But some hold that bastun here means simply "stave."
2 Bot Athelstan the maistrie wan and did tham mercie crie. P. 28.
3 And somewhat of that tree, they bond untille his handes. P. 22.
VOL. I I
H4 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
decasyllabics, 1 and even to something that is almost, if not
altogether, a decasyllabic couplet. 2 Hardly less but still
less important is Robert's management of rhyme. It is
clumsy too, but it has one point of great interest. He aims
at and, after a fashion, achieves couplet-rhyme, sometimes
only by keeping up the old Anglo-Saxon practice of de-
clining proper names (" ageyn the king Magnum ") as they
would be declined in Latin. But every now and then he
seems to have tried to emulate the continuous mono-rhyme
of his original, and hard as this is in English, he some-
times manages, what with rhyme and what with assonance,
to jingle after a fashion for a dozen or even a score lines.
The actual poetical interest in Manning is almost
nothing at all ; and the metrical interest, though not
small, is of a purely technical kind. But the poetical
interest is at the highest which the period can afford,
and the metrical interest is that, not of blind and
defeated groping, but of artistic and graceful accom-
plishment, in a collection of lyrical poems (earlier, and
perhaps a good deal earlier, than at least the com-
pletion of Manning's work), which has been the delight
of all poetically given readers of Middle English
since Thomas Wright published it more than sixty
years ago. 8
Lyric The most superficial reader must be struck with the
MS. Harl. . , . , ,,
22S3 singular contrast which these pieces present, not merely to
the rough and inartistic experiments of Manning, but to
much else of their time and even later. And it is
more than a coincidence that the same MS. contains both
French and English lyrics. Hardly the most childish
national vanity requires to be told that the two juxta-
positions, taken together, make the fact that English was
still at school to French as certain from the merely
literary point of view as it is reasonable from the political.
The Norman princes, in the strict sense, were not likely
1 The bisshop of his gift holdes his fe. P. 29.
2 Wharfor the barons granted him ilkone,
Knoute to be corowned, and haf it alone. P. 49.
3 Specimens of Lyric Poetry, London (Percy Society), 1842.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEO US METRICAL POETR Y 115
to exercise, or to see exercised, much influence of the
kind. At the time of the Conquest the poetical literature
of France was certainly not far developed ; nor were the
districts with which England was most closely connected
those to show this development earliest. The Angevins,
both chronologically, topically, and perhaps by tempera-
ment (for to say leur grancPmere ttait sirene, is no idle
conceit), were in better case ; and, as it happened, both
the greatest of them, Henry II., and the least, Henry III.,
married princesses from Provence, while Richard Cceur de
Lion was himself a troubadour.
The very first (French) poem is in the Tristrem
metre with the odd lines lengthened, the second in short
lines rhymed in regular blocks of four and three, as well
as in couplet and alternately. There can be no doubt at
all that some, if not all, of the authors wrote French and
English indifferently that all of them read the one lan-
guage just as easily as the other and ear and eye in such
a case must have simply driven tongue and pen to emulate
this new and charming music in their mother-tongue.
The first English poem (IV.) 1 has eleven-lined stanzas Analysis of its
belonging to the general family of " wheel " arrangements, metres -
which is so common in the French and Provengal lyric,
and rhymed ababababcbc. The a and b lines are octo-
syllables of the usual English free type, sometimes
reduced to seven by a monosyllabic foot at the beginning,
sometimes extended to nine by a trisyllabic foot, in any
place almost, but quite rhythmically regular. The c's are
of six syllables only. In this and some others, it should
be said, there is much alliteration, but the scansion is
1 Mid | del-erd | for mon | wes mad,
un-mih | ti aren | is mes | te mede ;
This he|dy hath | on hon|de y-had,
that he | vene hem | is hest | to hede :
Icherde | a bliss |e budel | us bad,
the dre|ri dom|es-dai | to drede,
Of sun|ful sauh|ting sone | be sad,
that der|ne doth | this der|ne dede ;
thah he | ben der|ne done,
This wrake | ful wer | kes un | der wede
in so|ule so | teleth sone.
Wright, op. cit. p. 22.
It may be useful to compare this with the Pearl stanza.
Ii6 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
quite metrical. The next l is in a stanza far less suited to
the genius of the language, and in fact certain to be disused
rather sooner than later, yet still very interesting as an ex-
periment in the great kind which was to yield, in this very
language, the most perfect example of stanza to be found
anywhere the Spenserian novena. It has, moreover, the
further interest of combining the alliterated line (rough alliter-
ated anapaestic dimeters rather shortened than lengthened),
with the attempt, for the greater part of it, at mono-rhymed
arrangement. Eight lines of this kind, rhyming together,
lead up to a couplet of the same construction, but on a
fresh rhyme. The effect, as might be expected, is grotesque
enough, but that does not matter to us in the very least.
Alison. There is nothing grotesque about the next, 2 the famous
Alison, the prettiest thing (with one possible exception
among its own companions) to be found in English
literature up to its own time and for generations after-
wards. This combines the elaborate wheel-stanza with the
refrain system in a form not yet seen. The whole scheme is
868688868886, ababbbbcdddc, the last four lines forming
the identical refrain in every stanza. The b lines are a
little irregular, expanding sometimes to the full eight
1 Ichot a burde in a bour ase beryl so bryht,
Ase saphyr in selver semly on syht,
Ase jaspe the gentil that lemeth with lyht,
Ase gernet in golde, ant ruby wel ryht,
Ase onycle he ys on y-holden on hyht,
As diamaunde the dere in day when he is dyht,
He is coral y-cud with cayser ant knyht,
Ase emeraude a-morewen this may haveth myht.
The myht of the margarite haveth this may mere,
For charbocle ich hire ches bi chyn ant by chere.
Ibid. p. 25.
2 Bytuen|e Mershe | ant A|veril
when spray |. bigin|neth to springe,
The hit | el fou|l hath | hire wyl
on hy | re lud | to synge ;
Ich lib | be in love- 1 longinge
For sem
He may
lokest | of al|le thynge,
me blis|se bringe,
icham | in hire | baundoun.
An hen|dy hap | ichab|be y-hent,
Ichot | from hevene | it is | me sent,
From alle | wymmen | mi love | is lent
ant lyht | on A|lysoun.
Ibid. p. 27.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 117
syllables, and all are more or less freely equivalenced. The
whole gives a quite charming effect elaborate, without
being laboured, and flowing, without looseness.
In the piece that follows (No. VII.), 1 a ten-line stanza
of sixes is arranged on the rhyme system aabaabbaab. It
is less effective, as is also VIII., 2 set in twelves of eight
eights and four sixes rhymed ababababcdcd, a certain
amount of assonance being admitted in the last quatrain.
IX. is in Romance twelves. X. is curious in an eight-line
stanza of alternate rhyme, with lines of a very uncertain
basis, varying from double to triple time, as if the writer
were aiming at the well-known Shenstonish anapaestic of
three feet, but with constant double rhymes and almost
equally constant lapses into different rhythm. It has
the ballade " envoy " of four lines, 3 and an entirely un-
accounted-for thing of the same kind after the first stanza.
1 With Ion I gyng y | am lad,
On mol|de I wax|e mad,
a maid | e mar|reth me ;
Y grede, | y grone, | un-glad,
For sel | den y | am sad
that sem | ly for | te se ;
Levedi, | thou rew|e me,
To roujthe thou havest | me rad ;
Be bote | of that | y bad,
My lyf | is long | on the.
Ibid. p. 29.
2 Weping | haveth | myn won|ges wet,
for wile | ked werk | ant wone | of wyt ;
Unblithe|y be | til y | ha bet,
bruches | broken | ase | bok byt.
Of leve | dis love | that y | ha let,
that lemjeth al | with luef|ly lyt,
Ofte | in song | y have | hem set,
that is | unsem | ly ther | hit syt ;
Hit syt | ant se'meth noht,
ther hit | ys seid | in song,
That y | have of | hem wroht,
y-wis | hit is | al wrong.
Ibid. p. 30.
3 In a fryht as y con fare fremede,
y founde a wel feyr fenge to fere ;
Heo glystnede ase gold when hit glemede,
nes ner gome so gladly on gere
Y wolde wyte in world who hire kenede,
this burde bryht, yef hire wil were ;
Heo me bed go my gates, lest hire gremede,
ne kepte heo non henyng here.
1 1 8 THE FO UR TEE NTH CENTUR Y BOOK 1 1
These oddities might be evened by dividing the whole
into twelves. XI. is the first borrowing in English, from
Provengal(?),of the world-renowned "Burns-metre" 888484,
aaabab, with a certain vacillation in the fourth line (and
elsewhere) between four and six syllables. 1 It may be
accident that the last stanza has only two instead of three
initial eights. XII. to XV. are Romance, or shortened,
twelves once more, XIII.
Lenten ys come with love to toune
being one of the best and best-known of the whole. With
this and Alison the pearls of the collection are completed
by XVI., couched in an eight-lined stanza, 88868886,
with a refrain of the most charmingly irregular beauty 2
the best early example of this most attractive poetical
device. XVII. is French ; XVIII. uses mono -rhymed
octosyllabic quatrains ; XIX., one of the not uncommon
irregular arrangements of the Romance sixes; XX. is new
in quintets composed of a triplet and a couplet ; 3 XXI. in
" Y-here thou me nou, hendest in helde,
navy the none harmes to hethe ;
Casten y wol the from cares ant kelde,
comeliche y wol the nou clethe."
" Clothes y have forte caste,
such as y may weore with wynne ;
Betere is were thunne boute laste,
then syde robes ant synke into synne.
Have ye or wyl, ye waxeth unwraste,
afterward or thonke be thynne ;
Betre is make forewardes faste,
then afterward to mene ant mynne."
Ibid. pp. 36, 37.
1 A wayle whyt as whalles bon,
A grein in golde that godly shon,
A tortle that min herte is on,
in tonnes trewe ;
Hire gladshipe nes never gon,
whil y may glewe. Ibid. p. 38.
2 Blow, northerne wynd,
Sent thou me my suetyng.
Blow, northerne wynd, blou, blou, blou ! Ibid. p. 51.
3 Wynter wakeneth al my care,
Nou this leves waxeth bare,
Ofte y sike ant mourne sare,
When hit cometh in my thoht
Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht.
Ibid. p. 60.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 119
sixes throughout, arranged in ten-line stanzas rhymed
ababccbddb ; l XXII., French ; XXI II., a false Macaronic of
Latin, French, and English mixed ; and XXIV., French.
XXV., the first English version of Jesu dulcis memoria,
keeps the original metre ; XX VI., French ; XXVII.,
Romance sixes; XXVIII. - XXX., varieties of 6 + 4
as XXI. But XXXI.-XXXIII. give us Robert of
Gloucester " swingers " in mono - rhymed quartet ;
XXXIV. is in six-lined stanzas of 888686, aaabcb ;
XXXV., in sixes, alternately French and English ;
XXXVI., eight -lined stanzas eights with ab rhyme ;
XXXVII., Romance sixes ; XXXVIII., French ; XXXIX.,
like X., but more even. XL. 2 and XLIL, which have
Note (as always at this time carefully) the decasyllabic last line. There are
only three stanzas, and the last lines of the other two
Alle we shule deye, thath us like ylle
and
For y not whider y shal, ne hou longe her duelle
are very irregular.
1 This is pretty enough to be given :
When y se blosmes springe,
ant here soules song ;
A suete love-longynge
myn herte thourh out stong,
Al for a love newe,
That is so suete ant trewe,
that gladieth al my song ;
Ich wot al myd i-wisse
My joie ant eke my blisse
on him is al y-long.
Ibid. p. 6 1.
This, it will be seen, is a combination of shortened Romance six and ballad
quatrain in reverse order. The actual order, in full-length lines as in XXX.,
occurs and persists, forming the beginning of Montgomerie's quatorzain long
afterwards.
2 Lutel wot hit anymon,
how love hym haveth y-bounde,
That for us othe rode ron,
ant bohte us with is wounde.
The love of him us haveth y-maked sounde,
Ant y-cast the grimly gost to grounde ;
Ever ant oo, nyht ant day, he haveth us in is thorite,
He nul nout leose that he so deore bohte.
Ibid. p. in.
XLIII. begins with the same line, but deals with earthly love. These sacred
and profane duplicates are common.
120
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
BOOK 11
Lesson of
these.
The Cuckoo
Song.
much in common, give us a new scheme, not quite ac-
complished, but very promising. An alternately rhymed
eight-six quatrain leads to a couplet, which at least
aims at being decasyllabic, and this is capped by another
refrain-couplet of the " swinging " type, with which it is
obviously waiting to be rhymed. 1
The lesson of all these is, I think, or should surely be,
unmistakable. Here, not much more, if more, than a
century after the first extensive, but scattered, signs of
the imprint of the mould in Layamon, we find the same
mould, but in sharper and incomparably more varied
outline, applied systematically to English verse. And we
find that verse taking it with a docility which is only less
wonderful than the unconquerable independence and
idiosyncratic quality which is simultaneously displayed.
Some of the patterns equal in complexity, and, as
patterns, in rigidity, the most accomplished forms of
classical prosody, the Alcaic or the still larger choric
strophe. Some are very simple, but equally rigid. All
come, more or less, from or through a language in which,
1 In connection with these pieces should be noted those on p. 86, and
(by careful students) the "Poetical Scraps" in Rel. Ant. ii. 119-121. Here
too we shall best give the famous Cuckoo Song. The MS. (Harl. 978) has
been dated at the middle of the thirteenth century, or earlier, and it has been
even rather wildly spoken of as the first English song with or without music.
Its rhythmical accomplishment remarkable as are the premonitory notes of
this that we have heard as far back, as the Bestiary seems to me rather too
perfect for anything much short of the later thirteenth. But it is a charming
thing, and may be left to its own charms, without dwelling . on the questions
whether it imitates the cuckoo's later as well as his earlier cry, what is its
relation to its existing Latin duplicate, etc. :
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu 1
Groweth sed and bloweth med,
And spring[e]th the wude nu.
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Llouth after calve cu :
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth.
Murie sing cuccu !
Cuccu ! cuccu ! wel singes thu cuccu
Ne swik thu naver nu.
Sing cuccu ! nu, sing cuccu !
Sing cuccu ! sing cuccu, nu !
I shall only add that if this is a "clear, natural music," as it has been called,
it is a pretty artful one too, and shows the new rhythm, the new foot -division,
the new rhyme, in no infantine stage of development.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 121
from the want of tonic quality, there is no difficulty in
accommodating itself to patterns of any complexity and
rigidity ; but in which the very process of accommodation
has ousted everything but the iambic base, or what
Johnson long afterwards calls the " pure " syllabic sequence
of accented or quasi-accented syllables, alternating with
those unstressed the actual arithmetical allowance of
syllables being taken, always with more and more conscious
stringency, as the be-all and the end-all of prosodic
value. From the first there is naturally and, indeed,
inevitably some tendency in English to accept this also;
and we shall find the " preceptists," as soon as they
appear, clinging to it. We could not have we have
not any one much earlier than Orm ; and if Orm had
had his way, the gyves of French prosody would have
been upon us unto this hour.
But Apollo and Pallas together thought of another Especially as
thing for England. That the thing was done with theoretic 1 t n ^ quiva "
or preceptist consciousness, in even a single instance
before Spenser, may be not so much doubted as peremp-
torily and unhesitatingly denied. But it was done. In
the great number of instances which we have been con-
sidering, and in the large supplement which will suc-
ceed, one single principle, undeviating at bottom through
its infinite surface variety, shows itself the determination
to cling to the foot, not the syllable, as the prosodic
integer, and the accompanying determination to allow, in
the arrangement of feet, syllabic equivalence and substi-
tution, just as it had been allowed in Greek and, to a
smaller extent, in Latin. It is probable to turn the
probability into fact by an actual examination would
be an interesting exercitation, but out of our proper
sphere that every non-alliterative stanza which we have
studied, and some at least of the alliterative, have exact
precedents in Northern French, or in Provencal, or in
both. It is certain that most have. But when we turn
to these precedents we shall find not merely fixed rhymes
and numbers of lines, but a fixed internal constitution
of lines likewise (accidents and errors excepted) on an
122
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
BOOK II
and Foot-
division.
The Percy
Society
" Religious
Poems."
absolutely syllabic basis. In the vast majority of the
English exponents we shall find that the rhyme and the
line -number are kept, but that the line constitution is
altered on the scheme just given.
It can hardly be necessary to repeat what has been
said more than once on the really, if not at first sight,
irreconcilable difference between this view and that of those
who look solely at accent, with or without an addition of
" section." The section and the foot (or foot-group) will
sometimes, though by no means very often, coincide ;
the accent-division will in appearance sometimes show
results not strikingly different, to the novice, from that of
the foot-division. But the difference is real, vital, irre-
concilable, and the contention of this book is that,
historically and logically, the foot -division will give a
coherent, a consistent, and a continuous explanation of
English metrical prosody, while the accent-division will not.
It is interesting to go through, after these, another
batch of lyric examples, the selection of " Religious
Songs " which Wright published in another Percy Society
volume with The Owl and the Nightingale} They are
probably both from the date of the MS. and from the
complexion of the language slightly older than those
which we have already surveyed ; but this is not quite
certain, and at any rate they belong to the same general
class that of the lyric in elaborate stanza. If they are
older they strengthen our case ; if they are not, they
certainly do not weaken it. The first is in a ten-line
stanza of double rhymes, arranged in a rather curious
order, ababbaabab? The general constitution of the line
1 London, 1843.
2 Nis non | so strong | ne sterch | ne kene,
That mai | ago | deathes wi | ther blench :
Yung and olde, brihet and schene,
Alle he riveth in one strench.
Fox and ferlich is his wrenh,
Ne mai no mon thar-to yeines,
Weilawei ! threting ne bene,
Mede, liste, ne leches drench.
Mon, let sunne and lustes thine ;
Wei thu do and wel thu thench.
P. 63.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 123
argues an early origin ; for the writer seems not to have
made up his mind which to adopt of the two great
divisions, three feet and four feet, hexasyllable and octo-
syllable, that, as we have seen, fought a rather unequal
fight for English in the latter part of the thirteenth
century. There are examples of complete iambic
dimeter ; but they are in the minority, and they do not
appear at any fixed or corresponding point of the stanza.
And further, there is the occurrence of identical rhyme-
schemes in successive stanzas another proof of earliness,
and a certain sign, either that the writer is aiming at
a still stiffer uniformity which he cannot quite accom-
plish, or that he has stumbled into an unintended
repetition the inartistic effect of which he has not
realised.
The second * is also a dizain with " Romance " begin-
ning, but the lines gravitating rather to the six- than to
the eight-syllable norm, and the final one is (with some
substitution) of two instead of three feet, in due proportion.
The rhymes are also differently arranged, ababaababa.
This makes a very good carillon, with possibilities of
still better gifts (e.g. the insertion of a very strong
middle pause in line six, the " hinge " of the stanza) which
the writer only dimly sees. 2 Number III. is an isolated
The rhymes are in I and 2 -ench and -ene ; in 3 -o and -ede ; in 4 -our and
-eo ; in 5 -ikedh and -o. The shortest line is
Him stil|lich to | for-do ;
the longest
Weilawei ! deth the schal adun throwe.
1 On hir|e is al | mi lif | i-long,
Of hwam | ich wu j le singe,
And heri|en hi|re, that | among
Heo gon | us bo|te bringe,
Of hel|le pi|ne that | is strong
Heo broh|te us blis|se that | is long,
Al thurh | hire chil | deringe.
Ich bid|de hire one | mi song,
Heo yeove | us god | endinge,
Thah we | don wrong.
P. 65.
2 He is near it in stanza 2
Heo broghte woht, thu broghtest right.
1 24 THE FO UR TEE NTH CENTUR Y BOOK n
octave on Wit and Will in two rhymes alternately
rather rough octosyllables, with a good deal of the
staccato effect noticeable in the proverb canto-headings
of King Alexander. IV., 1 though printed in halves
by Wright, is really shortish Robert of Gloucester
" swingers " mono-rhymed in quatrains the obvious but
much less effective English equivalent of the admirable
Meum est propositum in taberna mori metre of contem-
porary Latin ; and V. is the same. VI. is a merely
rhythmed Proverb of Bede, no doubt of great age, but
with what it would be not so proper to call traces as
embryos of rhyme. VII. is much more interesting, for
though of the same build for a time, it settles down as
possibly the first appearance in English of " The Queen
was in her parlour." But at one point of the poem, the
writer, either by mere accident, or feeling the necessity
(since he is paraphrasing the account of the Passion in
the Creed) to adopt a more solemn measure, shifts for
eight lines into the octosyllabic couplet. 2
wmiam of The poems of William of Shoreham 3 are more remark-
Shoreham. a ^ Q f Qf ^g adjustment of elaborate metres to abstruse
theological subjects than for any great merit of verse ;
but they should not be omitted. William's favourite is
1 Hwenne ich thenche of domes-dai,
ful sore ime adrede.
Ther schal after his
euch mon fongen mede.
Ich habbe Crist agult
widh thoghtes and widh dede.
Laverd Crist, Codes sone,
wat is me to rede ?
2 Harknied, alle gode men,
and stille sitteth adun,
And ich ecu wule tellen
a lutel sermun.
This is Gamclyn already. At what precise time, and in what precise way,
the "fourteener" takes this turn is a question which different ears seem to
answer differently. The octosyllabic insertion runs thus :
He made him into helle falle,
And efter him his children alle,
etc.
3 Ed. Wright, Percy Society, London, 1849.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 125
a sort of shortened Tristrem stanza of seven lines, 1 with
bob 8686286, rhymed or assonanced oaoabob. But a
moment's thought will show that it is really a quatrain
with three fourteeners, and a bob which forms the third
line and makes the rhyme-scheme, even while it accentuates
the eccentricity of the vehicle. Shoreham also adopts
alternately rhymed eights and sixes of a rough kind, and
the regular Romance sixain, as well as the very effective
one of 888686 rhymed aaabab.
The Camden Society " Political Songs," which were Wright's
among the earliest results (i 839) of the industry of Wright,
are of special interest for more reasons than one. In the
first place, it is quite evident that they must show us, not
merely what metre could be tolerated by the popular ear,
but what positively pleased it. For the political verse-smith
does not risk unpopularity of form. In the second place,
as they were at first written in French or Latin, and only
after a time in English, we should expect them to bear
strong marks of the prosody of these other languages ; and
they do. Thirdly, as nothing sinks into memory more
than satirical poetry of this kind, we should expect (and
we find) that they will either give early indication of, or
exercise great influence upon, the prosody of the future.
The very first piece 2 rewards us richly. The " Song
against the King of Almaine " (which should be as old as
the Battle of Lewes, 1264) is in stanzas of seven lines.
The last two of these are a constant refrain in trochaic
rhythm, with one internal rhyme and a sort of attempt at
1 The matyre of this sacrement
Hys ryght the oylle allone ;
And wanne the bisschop blesseth hyt
Baume therwith megth he none
Ther-inne,
For baume tokneth lyve's loos
Oyle mercy to wynne.
2 Sitteth alle stille ant | herkneth to me :
The Kyn of Alemaigne, | bi mi leaute,
Thritti thousent pound | askede he
For te make the pees | in the countre,
ant so | he du j de more.
Richard, thah thou be ever trichard,
trichen shalt thou never more. P. 69.
The'sth line changes after the 1st stanza.
126 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
another. The antepenultimate is a refrain " bob " of three
feet, the last word being " Wyndesore " always, with varying
others ; and the rest, or substance of the stanza, consists
of a mono-rhymed quatrain, the materials of which are
simply invaluable. For while they are evidently in main
intention the skipping nondescripts of " The Queen was
in her parlour," they often settle into anapaests of the
most unimpeachable structure, thereby giving yet another
testimony to the probable origin, or at least the circum-
stances, which helped to naturalise this great staple of
poetry in England. One may be very glad that the
Barons' triumph did not last ; but for this result of it,
while it did last, one may be truly thankful. For the
piece, besides the prosodic attractions already enumerated,
has another on which it would be wrong to lay too much
stress, but which certainly cannot be altogether neglected
when we compare it with the next, the " Song of the
Husbandman." l The skit on Richard of Cornwall has
alliteration in it, as nearly all natural English poetry has,
but there is no very great amount thereof, and it is quite
evident that the writer is not aiming at it, in the very
least, as a principle of his verse. In the " Song of the
Husbandman," perhaps fifty years later, this aim is quite
unmistakable. There is rhyme alternate on two rhymes
only, arranged in an octave first and then a quatrain by
turns. But the individual line is of the usual alliterative
type, only cadenced for singing. This evidence in the
great case of Persistence v. Resurrection is invaluable.
And each piece that follows tells of the revival and helps
1 Ich herde men upo mold make muche mon,
Hou he beth i-tened of here tilyynge,
God yeres and corn bothe beth a-gon,
Ne kepeth here no sawe ne no song syng.
" Now we mote worche, nis ther non other won,
Mai ich no lengore lyve with my lesinge ;
Yet ther is a bitterore bid to the bon,
For ever the furthe peni mot to the kynge.
Thus we carpeth for the kyng, and carieth ful colde,
And weneth for te kevere, and ever buth a-cast ;
Whose hath eny god, hopeth he nout to holde,
Bote ever the levest we leoseth a-last."
P. 149.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 127
to date it for us at the beginning of the fourteenth
century. The very uncomplimentary " Against the Pride
of Ladies " is in a quaint seven-lined stanza l with bob
and wheel rhymed aaaabbb, the aaaa being common
alliterated lines, the b " bob " a single foot, and the other
two a very irregular couplet hovering round three feet as
a norm. Another on the " Church Courts " is very
elaborate. 2 The full stanza has no less than eighteen
lines, and consists of a main body aabccbddbeeb, where the
b lines are three feet and the others alliterative, and a tail
ffgggf, twoys and the ^'s being sixes, the last f a four.
The English poem on the Battle of Courtrai has a
very popular ding-dong arrangement, not showing much
alliteration, but made of two rough triplets of " Queen-in-
parlour" lines, each mono-rhymed with a fourth and
eighth in sixes rhymed together. 3 A " Song on the
1 Lord that lenest us lyf, and lokest uch an lede,
For te cocke with knyf nast thou none nede ;
Both wepmon ant wyf sore mowe drede,
Lest thou be sturne with strif, for bone that thou bede,
in wunne
That monkun[n]e
Shulde shilde hem from sunne.
P. 153-
2 Ne mai no lewed lued libben in londe,
Be he never in hyrt so haver of honde,
So lerede us bi-ledes ;
Yef ich on molde mote with a mai,
Y shal falle hem byfore ant lumen huere lay,
Ant rewen alle huere redes.
Ah bote y be the furme day on folde hem by-fore,
Ne shal y nout so skere scapen of huere score ;
So grimly he on me gredes,
That y ne mot me lede ther with mi lawe,
On alle maner othes that heo me wulleth awe,
Heore boc ase un-bredes.
Heo wendeth bokes un-brad,
Ant maketh men a moneth a-mad ;
Of scathe y wol me skere,
Ant fleo from my fere ;
Ne rohte he whet it were,
Boten heo hit had.
Pp. 155-156-
3 Lustneth, lordinges, bothe yonge ant olde,
Of the Freynsshe-men that were so proude ant bolde,
Hou the Flemmysshe-men bohten hem ant solde
Upon a Wednesday;
128 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
Times" (p. 195 sq^) is in alternate rhymed eights, sinking
irregularly to " common measure." The long and not
very chivalrous ballad on the execution of Sir Simon
Fraser has the now familiar alternative quatrain with a
bob and wheel abba, the bob varying between one foot and
two, and the other three lines being mostly of three feet
each. A different note, but a very familiar one, is struck
in the short-lined song " Against Retainers," which, how-
ever, there is no reason for regarding as anything but the
usual quatrain of alliterated lines broken up and rhymed. 1
But the " Dirge on the Death of Edward L," though with
a good deal of alliteration, is in regular eights, arranged
in an octave by ordering the rhymes ababbcbc. We return
to extremely elaborate arrangements in the singularly
grave and earnest poem on his worthless successor's
breach of the Great Charter. Part of this is in French,
and part of the English part in Romance sixes, but the
rest is in these sixes " tailed " in a very curious fashion, 2
which citation will show better than any analysis.
Betere hem were at home in huere londe,
Then for te seche Flemmysshe by the see stronde,
Wharethourh moni Frenshe wyf wryngeth hire honde,
Ant singeth, weylaway !
Pp. 187-188.
1 Of ribaudz y ryme
Ant rede o mi rolle,
Of gedelynges, gromes,
Of Colyn ant of Colle,
Harlotes, hors-knaves,
Bi pate ant by polle ;
To devel ich hem to-lyvre
Ant take to tolle !
P. 237.
2 The ferste seide, " I understonde
Ne may no king wel ben in londe,
Under God Almihte,
But he cunne himself rede,
Hou he shal in londe lede
Everi man wid rihte.
For might is riht,
Liht is night,
And fiht is fliht.
For miht is riht, the lond is laweles ;
For niht is liht, the lond is loreles ;
For fiht is fliht, the lond is nameles."
P. 254.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 129
Lastly, the poem, already several times printed, on the
"Times of Edward II." is in long alliterated quatrain, with
a single foot bob and another full line rhymed to this.
While these elaborate stanza-arrangements were being The Cursor
practised, the old octosyllabic couplet was, even outside Mundl -
Romance, by no means neglected. It tended for a time,
beyond all doubt, to approximate more and more to the
syllabic or Owl-and-Nightingale uniformity, as was natural,
because, as has been repeatedly pointed out, the more
men deliberately studied French originals, the more were
they likely to be beguiled by the characteristics of those
originals which did not, as well as by those which did,
necessarily belong to English. But the Genesis-and-
Exodus freedom was not left without representatives even
in continuous couplet, while, as we have already shown,
it constantly if irregularly maintained itself in more com-
plicated arrangements. The chief example in the couplet
itself is probably that already mentioned, the interesting
poem of The Vox and the Wolf. We certainly cannot
take a better example of the more regular form, from the
mighty mass of non-romantic material which exists, than
the bulk, ingens but by no means horrendum or mforme,
of the Cursor Mundi. Even here there is frequent mono-
syllabic beginning, and sometimes, if not very often, a
trisyllabic foot ; for instance, 1. 3755 Gottingen version. 1
But for the most part the syllabic regularity is very great,
and in long stretches of lines you shall find not a single
violation of it.
Before coming to individual writers like Minot (and the Minor
more nebulous but more important Hampole), it may
be well to look through the great miscellany of the
Vernon MS. as far as it has been yet printed, to see if we
can add any useful studies. The most effective and by
far the most useful way of treating so large a mass will
be, as usual, to analyse right through, with examples at
foot where they are required.
1 And es|thar, fa|der, nan oth[er wan. E.E.T.S. ed. ii. 223.
There are more in some of the other versions, and in all the initial mono-
syllabic foot is common enough.
VOL. I K
1 30 THE FO UR TEE NTH CENTUR Y
I. is a species of Gospel history in mono-rhymed
quatrains of eights. II., a paraphrase of the Miserere in
alternate rhymed octaves of the same. III., ditto. IV.,
couplets of eights partly continuous, partly interlarded
with a couplet refrain. V., an extremely effective double
octave, showing the command of metrical rhythm which
had been reached (before 1380) as well as almost any-
thing we have met. The first octave is of continuous
eights, oaoaoaoa ; the second 86868686, rhymed babaoaoa.
The continuous a rhyme sets the music marvellously, and
the adjustment of dissyllabic, monosyllabic, and trisyllabic
feet in the second part is consummate. There is a
possible alternative of scanning the even lines as sixes
all through, which almost improves it ; and altogether
it is a jewel. 1 VI., alliterative mono-rhymed quatrains.
VII. consists of Romance sixes, powerfully shortened in
the couplets into frequent monosyllabic feet. VIII. is a
cunning arrangement which may look like a muddle, but
is very much the reverse. The lines are eights through-
out, with a very little substitution ; the rhyme-system is
ababababcbcbcbcbcb. The b rhymes, as in the former case,
are all in e, to provide for the constant recurrence of
1 Jhe su Crist, | my lem|mon swete,
That digh|edest on | the Ro|de-tre,
With al | my miht | I the | be-seche,
ffor | thi woun|des two | and three,
That al|so fas|te mot | thi love
In to | myn her | te fie | ched be
As was | the spere | in to thin herte
Whon thou | soffre|dest deth | for me.
Jhesus | that digh|edest on | the Rode
ffor | the love | of me
And bouh|test me | with | thi blode,
Thou | have mer | ci of me : |
What | me let | teth of e | ny thing
ffor | to love | the,
Beo hit | me lef | beo hit | me loth,
Thow do | hit a-wey | from me, AMEN.
Or 2. That dighedjest on the | Rode-tre.
4. ffor thi wounjdes two | and three.
6. In to myn | herte fie, ched be.
8. Whon thou soff redest deth | for me.
Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. ,
E.E.T.S. (1892), i. p. 22.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 131
" me " necessary in a devotional poem ; and it is not ex-
travagant to call the total effect charming. 1 IX., Romance
sixes. X., couplets of eights. XL, alliterative mono-
rhymed quatrains ; so also XII. XIII., couplets of eights.
XIV., the same, every other line headed " Marie."
XV., Romance sixes, as also XVI. and XVII., while
XVIII. returns to octosyllabic couplets much curtailed.
XIX., "The Hours of the Cross," adapts its Latin
original very skilfully by means of a mono -rhymed
alliterative quatrain, a bob of varying length, and,
rhymed with it, a fifth alliterative line and a versicle or
refrain couplet in eights, with some licence of exten-
sion in the second line. XX., the Middle English Vent
Creator, is in alternate rhymed quatrains of eights,
and therefore most interesting to compare with Cosin's
and Dryden's famous standards. The alternate rhymes
have not quite the dignity of the couplet, and there
is perhaps no single phrase that approaches the un-
approachable
Anoint and cheer our soiled face
With the abundance of Thy grace
in the great Bishop of Durham's version, but that could
1 I the honoure with al my miht
In fourme of Bred as I the se,
Lord, that in that ladi briht,
In Marie Mon bi-come for me.
Thi fflesch, thi blod is swete of siht,
Thi Sacrament honoured to be,
Of Bred and Wyn with word i-diht ;
Almihti lord, I leeve in the.
I am sunful, as thou wel wost :
Jhesu, thou have merci of me ;
Soffre thou nevere that I be lost
ffor whom thou dighedest uppon the tre,
Ac thorwh that ladi of Merci most
Mi soule thou bringe in blisse to the ;
Repentaunce to-fore mi deth,
Schrif[t] and Hosul thou graunte me,
With ffadur and Sone and Holygost,
That Regneth God in Trinite. Amen.
P- 25-
I have given this in full, but without marking the foot-divisions, as a good
excursive example in the infinite and delicate diversities lumped under the
clumsy title-muddle of ' four-accent " metre.
132 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
hardly be expected. 1 XXL, alternate eights of eights,
and XXII., quatrains to match. XXIII., a version of the
Psalterium Mariae of Albertus Magnus, is not very good
and very rough ballad metre, the odd lines often shortened,
as is XXIV., another of the same form, the original being
attributed to Aquinas. The great length of both these
pieces, and the probably supposed necessity of keeping
to the divisions of the Latin, may account for their
inferiority. XXV., a third Ave Maria, is in Romance
sixes, and better, the same metre being followed in
XXVI. and XXVII. XXVIII. is in alternate rhymed
eights. The batch (remnant of a much larger one) of
" Miracles of Our Lady " which fills XXIX. is, as we
should expect, for the most part in the usual octosyllabic
couplet, but diverges into the alternate rhymed quatrain
and the alliterative couplet or quatrain, with one or two
excursions. The same metres prevail in four or five long
poems that follow ; but two others, which complete the
first volume in the E.E.T.S. edition, fall into quite a
different class and require separate treatment. These
are "The Dispute between a Good Man and the Devil
(XXXVII.) and "The Castle of Love" (XXXVIII.).
They present certain points of resemblance, as well as
others of contrast, with Hampole's famous Prick of Con-
science, which may be taken with them.
The Dispute The most interesting, though by far the least known
between a o f j^e three, is " The Dispute between a Good Man and
Good Man .
and the the Devil," which, metrically speaking, is an Ingoldsby
Legend of the fourteenth century. No other poem shows
the ease with which the stricter metre and the looser
rhythm had come to keep house together in English, and
1 Compare also Vernon, fourth stanza
Lord, in ur wittes tend thi liht,
And in ur hertes thi love sende ;
Ur bodi feblenesse thorwh thi miht
Strengthe hit evere with-outen ende.
and Dryden
Refine and purge our earthy parts,
But oh ! inflame and fire our hearts ;
Our frailties help, our vice control,
Submit the senses to the soul.
Etc.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 133
the satisfactory results of the menage. The Dispute begins
with eight lines of octosyllabic couplet, showing no liberty
except that of the anacrusis, or initial monosyllabic foot.
But, the story once begun, it launches suddenly into
Robert-of- Gloucester fourteeners or ballad -metre for a
distich, contracting itself into what is almost a deca-
syllabic couplet forthwith. Nay, to cover the whole range
of standard foot -arrangement at once, there is even a
pretty complete Alexandrine here and there, as at line
1 6. And henceforward the versifier fingers this range
from sixes to fourteeners without, it may be allowed, very
much poetical power, but with astonishing ease and
technical skill. His lines are never unscannable ; they
never betray the least sign of that metrical inability and
trouble which is so evident a hundred years earlier, and
which reappears less and more than a hundred years later.
He has got his tuning-fork adjusted, and his ear and
tongue and hand follow it, and each other, through the
most apparently eccentric windings without any difficulty
at all. 1 The system of the foot iambic as a rule, but with
1 Swithe muche neode hit is
That uche mon be war and wys
To kepe him from the fendes lore
ffor he fondeth euer-more.
And that we mowen alle I-witen
As hit is in the Bok I-writen,
I wol ow telle, as I con,
How the fend tempteth a Mon.
Hit was uppon an haly-day : In an heigh feste of the yere ;
Muche folk was to churche gon : Codes word for to here ;
The Preost of the chirche undude the gospel
And lerede his parischens, as he couthe wel,
And bad hem openly nyme good yeme
Hou thei scholden god wel queme
And schenden the foule fend of helle,
That fondeth euere iliche monnus soule to qwelle.
When the prest hedde I-spoken & don what he wolde,
The folk wente ham ward, as right was thei scholde.
Ibid. \. p. 329, 11. 1-18.
Divided examples :
i, 2. Swi|the muche neo|de hit is
That u|che mon | be war | and wys.
9, 10. Hit was | uppon | an ha|ly-day | : In an heigh | feste of | the yere ;
Muche | folk was | to chur | che gon : Codes | word for | to here ;
16. That fon|deth eu|ere ili|che monjnus sou|le to qwelle.
23. The wik|ked fend | of hell|e ther | of hed|de onde.
134 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
equivalents from trisyllable to monosyllable permitted
is obviously quite at his mastery : he can mow this
meadow in the most complicated swathes with perfect
proportion and success.
"The Castle We have two English versions of Grostete's Chateau
d 'Amour, which are at least as interesting to compare
from our present point of view as from any other. The
first of these is couched in that form of octosyllabic
couplet, with occasional extension to decasyllabic, which
is so noticeable at this period, and of which we shall
have more to say presently. It handles this mixture if
mixture it is to be called freely enough, but does not
go beyond it. The second version, however, attributed
to a monk of Sawley, approximates much closer to the
elaborate freedom of the Dispute, but with less variety
and at the same time less sureness of touch. The writer
begins with a block of rather roughly rhythmical eights,
and changes from it to a similar block of tens, 1 which
1 Specially to be noted. They occur constantly.
Who-so wele thinkes, wele may say,
ffor of gode thoghtes comes gode dedes ay.
God send us thoght to his plesyng,
In vvhos fre wil hynges all thyng.
He is god and lord of myghtes mast,
The fader and sone and haligast ;
In godhed are thise persones thre,
And all are on god in trinite ;
None is othir of thise persons thre,
Bot alle are on god and ay sal be.
Oure mede is to trowe this with stable thoght,
Al-be-hit that mannes skil proues it noght ;
Bot when we sal se god clerly,
Than sal we knawe this witerly,
Of the begynnyng of the world
God in vj dayes made bothe erthe & heuen,
And, to make haliday, cessed at the seuen.
Heuen was occupid with angeles kynde,
Euermore on god for to haue thair mynde
Bot many thorgh pride fel in to helle,
Thar sal thei all with-outen ende dwelle.
Bothe sunne and mone [mor] bright thai ware
Then seuenfold then thay now are,
And all erthli thing more vertuous,
Bi-for Adam thurgh synne was vicious ;
And ilk a best sul[d] haue bowed to mannes will,
Had he neuer bi way of synne don none ill.
When god had the world so parfit made
That no partie of hit defaut hade,
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 135
extend themselves, in a still rough but distinct procession
or telescopy, to twelves and fourteeners. And this system
he pursues, seeming on the whole to prefer the longer lines
to the shorter, and as a rule, though not universally, using
them in blocks and not attempting the agile variety of
the Dispute. It is no doubt just as well, for the man's
ear was obviously not a very good one, and if he had
attempted the full " Ingoldsby " legerdemain he would
probably have made a very great mess of it. But he is
quite as valuable a document for his time as if he had
possessed the technique of Barham or of Banville.
But it is time to come, if only for a moment, to the
most interesting single figure in English verse of the
fourteenth century before Chaucer a figure dim and
legendary, no doubt, and with its actual literary work
not so much difficult as impossible to authenticate, but
both striking and stable in its shadowiness Richard
Rolle of Hampole.
The nearly ten thousand lines of the Prick of Con- Hampole.
science^ display the lesser, but newer and in a sense more
momentous, of the two extensions of the octosyllable that
we have been surveying. Hampole never expatiates into
Then of erth he made Adam, of man age,
To his liknes in saule he was & his ymage.
Of a rib of Adam syde, when he lay slepand,
God may Eue, that sho to him suld ay be kepand.
Of on god made al man-kynde, for ilkon suld loue other
And non til other do wrong mor then til his brother.
What lyf myght mor be schewed to man in charite
Then in saule make him lik to the haly trinite,
Make him lord of al the world, ful of vertuez, & wise,
Make him eir of heuen-blis & sette him in paradis,
Thare he and all that come of him myght leue with-outen deyng,
If thay use the frut of lif & kepe wel godes biddyng.
Of all the trees of paradis bi goddis biddyng thei suld etc,
But the frut of the tre of wetyng of gode and ille thei suld lete ;
What tyme as thei ete of that, thai suld forfet thair heritage
& be oblischid to deth & helle-payne, thai & all thair lynage.
Bot, if thai had kepid wel all goddis biddyng,
Thai suld haue leued joyfully, & all thair ofspring,
Til thai had ben tan til heuen, to fille that fair place
That thurgh pride of lucifer & his feres voyde was ;
Thare thai suld haue had mor ioye than hert may thenk or tunge telle,
& neuer non of thair kynd suld haue suffride payn of helle.
Ibid. i. pp. 407-409, 11. 1-50.
1 Ed. Morris, Philological Society, 1863.
136 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
the fourteener, and if there are any Alexandrines it must
be more or less accidental ; but he frequently l drops
a decasyllabic couplet, and his individual lines not very
seldom allow themselves hyper-catalexis to the same
extent, while they simply swarm with equivalences.
But it is in the minor poems, attributed not so probably
to Hampole himself as to his later disciples and successors,
that the most astonishing examples of the completed
combination of metre and " swing " exist. They may not
be quite so early as most of the poems with which we are
dealing ; yet examples, certainly in the Vernon, with
which we have dealt and shall deal, make this by no
means impossible. The two most wonderful are the
exquisite piece beginning
My treuest treasure so traitorly taken
(Horstmann's Hampole, i. 72),
of which I have already remarked elsewhere 2 that it
anticipates Mr. Swinburne's music five hundred years
later ; and the very valuable " E. L O. " which, in its most
perfect form, gives the full sway and swing of the Nut
Broune Maid itself. But to these we may return when
we come, in the next Book, to this last-named jewel, and
to the complicated lyrics of the Mystery Plays.
Continuing the Vernon (E.E.T.S., Ft. 2), XXXIX. is in
alternately rhymed octosyllabic quatrains, and XL. in mono-
1 E.g.-
He may [ be li | kend and | he | es | llyke than
Til besjtes that | na sky | lie ne witjte can.
11. 606, 607.
The bu|ghes er | the ar|mes with | the handes,
And the | legges | with the | fete | that standes.
11. 680, 681.
For a gre | te clerk j says that | hight Ber | thelmewe
That twa | worldes | er principally j to shewe.
11. 966, 967.
There are scores and perhaps hundreds of others. Perhaps I may as well
here counter, once for all, an objection which may be made by some, that,
according to their ideas, English was then pronounced in a way which will
not admit of my scansions. They may be right or wrong as to their pronun-
ciation I have never seen any real evidence in their favour. But that the
words have the SiW/cus of mine, whether they have the momentary actuality
or not, is a fact obvious and insuperable.
2 Short History of English Literature, p. 76. I refer to Itylus.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 137
rhymed ditto, as is XLI. XLII. is in octosyllabic staves
on two alternate rhymes ; XLI 1 1. in similar octaves of
sixes ending with one of eights. This later scheme re-
appears in XLIV., but with much uncertainty of arrange-
ment, whether deliberate or not it is hard to say. The
first stanza is rhymed ababccdc ; in the others the even
lines are mono-rhymed, while the odd ones are blank. But
XLV. returns to the regular form of the stanza. XLVI.
is in the sixteen-line stanza of mostly short lines, aaab, cccb,
dddb, eeeb, which we have noted in Romance. XLVI I. is
in Romance twelves and XLVI 1 1. in Romance sixes
" The Proverbs of Prophets," etc. XLIX. translates Latin
first into French and then into English quatrains, sixains,
or octaves, usually in octosyllables, but sometimes with an
extra foot ; and the same process is observed in " Little "
and " Great " " Cato " (L.) (quaint things made up of Latin,
French, and English), though the tendency here is rather to
shorten than to lengthen the octosyllable. 1 LI. (the rather
well-known Stations of Rome) is in octosyllabic couplet.
Two alliterative pieces follow : the later, the beautiful,
well-known, and already noticed Pistyl of Sweet Susane,
with its thirteen-lined arrangement of body, bob and
wheel ; the earlier, mainly in thirteen-line stanzas, rhymed
like Susane, but the lengths different, the first and
last a very odd creation 2 of no less than seventeen lines
aabaabaabaabcdddc, 44444444444468886, but compres-
sible into nine as below. LIV. is in couplets.
1 The "Great Cato" man apologises punctiliously at the end.
The merueyles of thise nakede vers
Beoth maked bi two and two :
The schortnesse of my luitel wit
Dude me en-Ioynen hem so.
Vernon, ii. p. 609, 11. 633-636.
2 Oure ladi freo, on Rode treo, made hire mon :
Heo seid, " on the, the fruit of me, is wo bigon ;
Mi fruit I seo, in blodi bleo, among his fon ;
Serwe I seo, the veines fleo, from blodi bon.
Cros, thou dost no trouthe,
On a pillori my fruit to pinne.
He hath no spot of Adam sinne :
fflesch and veines nou fleo a-twinne ;
Wherfore I rede of routhe." Ibid. ii. p. 612, stanza i.
(For metre cf. Tusser, p. 328.)
138 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
The thirty poems which make up number LV. are
almost throughout written to refrains, and in stanzas
mostly composed of eights, alternately rhymed, but
arranged with slight differences ; the b rhyme being very
often caught up from the even to the odd lines in the
second half of the verse. The few short poems from
MS. Digby 86, which complete the second volume of the
E.E.T.S. edition of the Vernon Shorter Poems give, I
think, nothing new.
Minot. In Laurence Minot, 1 the one named (though hardly
known) writer of the exact middle of the century, there is
nothing very original either in matter or in form, but the
latter shows an attempt to smooth out and regularise
after a somewhat mechanical fashion. I. is in octaves of
eights rhymed abababb. II.,
Skotes | out of Berjwik and of | Aberdene |
At the | Bannokburn | war | ze to kene,
shows with what ease the old accented line settles to
fairly regular anapaests. III. is the familiar admixture of
octosyllabic couplet and Romance six, both fairly if not
perfectly regular. IV. repeats the anapaests, keeping more
alliteration than in the former instance ; V. is in octaves
of threes, rhymed like the eights of I.; to which VI. returns
after a couplet prologue ; and VII. follows suit. VIII. is
a " Queen-in-the-parlour " kept short in this fashion :
Sir David the Bruse
Was at dystance,
When Edward the Baliolfe
Rade with his lance,
a form which Minot liked well enough to keep it in IX.
and X. 2 As he writes in a distinctly northern dialect, we
may perhaps safely note in him that greater precision of
stanza which will distinguish poets in Scots, and which is
the complement of their tendency to alliterative scansion.
1 Repeatedly edited from Ritson to Mr. Joseph Hall ; some in Morris
and Skeat.
2 If any one likes, he may say that this is the same as II., and that both
are only Robert of Gloucester and so Poema Morale. I have already referred
to the Appendix for my view of the metamorphoses of the fourteener and its
chasst-croist with the anapaest.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 139
Gower l requires much less notice than Chaucer, for Gower.
the simple reason that, great as is the bulk of his work in
English, it is, with trifling exceptions, all written in one
metre, and that one of which we have said a great deal
already. His French and Latin exercises, much more
metrically various and complicated, do not here concern us,
except that the ease with which he manages them shows
the great effect which these two prosodies must have had
on the trilingual generation of writers who had to do,
at this momentous time, with the practical foundation
not of English prose and poetry, but of modern English
poetry and modern English prose.
Gower's management of his octosyllable, however, has His octo-
quite interest enough in itself to occupy us for a page or sy
two. In a certain sense, its age and its accomplishment
being taken together, it is the capital example, in English,
of the unequivalenced variety of the metre. It has less
vigour and variety than Chaucer's, but runs much more
easily ; it seems to be written as much con amore as
Chaucer's was written against the grain. It was, I have
little doubt, directly in the eye and mind of Wither and
Browne when they wrote in the early seventeenth century,
and while it may have had direct influence, as well as
through them, on Keats, in the admirable Eve of St. Mark,
it certainly influenced directly, as well as through him and
them, Mr. William Morris, the actual author of the greatest
examples of it in English, taking bulk and merit together.
It must therefore be worth a little examination.
The exceptions above noted the decasyllabic Sup- His other
plication of the Eighth Book and the short piece verse>
In Praise of Peace show much the same general
characteristics as the octosyllables, Dr. Schipper's dis-
covery of roughness in them being only one of those
instances which show how hardly a foreigner shall
1 Every student of English poetry must acknowledge the debt which we
owe to Mr. G. C. Macaulay for at last providing us, in the Clarendon Press
issue (4 vols. Oxford, 1899-1902), with a complete and trustworthy edition
of an author whose piecemeal and slovenly presentation, up to our time, had
been a positive scandal to English bookmaking. If here, as in relation to
Chaucer, I take prosodic views rather different from Professor Macaulay's, I am
all the more indebted to him for supplying a stable foundation to my own.
140 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
appreciate these things. 1 But their amount is too small to
necessitate study. 2 In the octosyllable, the uncompromising
adoption of the French, or syllabically uniform, system is
the first thing noticeable. There may be a few excep-
tions, but they are very few, and as a rule Gower trusts
to syncopation, or actual compounding of syllables, rather
than to addition, while he also avoids the seven-syllable lines
in which Chaucer revels. He does begin with a trochee
a proceeding which can give no pause or difficulty to
any but very fanatics of "accent" Even Mr. Macaulay,
whose description of Gower's versification as an adaptation
of French syllabic to English accentual scansion I
could not quite accept, justly says " this is not so much a
displacement of the actual accent as a trochaic com-
mencement, after the fashion which has established itself
as an admitted variety in English poetry." The frequent
syncope is almost always before liquids, after the fashion
which, in Milton, has made some adopt what seems to me
a false theory of prosody. And nearly, though not quite
always, the MSS. (which are supposed to be more authen-
tically representative of the author's own writing than
most that we have) adopt the ugly "jamming together " of
" the " and more rarely " to." Whether the words were so
pronounced, or merely made subject to slide or slur, must
be matter of opinion 3 and opinions may also differ how
far this preciseness contributes to the merits and defects
His general of his work. The immense length of his poem, and the
quality. heterogeneous character of its contents, have no doubt, in
modern times, done him at least as much harm as they
secured him respect in his own, and those immediately
following. He deserves, equally beyond doubt, no small
credit for his accomplishment in a certain kind and
degree of style, and for the almost complete manner in
which he has mastered and applied his own conception of
1 It is but fair to say that natives as well as foreigners are only too apt to
shut their eyes, with almost ludicrous obstinacy, to that equivalence which
makes so many rough places smooth. Gower does not indulge in it much,
but he does sometimes.
2 They should be taken into account by any one who wishes to make a
thorough discussion of rhyme-royal after Chaucer.
3 V. inf. on Chaucer.
CHAP, in MISCELLANEOUS METRICAL POETRY 141
the metre which he uses. And I am bound to say that the
more I read Gower (and I have read him a good deal, both
before and since Mr. Macaulay's edition for the first time
did him justice) the less I am inclined to think him
merely an example of polished long - windedness and
accomplished monotony. But I do not think that he can
ever be entirely cleared from these charges, and though it
may seem unfair, I believe that his conception and execu-
tion of metre had a good deal to do with this. And I
am confirmed in this belief by the chief instance in which
he shook himself free from these defects the really
magnificent and should - be - well - known climax of the
Medea story, where the sorceress perfects her spells. 1
Here the glamour of the legend has itself acted as a spell
on Gower and has warmed him up. Therefore he could be
warmed. Elsewhere it has not ; therefore there was some-
thing that cooled the warmth. The something was not
the matter, for in the myriad tales he tells there are
others nearly as good as this. It was not his language,
which is always competent if seldom consummate.
Therefore it is at least possible that it was his metre.
Supposing, for the sake of argument, that it was, there
is not much difficulty in assigning the cause. Gower,
completing for Middle English the succession begun by
1 Thus it befell vpon a nyht, Ferst sche began to clepe and calle
Whan ther was noght bot sterreliht, Vpward vnto the sterres alle ;
Sche was vanyssht riht as hir liste, To wynd, to air, to see, to lond
That no wyht bot hirself it wiste ; Sche preide, and ek hield vp hir hond ;
And that was at[t]e mydnyht tyde ; To Echates and gan to crie,
The world was stille on euery side. Which is goddesse of sorcerie :
With open hed and fot al bare, Sche seide, " Helpeth at this nede,
Hir her tosprad, sche gan to fare ; And as ye maden me to spede
Vpon hir clothes gert sche was, Whan lason cam the Flees to seche,
Al specheles, and on the gras So helpe me nov, I you beseche."
Sche glod forth as an addre doth. With that sche loketh, and was war,
Non otherwise sche ne goth, Doun fro the sky ther cam a char,
Til sche cam to the freisshe flod, The which dragouns aboute drowe.
And there a while sche withstod. And tho sche gan hir hed doun bowe,
Thries sche torned hire aboute, And vp sche styh, and faire and wel
And thries ek sche gan doun loute ; Sche drof forth bothe char and whel
And in the flod sche wette hir her, Above in thair among the skyes.
And thries on the water ther Ed. cit. sup. iii. pp. 54-55, Bk. v.
Sche gaspeth with a drecchinge onde, 11. 3957-3993 ; Morris and Skeat,
And tho sche tok hir speche on honde. ii. pp. 274, 275, 11. 131-167.
142 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
the author of The Owl and the Nightingale, and declining
that headed by him of Genesis and Exodus, has followed
the French in rejecting 1 foot-elasticity, with the result of
meeting the same " disasters " is perhaps too strong a
word, but inconveniences, which they met. The liability
of the French octosyllable to a sort of skipping-rope
monotony, insignificant and even a little irritating, has
been acknowledged in its own country, and certainly
cannot escape any one out of it. And Gower generally
does nothing to obviate or evade the danger. He does
not, indeed, observe the strict hemistich caesura, which, in
the most extraordinary of his many extraordinary
crotchets, Guest so solemnly censured Milton for dis-
regarding. He avails himself freely, and perhaps more
judiciously than Chaucer, of the paragraph-pause in the
middle of a couplet. But, as we have said and seen, he
is plus quam Chaucerian on syllabic uniformity, and he will
not even allow himself the advantage of a period in the
middle of the line. With these limitations, and with
the further drawback of the very simple construction
of his period as it stands, the result was more or less
unavoidable. But we must never forget or undervalue
the immense value of the example of accomplished
prosody which Gower set so far as he went. In fact, it is
hardly fantastic or obvious to say that if one could have
bespoken three prosodic teachers for England at this
moment, it would have been impossible to improve upon
Chaucer, Gower, and Langland. We have seen what the
second did in this chapter. We shall see what the
third did in a later one. But the first must have a place
to himself.
1 Not entirely. Even Mr. Macaulay, who regards a trisyllabic foot as
not a trisyllabic foot but an instance of a superfluous syllable to be accounted
for, admits the existence of such syllables at iv. 1 131, v. 447, v. 2914, v. 501 1.
And I could add many.
CHAPTER IV
CHAUCER
Plan of campaign What Chaucer had before him in prosody
His work: The Romaunt of the Rose The early "Minor
Poems " The ABC and its stanza Rhetorical prosody
The Complaint unto Pity Rhyme -royal The Book of the
Duchess The Complaint of Mars The Parliament of Foules
The other Minors Their lesson Troilus and Creseide The
House of Fame Cadence, note The decasyllabic : retrospect
of its origin ; and study of its virtues The Legend of Good
Women Digression on difficulties The crux of text
"Critical" editions of the classics and of Middle English
Solid points for discussion : the stanza forms The lines
Decapitation or initial monosyllabic foot Trisyllabic feet
Elision and Slur Trisyllabics proper Alexandrines Syllable-
values Rhyme Note on " Chauceriana."
WE now come to what would have been regarded, not so Plan of
very long ago, as the starting-point, but what is in reality cam P a 'g n -
only the centre (if not even the real end) of the first stage
of our enquiry the prosody of Chaucer. Something of
what has to be said as to his relations with his fore-
runners and older contemporaries will fall best into the
Interchapter which follows this book, but something also
must be said here. Then we may give, in our usual
fashion, a survey of the actual prosody of Chaucer's
actual works, a survey which will not neglect the modern
theories about them wholly, and which will always admit,
for quoting, the most modern texts, but which will be
mainly based on very many years' actual reading of
Chaucer and Chaucer's predecessors and followers. After
this it will be convenient to make a minuter study of
foot- and verse-arrangement, syllabic values, rhyme, and
144 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
the like. I may add that though, as will be seen, I
cannot agree with the principles on which some of the
Chaucerian fringe has been cut off the garment, I shall
confine myself, in the text of this chapter, to the matter of
Dr. Skeat's Student's Chaucer and the Globe edition. 1
what Chaucer Those who have done me the honour to read the pre-
m cecu ng pages will have a tolerably clear idea of what any
man of fair "education, and of interest in poetry, had, as
prosodic data, about the seventh decade of the fourteenth
century, towards the end of which Chaucer probably began.
And certain slight additions can be made from internal
evidence as to what he personally and actually had before
him. Such a man, or such a poet, might belong to either
(or to both) of the two great schools of purely metrical
and purely alliterative prosodians. We know that, as
a matter of practice, Chaucer, " a southern man," belonged
to the former, and from the famous disclaimer of " rym
ram ruff" 2 we may not unfairly conclude that he belonged
to it as a matter of positive preference. What sort of
prosodic models he had before him in English we may
judge from the Auchinleck MS., apparently written some
twenty years before, and the Vernon MS., apparently
written not ten years after, his probable ctibut. The con-
tents of both of these have been elaborately analysed and
discussed in the preceding pages. He would find in
them 3 octosyllabic couplets and Romance sixes, the staples
of English verse ; but he would also find a very large
number of more elaborate stanzas the whole reducible,
though never as yet by any preceptist reduced, to a system
of foot-division, or of accent-grouping, according to taste.
But he had more means, material, machinery, at his
disposal than those furnished by the pure vernacular.
That he could have written trilingually, as Gower did with
complete ease if not with complete scholarship, in English,
1 I prefer the latter, on the whole, as presenting a text rather less "made
up " according to theory.
2 I give Gascoigne's form in his Notes. The MSS. of the Parson's
Prologue seem to vary between rum and rom.
3 As the perversity of some readers is only not incalculable, let me prevent
it by observing that I do not mean by "them" the two MSS., but their
contents. Some of those of the Auchinleck are mentioned in Sir Thopas.
CHAP, iv CHA UCER 145
French, and Latin, there is no evidence one way or another ;
that he did not so write there is at least the evidence that
no such writing exists. But as every educated man of
his generation still necessarily was (though according to
the great passage of Trevisa * things were actually chang-
ing) he was perfectly familiar with French, which, as it
happened, had for a century and more betaken itself to
extremely elaborate, very strict, and in some cases very
beautiful arrangements of prosodic form. And his earliest
probable stage was occupied with direct translations and
almost as direct imitations of French poetry. If not a
Latin scholar few people in his day deserved that name
out of Italy, if many in it he was familiar with Latin
classical authors to some extent, and with the Dark and
Middle Age writers to a large one. In particular, the
Vulgate, and the hymns and services of the church, he
must have known by heart. Everything points to his
having, in somewhat later days, had a direct knowledge of
Italian, which already possessed in Dante the greatest, 2
and in Petrarch and Boccaccio two of the most formally
accomplished, of European men of letters, in prose and
verse, for a thousand years past. His linguistic-literary
equipment is not likely to have extended further, but this
was a sufficiently wide range.
The Romaunt of the Rose, which is usually put in the His work,
front of Chaucer's works, is one of those which have fallen The *
of the Rose.
under the suspicion of modern scholars for reasons, many
of which do not touch our subject, while the principal one
that does touch it seems impossible of argument 3 To be
as accommodating as may be, however, let us say that the
1 This will be referred to again.
a Chaucer's remarks on Dante in the Legend, if accidentally felicitous, are
one of the oddest examples of accidental felicity in criticism.
3 I repeat regretfully, respectfully, but peremptorily and irrevocably, that
it is impossible to argue with persons who say that Chaucer never rhymes
Y to ye, and then admit that he did in Sir Thopas, and say that it can easily
be explained. Of course it can by the fact that if he ever made a rule of the
kind at one time he broke it at another and in no second way. This un-
fortunate lubie of the late Mr. Bradshaw must, I suppose, be allowed to have
its day ; it will cease to be in time, like other things of the same kind. Mean-
while, let it be now observed that the various discussions about the English
Romaunt, and the way in which its parts are chopped and changed by this
VOL. I L
146 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
English Romaunt of the Rose, whether Chaucer's or not,
displays with rare exceptions, though perhaps with those
exceptions, no very great advance upon, and even no
very great difference from, precedent octosyllabic couplet
work, especially such (the great majority) as is translated
from French.
The author or authors seems or seem to have suf-
ficiently realised the first secret of music in this* metre
the overrunning of the line ; and less fully the second,
that of the overrunning of the couplet. The third,
the putting of a full stop at the end of the first line,
which relieves the variety of the verse paragraph, is also
known. There is a little, but not much, equivalence : l
but there is very little, if anything, of the other secret,
which Chaucer afterwards learnt so thoroughly, of alternat-
ing lines of strict and full iambic cadence with those where
a monosyllabic foot at the beginning turns that cadence to
trochaic. Nor is there much understanding of pause-
variation, though sometimes we find a full stop early in
the line. 2 The value for us of the whole piece, however,
is lessened by the preciseness with which (in part at least)
it keeps to its original. The languages were by this
time close enough to each other to make this easy, and
when there was any difficulty it scarce required the wit
of a Chaucer to supply such a cheville as
An emperesse or crowned queen
for
D'estre emperieris ou roine
(though it may be observed that " crowned " is a distinct
improvement to the sound, if not to the sense of the
line), or
The lusty folk that danced there
and that distributor, are characteristic. In this book we do not rope-dance,
but keep to solid paths, and where the paths are not solid we do not care
to walk.
1 More than in Gower, less than in most of the romances.
2 E.g. 6322
As I. For I come never in toune.
Near this are some lines which / should take as slipped decasyllabics.
CHAP, iv CHA UCER 147
for
Ainsi karoloient illecques.
On the whole, however, the poem is fairly free from the
abominable stock - stuffings " verament," " everichone,"
and the like which are so frequent elsewhere. But it
has little new for us. 1
The so-called " Minor Poems " of the French period, the The early
majority of which are fortunately unchallenged, have more. p oern n s "
The use of elaborate, and even very elaborate, stanzas
was, as we know well, not itself a novelty ; we have them
in very fair perfection, and in very great variety, as far
back as the Harleian Lyrics, which were pretty certainly
written half a century, and may have been written the
best part of a century, before Chaucer's time. But with
rare exceptions, most of which have been pointed out,
these stanzas do not run quite easily, and the exceptions
themselves are due rather to inspiring force of subject to
a little passing gust of poetry in feeling than to assured
craftsmanship. Now, as has been said above, the French
had for more than a century been writing elaborate forms
of poetry most sedulously, and had turned out, in several
different kinds of continuous stanza, and in the smaller
integers of triolet, rondeau, ballade, and the like, the
most artificial perhaps, but certainly not the least artful
and artistic, of poetic arrangements.
1 An extract, however, may be desirable :
Hir heer was as yelowe of hewe Hir throte also white of hewe
As ony basyn scoured newe, As snowe on braunche snowed newe.
Hir flesh [as] tendre as is a chike, Of body ful wel wrought was she,
With bente browis smothe and slyke ; Men neded not in no cuntre
And by mesure large were A fairer body forto seke.
The openyng of hir yen clere ; And of fyn orfrays hadde she eke
Hir nose of good proporcioun, A chapelet so semly oon
Hir yen grey as is a faucoun ; Ne werede never mayde upon.
With swete breth and wel savoured, And faire above that chapelet
Hir face white and wel coloured, A rose gerland had she sett.
With litel mouth and rounde to see ; She hadde [in honde] a gay mirrour,
A clove chynne eke hadde she, And with a riche gold tresour
Hir nekke was of good fasoun, Hir heed was tressed, queyntely.
In lengthe and gretnesse by resoun, Hir sieves sewid fetously,
Withoute bleyne, scabbe, or royne ; And forto kepe hir hondis faire
Fro lersalem unto Burgoyne Of gloves white she had a paire.
Ther nys a fairer nekke, i-wys, And she hadde on a cote of grene
To fele how smothe and softe it is. Of cloth of Gaunt, withouten wene.
539-574-
I 4 8 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK 11
The ABC In what is sometimes supposed to be his very first
and its stanza. WQrkj the A B j n what certa j n l y may be his first
as well as any other there are divers noteworthy things.
Like the Romaunt, it is a direct translation ; but, unlike
the Romaunt, it does not follow the prosody of its original,
but innovates in a remarkable way. That original is in a
twelve-line stanza of octosyllables rhymed aabaabbbcbbc.
Chaucer shortens the stanza and lengthens the line, using
eight decasyllabics rhymed ababbcbc} Now this instinc-
tive and early striking out for the great staple line of
English poetry is a prosodic fact, the importance of which
cannot be overrated. It had for centuries been one of
the staples (it was perhaps the oldest of all) in French, and
it corresponded (with the necessary difference in the two
languages) to the hendecasyllable which had established
itself as the staple of Italian. But though there had
been, as we have seen, sporadic examples of it, and even
of its couplet, in English, it had never been staple, had
never been used continuously and deliberately, had never
even made frequent appearance. Yet Chaucer, as to the
manner born, seems to have hardly the slightest difficulty
with it. That he is a beginner is perhaps shown by the
facts, not merely that he wields it with less varied ease
than later, but that he writes it with some severity.
There is possible trisyllabic equivalence in one or two
places
Haven of refute, of quiete and of reste,
and
Ever hath myn hope of refut been in thee,
where, of course, some folk would apply their rule of
elision before liquids, and scan " hav'n " and " ev'r." He
has some double rhymes that are not feminine, such as
1 E.g.
Al myghty and al mercyable Queene,
To whom that al this world fleeth for socour
To have relees of sinne, of sorwe, and teene !
Glorious Virgine, of alle floures flour,
To thee I flee confounded in errour.
Help, and releeve, thou mihti debonayre,
Have mercy on my perilous langour !
Venquisshed me hath my cruel adversaire.
CHAP, iv CHA UCER 149
" never " and " ever," where the same note may be made
if any one likes. He does not appear to trouble himself
with the French decasyllabic caesura at the fourth syllable,
for though it sometimes appears, it is quite as often absent.
Indeed, as we see from Gascoigne much later but almost
as early as we have an opportunity of seeing anything of
the kind a rational idea grew up (even in times which
had the superstition of this caesura) that it was less bind-
ing in stanza than in couplet. Still, where he dares a
full, or very strong, stop in the middle of a line, it is
generally at this fourth syllable.
This last point brings us to the consideration of a Rhetorical
new class of prosodic characteristics, which it has been P rosod y-
hardly worth while to consider earlier, the class which
may be called rhetorical - prosodic ; where devices are
employed, not immediately or not wholly for versifica-
tion, but as they might be employed in prose, to enhance
the beauty of sound. These, except of a very rudi-
mentary description, can only be found when a language
and its writers have arrived at a certain point of accom-
plishment. Such a thing as the sharp pull-up just
noticed l is itself of them, though on the more prosodic
side. Two others to be mentioned now incline rather
to the rhetorical. One of these, the least noticeable,
though neither is unnoticeable here, is the well-known
reduplication of synonyms, as in
Haven of refute, of quiete and of reste,
which has nothing whatever to correspond to it in the French.
Still more noteworthy is the first sign of that epanaphora,
or trick of beginning successive lines with the same word
or words, which Chaucer afterwards indulged in very
freely, and which his successors, including even the earlier
Elizabethans, not seldom abused :
O verrey light of eyen that ben blynde,
O verrey lust of labour and distresse.
The Complaint unto Pity, even if it be not (as some
1 As in 1. 12
Axeth thyn helpe. Thyn herte is ay so free.
ISO
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
The Complaint again think), and as it may very well be, the actually
earliest, and even if it be (as some also think) a trans-
lation of a French poem not yet identified, has an even
higher interest. For here we have, beyond reasonable
doubt, the first English piece in the great Rhyme-royal,
or seven - lined stanza of decasyllabics rhymed ababbcc,
which Chaucer afterwards brought to such perfection, and
which long held the premier place among our stanza forms.
His pitching on it, and his preference of it, are fresh proofs
of his instinctive genius for prosody. It is not, indeed,
Rhyme-royal, a stan za-of-all- work. But it can do several things well,
and one thing, the expression of clangorous cry, it can
do supremely. It is odd that, this being so, the very
first example of it should be in so suitable a subject ; for
the expression itself is not very successful. The poet's
instinct is true, but his craftsmanship is as yet incomplete.
It can hardly be quite accidental that the MS. variations
in the piece are unusually numerous and serious, not least
from our special point of view. Some of them, if original,
would certainly show that Chaucer's prosody was not
born full grown, in which, indeed, there would be nothing
remarkable but the reverse. 1
Still on the mounting hand is the interest of the Book
of the Duchess. Nobody disputes its genuineness, or its
1 A single line (50) will give us a curious and capital instance of what is
called critical editing. Of the seven MSS. which Professor Skeat collates
two give
Thanne leve I alle thees vertues sauf pitee ;
two
Then leve we al vertues saue oonly pile ;
three
Then leve all vertues saue onely pite.
Now none of these will scan according to the orthodox values of the final e.
So you take the text of the first group and spell it according to the others, and
you get
Then leve I al thise virtues sauf pite.
But we ought to give a whole stanza
Pite that I have sought so yore ago
With herte sore and ful of besy peyne,
That in this worlde was never wight so wo
With-oute dethe ; and if I shal not feyne,
My purpos was to Pite to compleyne
Upon the crueltee and tirannye
Of Love, that for my trouthe doth me dye.
The Book of
the Duchess.
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 151
solidarity, or its earliness, and it is in the octosyllabic
couplet, so that we are able to study Chaucer's handling,
of the most popular English metre before his day, undis-
turbed by any quibbles or irrelevances. He has by no
means reached the mastery of it which he afterwards
showed in the House of Fame, but which he did not care,
elsewhere or later still, to exhibit at all. Yet he is already
far above the level of the bulk of his predecessors. As
in the Romaunt, and as we should expect, the model is
the non-equivalenced one of The Owl and the Nightingale^
not the equivalenced one of Genesis and Exodus. But it
displays the catalectic - trochaic alternation. Once (11.
471-472) we find a curious identical rhyme ("song" and
" song " in the same sense), which is followed by a pretty
lyric or strophe-arrangement an onzain divided into five
and six, and rhymed aabbaccdccd. And, a little out of
the strict prosodic road, we may note the ease with which
the verse is made subservient to conversation, partly by
the obvious device of splitting the couplets between the
interlocutors, and sometimes by the slightly more daring
one of splitting a line between them ; but never, I think,
by running on one speech into a line and then beginning
another in the same, which is the crowning grace. 1
1 Or outrage, according to the famous perruque critic of Hernani. A
short couplet batch, chosen to show the dialogue, and the onzain, may
follow :
" Sir," quod I, " wher is she now? " I have of sorwe so grete woon
" Now ! " quod he, and stynte anoon. That joye gete I never noon,
Therwith he wex as deed as stoon Now that I see my lady bright,
And seyde, ' ' Alias, that I was bore ! Which I have loved with al my
That was the los, that her-before myght,
I tolde the that I hadde lorn ; Is fro me deed and is a-goon.
Bethenk how I seyde herbeforn ; Alias, Deeth, what ayleth thee
' Thow wost ful litel what thou menest ; That thou noldest have taken me,
I have lost more than thou wenest ! ' Whan thou toke my lady sweete
God wot, alias ! right that was she ! " That was so fayr, so fresh, so fre,
"Alias! sir, how? what may that So good, that men may wel se
be? " Of al goodnesse she had no meete.
"She ys deed ! " 11. 475-485.
' Nay ! "
' ' Yis, by my trouthe ! "
1 ' Is that your los ? by God, hit is
routhe ! "
And with that worde right anoon
They gan to strake forth ; al was doon
For that tyme, the hert-huntying.
11. 1297-1312.
152 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
The Complaint There is more metrical experiment in the curious
composite poem called the Complaint of Mars, where
Chaucer has rather scandalised some of his admirers
by celebrating an intrigue between Princess Isabel of
Castille, Duchess of York, and John Holland, Duke of
Exeter. The proem and the story are in .rhyme-royal ;
but the " Complaint " itself is in a nine-line stanza 1
of some complexity, decasyllabically lined, and rhymed
aabaabbcc, which may be regarded either as a six -line
body with a triplet coda, or as a triplet with three couplets
strung to it, or as rhyme-royal with two lines (2nd and
5th) inserted. It is by no means unimportant to observe
that in both these stanza-metres the couplet itself plays
a very large part. These forms gave him ample exercise
in both forms of it the strophes of the Complaint stanza
in the " enjambed," the final couplets of rhyme-royal in
the " stopped."
The Parlia- The Parliament of Foules is wholly rhyme-royal, with
mmt of Ponies. a S pi enc jid piece of cadence 2 the first great thing, perhaps,
in Chaucer at the opening, others later, and a very pretty
"roundel," 3 "Now, welcome, summer," which may be the
earliest example of these forms in English.
The other The remainder of the minor poems, whether they be
all of one time or not, and discarding the minor questions
1 To whom shal I then pleyne of my distresse ?
Who may me helpe ? Who may my harm redresse ?
Shall I compleyne unto my lady fre ?
Nay, certes ! for she hath such hevynesse,
For fere, and eek for wo, that, as I gesse,
In litil tyme it wol her bane be.
But were she sauf, it were no fors of me !
Alas ! that ever lovers mote endure,
For love, | so ma|ny a pe|rilous a [venture !
11. 191-198.
2 The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,
Thassay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge,
The dredful joye, alwey that slit so yerne ;
Al this mene I be love, etc.
3 Now welcom, somer, with thy sonne softe,
That hast this wintres weders overshake
And driven a-wey the longe nyghtes blake.
Lines I and 2 repeated twice and 3 once, woven ingeniously with others into
thirteen and rhymed abbabab-abbabb.
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 153
of authenticity, supply interesting evidences of Chaucer's
metrical Wanderjahre. Especially interesting is the col-
lection of fragments, which older copyists seem to have
taken as a coda to the Complaint of Pity, but which Professor
Skeat groups as a Complaint to his Lady. The first,
consisting of two stanzas of rhyme-royal, strikes me (I dare
say it has struck others) as of real value in connection
with the development of the quatorzain or English sonnet
by Wyatt and Surrey, just when there was a renewed study
of Chaucer. It is followed by certain experiments in terza
rima, 1 which have interest of the same kind, in redoubled
measure, as affecting the answers to two questions of
extreme importance : " Why did Chaucer, at a time
when he was evidently under very strong Italian in-
fluence, not make further experiments in this favourite
metre of the ' great poet of Italy ' ? " and " Why has this
metre never really acclimatised itself with us?" The
double answer is, of course, obvious : " Because he found,
and because all have found, that it would not do." The
rest, and the bulk of the piece (if we may so call it), is in
ten - line stanzas, a sixain tipped not with triplet " uni-
corned " like that of the Mars poem, but with a quatrain of
decasyllabics rhymed In Memoriam fashion as a whole
aabaabcddc?
Annelida to use the old form (the double n is prettier
1 Hir name is Bountee, set in womanhede,
Sadnesse in youthe and Beautee pridelees
And Plesaunce, under governaunce and drede ;
Hir surname eek is Faire Rewthelees,
The Wyse, y-knit un-to Good Aventure,
That, for I love hir, she sleeth me giltelees.
2 My dere herte and best beloved fo,
Why liketh yow to do me al this wo,
What have I doon that greveth yow, or sayd,
But for I serve and love yow and no mo ?
And whilst I lyve I wol ever do so ;
And therfor, swete, ne beth nat yvel apayd.
For so good and so fair as [that] * ye be
Hit were right gret wonder but ye hadde
Of alle servantes, bothe of goode and badde ;
And leest worthy of alle hem, I am he.
* Supplied by Professor Skeat.
154 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
and there is MS. authority for it) and Arcite, a beautiful
poem, has a frame, or rather a long beginning and a single
stanza end, of rhyme-royal, which was evidently Chaucer's
metrical stand-by at this time ; but nearly half of it, between
the beginning and the end, has remarkable variations.
First, we get the nine-line Mars stanza, arranged in two
corresponding blocks, which Professor Skeat very justifiably
calls " strophe " and " antistrophe." Each of four of the
niners is followed by a fifth, 1 which consists of sixteen lines
in batches of four-three octosyllables and a decasyllabic,
rhymed aaab, aaab, bbba, bbba and a sixth, 2 which is
Chaucer's only attempt at the ringing internally rhymed
carol arrangement.
Of the rest, the half-jocular, half-angry, rebuke to
Adam, his scrivener, is a rhyme -royal stanza ; " The
Former Age " is in decasyllabic octaves rhymed ababbcc ;
and the rest, including the Complaint of Venus, are ballads
and roundels, except the " Proverbs of Chaucer," which
are quatrains of eights rhymed alternately.
Their lesson. The lessons of these early poems are quite clear and
easy to disengage. Chaucer has found an English prosody
already thoroughly broken to the use of foot-divisions and
their arrangement in metrical groups, and he does not
attempt any startling innovations or reformations upon it
1 Now cer|tes, swe|te, thogh | that ye
Thus cau|seles | the cau|se be,
Of my [ dedly adver | sitee,
Your man | ly re | soun oght | e it to | respite,
and so on to sixteen.
2 My swete foo, why do ye so, for shame ?
And thenke ye that furthered be your name,
To love a-newe, and ben untre | we ? Nay !
And putte you in sclaunder now and blame,
And do to me adversitee and grame,
That love you most God, wel thou wost ! alway ?
Yet turn ageyn, and be al pleyn som day,
And then shall this, that now is mis, be game,
And al foryive, whyl that I li | ve may.
This, of course, is interesting to compare with "E.I.O." and "The
Nut-Browne Mayde," and to note the shortened and, as it were, "pulled up"
effect of the places marked. Chaucer, though not ill, was not supremely well
at these carillon numbers. Yet some have even called the piece "Pindaric,"
and it is certainly both ingenious and pleasing. (Cf. notes, pp. 137 and 328.)
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 155
as far as feet go. He uses, on the whole, the severe
forms, except in his predilection (which was to continue)
for an occasional monosyllabic opening foot. In metres,
however, he is decidedly eclectic and experimental, and
calls both French and Italian to his aid. He practises
the old octosyllabic couplet, but does not seem to have
any great fancy for it : and he practises the new French
artificial forms, but without very much eagerness or very
brilliant success. On the other hand, he hits (in the
seven-lined stanza with end-couplet, the " rhyme-royal ")
on a form which evidently suits him, and which, not
merely by the effect of his example, holds a very great
place in English poetry for the two next centuries. More-
over, he shows in his handling of these various vehicles
distinct mastery, and a great freedom from the two faults
straggling looseness and wooden precision which had
characterised most earlier verse.
But it is important to notice that both in diction and
versification more particularly in that adaptation of the
two which was later to be his great glory he as yet
shows no very brilliant accomplishment. The opening of
the Parliament of Foules is the chief exception, and there
are few more. If these poems stood alone to his credit, it
is but merely trivially obvious to say that he would hold
no great place in English poetry. It would be strictly
and critically correct to say : " Here was a man who
seemed to have a surer prosodic grasp than any previous
writer ; one who showed the definite constitution of English
prosody, but not much more."
All this makes the final outcome of this period, in the Trail and
completed and substantive work belonging to the next, Crese%de -
a most interesting thing. The delightful romance of
Troilus and Creseide has been abundantly illustrated, in
respect of its indebtedness of matter, by the very painful
and very useful industry (here quite in place) of the
modern scholar. It is in another department of strictly
literary criticism from that which we are pursuing a
great document against the idle notion that Chaucer dis-
liked, despised, and depreciated Romance itself. But here
1 56 THE FO UR TEE NTH CENTUR Y BOOK 1 1
we are busy only with its form. As such, it is the
finished work the diploma - piece, such as but few
diploma-pieces are of that period itself. Chaucer has
preferred the prosodic form, which in his 'prentice period
he had already selected, that of rhyme-royal, and of this
preference merely as such, or of the qualifications of the
stanza, there is no need to say any more than has been
said. But of his accomplishment in it there is much more.
The earlier pieces had been scarcely of substance enough
individually, or of variety enough taken as a whole, to
show the capacities of the metre, and Chaucer had in
them done little more than produce " copies of verses,"
such as, let us say, the author of the " copy of verses "
generally does not produce. Here he had buckled to
quite a different task. This is not the place to dilate
upon the extraordinary interest of the Troilus story that
story which, hardly suggested in the classical Tale of
Troy, took form, so far as we know, under the hands
of Benoit de Sainte - More, was continued by Guido
delle Colonne, and Boccaccio, and taken up by Chaucer
himself, Henryson, Shakespeare, and Dryden, in a fashion
which has left us a group of compositions by greater and
lesser masters, hardly one of which is negligible, and most
of which are great. Chaucer's is not one of the exceptions,
and the greatness is due in large measure to qualities
which come fairly under our purview, whether as pure
prosodic matter or as what we have called rhetorical-
prosodic ; in other words, in respect of versification and
diction.
As to the first point, there can, to any reader with
a careful eye and a good ear, be no question about the
immense gain of fluency and exactness combined which
Troilus shows. It is not even necessary to use the text in
which the obliging hand of Professor Skeat has judiciously
restored, and perhaps in a few cases supplied, readings
according to the strictest orthodoxy of the final ^, and
similar things, or that less composite one with which, in the
" Globe " edition, Professor M'Cormick has given us a useful
companion. The comparatively unregenerate textus receptus
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 157
of the Moxon one-volume edition will be quite satisfactory
to any one with such an eye and such an ear. The
stanzas " set," in the dancing sense, to themselves and each
other with an accomplished grace ; they carry out the
combined figures, if not with such perfect accomplish-
ment as in the possibly later Prioress's Tale, at any rate
with a great advance in it over the earlier examples of
the metre. But besides this we begin to get what we
got rarely or not at all earlier those single lines or short
batches of perfected prosodic and symphonic beauty,
which are the sine qua non of really great poetry. How
caressing is the throb and soar of the Cantus Troili in
the first book :
If no love is, O God, what fele I so ?
And if love is, what thing and which is he ?
If love be good, from whennes comth my wo ?
No matter whether Italian or French, or his own soul,,
taught him this melody ; the point is that he has found
it that it is there.
Turn the leaves over at random and come to such
a line as iv. 816
The mighty tresses of hir sonnish heres,
and see how he varies the vowel sound ; dip again and
you will again find. But, of course, the crucial examples
of this, as of other excellence in the poem, are the three
famous passages, first of Cressida's surrender the uni-
versally known
And as the newe abaysshed nightingale
the magnificent address of the desolate lover to the
palace also desolate, and the conclusion. Up to this
time, though the lyre of English prosody is pretty well
built and quite capable of producing musical sounds, it
has never been thoroughly in tune, could never be quite
trusted to apply concord and discord alike for the total
production of harmony. Now, there is no more doubt.
The tuner has come. But perhaps his main instrument
of adjustment is, after all, his diction his command of
158 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
the famous " gold dew-drops of speech," l already to no
small if not to the fullest extent. We find it in
occasional epithets and phrases (" Fortune, executrice of
wierdes" etc.) where the trick-combination of Latin and
Saxon vocabulary is evidently known and practised ; but
still more in the purple patches, the set passages already
indicated and others. The compass of rhyme -royal, as
has been hinted, is not quite so wide as its appeal is
poignant. But Chaucer knows already how to make the
best of both in a way never surpassed by any of his
successors, and perhaps only equalled by Sackville in his
two little masterpieces. 2
Still the compass is rather narrow, and a very much
1 Might not this admirable phrase have saved its poor author, whoever
he was, from dismissal of the piece as "a poor stanza," and a "poor imita-
tion of the style of Lydgate " ? Even if he stole it from somebody else, he
gave it rightly to the right person, wobble and " wamble " as his poor verses
may.
2 To illustrate the karole the musical dance above noticed take these
stanzas
And whan that he was slayn in this manure
His lighte goost ful blisfully is went
Up to the holwnesse of the eighte spere,
In convers leting everich element :
And ther he saugh with ful avisement
Th'erratik sterres, herkning armonye
With sounes fulle of hevenissh melodye.
And down from thennes faste he gan avise
This litel spot of erthe that with the see
Embraced is, and fully gan despise
This wrecched world, and held al vanit6
To respect of the pleyne felicite
That is in hevene above. And at the laste,
Ther he was slayn his loking down he caste,
And in himself he lough right at the wo
Of hem that wepen for his deth so faste,
And dampned al our werk, that folwen so
The blinde lust the whiche that may not laste,
And sholden al our herte on hevene caste.
And forth he wente, shortly for to telle,
Ther-as Merciirie sorted him to dwelle.
Swich fyn hath tho this Troilus for love !
Swich fyn hath al his grete worthinesse !
Swich fyn hath his estat real above 1
Swich fyn his lust, swich fyn hath his noblesse !
Swich fyn, this false worldes brotelnesse !
And thus bigan his loving of Criseyde
As I have told, and in this wise he deyde.
11. 1807-1834.
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 159
smaller person than Chaucer must have found this out
in writing eight thousand lines of it. At any rate he
deserted the measure in his two next poems, poems where
the interest still heightens, prosodically and otherwise.
He had found out, no doubt, that it is not very well suited
for narrative, save of a very brief or a very discursive
character, dealing little with action and character, and
that it is (unless wilfully burlesqued and parodied in
mock-heroic) as deficient in lightness as it is full of pathos
and gravity. Now both the poems which he proceeded to
write were narrative, and the first of them had a strong
satiric tendency. For it, he fell back once more on the
old octosyllabic couplet for the last time, but also with
far the best success. The House of Fame is in the good The House of
sense a very comfortable poem, and it is by no means Fame '
least comfortable prosodically. 1
At the beginning of the Third Book Chaucer makes
a curious apology, 2 echoed with much better reason by
1 I am particularly anxious not to multiply differences with Professor
Skeat. But surely it is very misleading to say, true enough as all the
statements are : ' ' The four-accent metre was commonly known before
Chaucer's time," that " it was used by Robert of Brunne in 1303, in the Cursor
Mundi and in Havelok," being, however, " of French origin." All these
statements are, I say, true ; but how very far do they fall short of the whole
truth ! The "four-accent metre," octosyllabic couplet, or iambic dimeter, is
practically the staple metre of English verse from Layamon to Hampole, both
included. Layamon himself, a century before Robert, the author of Genesis
and Exodus, and the author of The Owl and the Nightingale, a vast
proportion of the romancers, and a vast proportion of the religious verse-
makers all alike use it. And further, to say that " it occurs in the Roman de
la Rose" though again quite true, obscures the fact that, long before Lorris, it
had been used by Chrestien and the other French authors of the Arthurian
poems, that it is the staple of the Renart cycle, of the Fabliaux, of the Romans
d'a-ventures generally. All this Professor Skeat knows as well as I do, and
did know long before I knew it. But his readers do not know in one case
out of a hundred, and they could hardly learn it from his words.
2 Nat that I wilne, for maistrye
Here art poetical be shewed ;
But, for the rym is light and lewed,
Yit make hit sumwhat agreable,
Thogh soni vers faile in a sillable.
There is yet another prosodic reference in the House of Fame, which has
been the occasion of so much discussion that it may perhaps best be treated
here at some little length. This is where the eagle, in his amusing and
very unceremonious talk with Chaucer, observes that the poet has never yet
received any favours from Venus or Cupid
160 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
many of his fellows, for his metre. As a matter of fact
he manages the light and lewed rhyme very agreeably.
His verses that omit a syllable hit the very genius of
English poetry, and, though their lesson was at one time
lost or slighted, helped Milton and Dyer and Coleridge
to keep the precious torch alight. But he was evidently
not quite satisfied with it, as appears not merely from the
apology, which might be a mere piece of manners, or
even of fun, but still more from the fact that he left the
piece unfinished, and most of all from the other fact that
he never again attempted the form. I do not know,
sorry as I should be not to. have the House of Fame,
that he was wrong. The metre is crisp, fresh, and alive ;
the " failing " syllable gives variety and more freshness,
and the poet uses effectively the device above referred to
Cadence. And neverthelesse hast set thy wyt
(Although that in thy heed ful lyte is)
To make bookes, songes, or dytees
In ryme or elks in cadence.
Now what, it is asked, is this " cadence " which is so opposed to " rhyme " ?
"Alliteration" of course, say some. Without being in a hurry to answer
them, let us cite two other "classic places." One of these is from Gower
(Conf. Am. iv. 2414)
And Heredot in his science
Of metre, of rime, and of cadence,
The firste was of which men note.
The other is Wyntoun's (Orig. Cron. Bk. v. ch. xii. 4336)
Had he cald Lucyus Procuratoure
Quhare that he cald hym Empyrowre,
That had mare grevyd the cadens
Than had relevyd the sentens.
The mere quotation of these side by side ought to show that, at any rate,
"alliteration" was not a specific meaning of "cadence" known to and used
by the three writers ; and it seems to me to show that none of them can
have, by cadence, meant alliteration at all. We do not know that Chaucer
wrote any alliterative verse ; and we do know the ad infinitum cited locus
suggesting that he did not. Whomsoever and whatsoever Gower meant by
"Heredot" (Mr. Macaulay has no note dealing with the passage) he most
certainly did not mean that any of the ancients whom he is cataloguing wrote
like Langland. And, as a matter of fact, the substitution of " Procurator "
for "Emperor" need not "grieve" alliterative verse at all, so that Wyntoun
certainly did not refer to it and did refer to " cadence " in ordinary sense. In
one or other form of this last I myself see no reason whatever to doubt that
the word is used in all three. (For King James and his supposed translation
of "cadence" into " tumbling verse " we may wait till we come to him.)
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 161
of finishing the sense of a paragraph at the first line
of a couplet. But in avoiding the " lubricity " of the
French original the way in which the couplets slip away
without mark or " bite," and which Gower has thoroughly
transferred the author has incurred a certain lack of
ease, of fluency and fluidity. I think myself that there
are some decasyllabics in it, 1 as there had been in the work
of the kind turned out by other practitioners ; whether
there are or not, Chaucer must have felt the cramp and
"fidget" of so short a unit, for after it he turned definitely
to the longer one, and usually, though not always, to the
couplet form of it
As to the origin of this, there have been great but The deca-
perhaps unnecessary searchings of heart, which have as retrospect of
usual even obscured the true objects of search. Every- its origin,
body with some small knowledge of old French knew, of
course, that the decasyllabic itself, in long batches of
mono-rhymed 2 lines, is perhaps the oldest of all metres in
French, and is certainly the staple metre of the oldest
extant French literature. But this knowledge implied
the other, that the French, before Chaucer's time, did not
often or largely use it in couplets, though the octosyllabic
couplet had been one of their staples for centuries. It
was therefore a great relief to some, though one not in
the least needed by others, when a poem 3 by Guillaume
de Machault, Chaucer's certain model in some things,
was discovered in this metre.
Now I do not think it in the least necessary to doubt
that Chaucer knew this poem, and perhaps others, and
that their existence was not without some influence on
his adoption, if not creation, of the great English epic,
satiric, almost pan- (or pam-) poetic vehicle. But I am quite
certain that he might have devised it independently of
Machault, and I am by no means certain that he did not
do so. It is one evil of the accent or beat theory that it
1 E.g. i. 12 ; iii. 1967.
" Or mono-assonanced.
3 The Complainte aprh la bataille de Poitiers. See Tarbe's ed., Paris and
Rheims, 1849, p. 89 ; and Professor Skeat's Chaucer ; iii. 383.
VOL. I M
162 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
obscures attention to the syllabic constitution of the line.
If that attention is used properly, I am quite certain that
not only decasyllabic lines but decasyllabic couplets,
rude, and sometimes not so very rude, in English poems
before and sometimes long before Chaucer, are unmistak-
able. I have called attention to these often here, but the
matter is important enough to justify their repeated
citation, especially as there is hardly a point which has
been more generally overlooked, and which is received
with more incredulity when presented.
In fact it would have been very extraordinary if the
heroic had not "separated itself from the heap," to employ
once more the precious phrase for which we must ever
thank our sometimes Shylock Guest. On our own
general hypothesis of the application of the metrical
moulds of French and Latin to the rhythmical matter
of English blended with them, and of the resulting con-
stitution of all forms that really suited that language, it
could not but do so. But there is a stronger reason in
the peculiarly loose and molybdine character of these
earliest stages of English prosody, while the rigid
syllabicism of French lessened the same chance there.
A Frenchman might deliberately say to himself, " We
have been using the decasyllabic line and the octo-
syllabic couplet for ages ; so let us ' combine our informa-
tion ' and use the decasyllabic couplet which we already
have in laisse and stanza." But he was not likely to
stumble into this latter by accident and then, seeing that
he had stumbled upon a good thing, to keep it on
purpose. Many an Englishman, on the other hand, had,
as we have shown, done the first, and an Englishman who
was Chaucer was not at all unlikely to do the latter.
The irregularity even of the more rigid octosyllabic distich,
the elasticity of the equivalenced one, made such things as
those which have been quoted certain to occur, when one
remembers the almost uncanny virtues of the decasyllabic
itself, the way in which it has, in one form or another,
imposed itself upon every great literary nation in Europe
(except the Spaniards) as the longest line and therefore
CHAP, iv CHA UCER 163
the most capacious of sense that will give a thoroughly
satisfactory continuous medium for sound. 1 But besides and study of
all this Chaucer had another strong reason for adopt- lts Vlrtues -
ing the decasyllabic couplet, which was this, that he
had actually been writing it for years at the close of
each of his rhymes- royal. He had written more than
a thousand such couplets in Troilus, he had written
numbers in other poems, and, as has been seen, some of
his most apparently elaborate stanzas resolve themselves
in part into a mere sequence of decasyllabic couplets.
And such a master, at once of rhetoric and poetry, could
not fail, with such practice, to see its extraordinary
advantages, though no doubt he saw these, as he shows
them, more and more till the end. The heroic gives that
elbow-room which the octosyllable denies ; it retains the
attraction, without imposing too much of the tyranny, of
rhyme ; it avoids the blocky and broken-up character of
stanza writing ; it gives in every particular room enough,
and not too much room, for authentically prosodic and
prosodic-rhetorical exercise and ornament ; it is easy in a
general way, without the fatal fluency and facility of the
octosyllable itself; it offers much less temptation to the
cliche and the cheville the stereotyped padding and the
cut-and-dried tag. And lastly, though even genius could
hardly discover this at once, it provides opportunity
for a variety of adjustment and appeal which is marvel-
lous and almost endless. Nothing can speak more highly
for Chaucer's metrical genius itself though of course he
had a certain advantage in the paucity of models before
him than the fact that he never put himself under
articles, either to the enjambed or to the stopped couplet,
as poets of other ages have in turn done. If there is
one secret that he does not seem to have fully discovered,
it is the virtue of the full stop within the line. But even
he had to leave something for others.
He took to this couplet, anyhow ; and while the whole
1 The French Alexandrine is the only (and only an apparent) exception.
I do not, of course, mean that the Spaniards did not use the decasyllabic.
But they continued to prefer the " short line " as a staple, especially in drama.
1 64 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
of the Legend of Good Women (barring the inset Ballade)
is in this metre, the exceptions in the Canterbury Tales are
but exceptions. The Man of Law's, Clerk's, Prioress's,
and Second Nun's Tales are in rhyme-royal, and the Monk's
in octaves, while the Rhyme of Sir Thopas, for obvious
reasons of parody, is in Romance sixes. But all the rest,
and all the prologues and interim conversations which
frame the whole, are in heroics, or as the old phrase better
put this variety, " riding rhyme." * To expatiate on the
delights of all is for the historian of English Literature,
not for the historian of English Prosody. It is, however,
The Legend of \vithin our competence to point out that the Legend of Good
Good Women. w omen ^ though it lacks the astounding variety in accom-
plishment of the Prologue, the splendour of the best parts
in the Knight's Tale, and the humorous flexibility of
the comic stories, already shows remarkable command of
the capacity of the metre for narrative purposes. The
Prohemium in particular, where the poet has elbow-room,
and can run over a wider gamut than in renderings of the
pathetic stories of the " martyrdom " of the dames and
damsels of old, is a most remarkable thing in its adapta-
tion of the almost infant metre to the needs of irony, of
description, of fancy, of argument, and of debate. When
a metrical child is thus brought up in the way it should
go, it is likely to go far. 2
Digression on But the arrangement and examination of Chaucer's
larger prosodic forms, though an indispensable part of our
duty, and perhaps that which demands most space, is
scarcely the most important part. Of that most important
part the consideration of the general prosodic effect is itself
a subdivision : the rest concerns the very vital matters of
foot -constitution, quantity or accent, line -arrangement,
rhyme, and the like. And here the difficulty which besets
all this earlier part of our enquiry reaches its acutest stage.
1 If any one wishes to know why I say "better," let him look at a really
good horseman walking his horse.
2 It was certain that the discovery of two versions of the Prologue to the
Legend would lead to conflicting theories as to last and first, and it has done
so. Metrically there is no striking difference : or rather the differences are
cross, and cancel one another.
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 165
That difficulty is plumply and plainly this, that we have The crux of
no means of ascertaining with any certainty what, exactly, text '
Chaucer wrote ; by which I do not mean to touch anew
on the eternum vulnus of the genuine and spurious works.
What I mean is that in the case of the things most
certainly and indisputably Chaucer's the Prologue, say,
or the Knight's Tale, or the Rhyme of Sir Thopas we
cannot, except by guesswork, decide what exact words
Chaucer wrote, and still less in what exact spelling he
wrote them. The stages of the history of the text are
briefly and roundly three. We have a large number of
early MSS., and we have some fairly early printed editions
which are allowed by the most fastidious scholar to have
their weight. But I do not think that any of the extremest
of fanatics or fantastics has ever suggested that we have
a line of Chaucer's own handwriting in the MSS. : while
even Caxton's print is shut off by some seventy years from
the possibility of Chaucer having supervised the printing.
Then we have a further number of printed editions
only possessing no authority whatever except what they
may have derived from MSS., and dating partly from the
times when Chaucer was still a great name but had not
been actually studied at all, partly from the later times
when even those who thought him a genius had made up
their minds that he did not know how to scan. During
this time, naturally, there grew up and flourished it had
begun even in the fifteenth century, and among the MSS.
themselves a process of arbitrarily " mending " Chaucer,
of putting in words to fill up the nine-syllable lines and
compensate for the misunderstood final e, of altering in
order to correct what was thought false accent, and the
like. Let us remember that even Tyrwhitt (who did
more service to Chaucer than almost all other Chaucerians
with " weight for age ") printed
A twenty bokes clothed in black or red.
But Tyrwhitt himself began a new order, and the new
order (as the " Board School," if not the " Christian " child,
and as almost " the grey barbarian " knows) has gone very
166 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
far and very fast. The editions of Chaucer now current
are constructed l with a view of piecing together from this
MS. and that, even (where the MSS. will not help) from
this printed text and that " critical " text, things that shall
comply with the notions as to Middle English grammar,
prosody, and pronunciation, which have been excogitated
by guesswork, or, if that seem too uncivil, by inferential
hypothesis, during the last half century or more. Now in
reference to these " critical " texts there is always an
irrefutable logical aporia lying in wait. Any single MS.,
however bad, may be a copy at first or second-hand, careful
or careless, of the original. A blending of two or three or
more is less and less likely to represent any actual original
at all.
" Critical" But it may be said, "This is blasphemy against classical
the'ciassics scholarship as well, and you do not intend that, surely ? "
and of Middle To which I reply, " Certainly not," though I confess that
even in the name of this the true " scholarship " things
are sometimes done at which a tolerably lachrymose angel
would shed floods of tears. But between this and the so-
called " scholarship " of philologists in modern languages,
and in English perhaps most of all, there are differences
of the gravest and the most multiple kinds. That the
one is the fruit not of centuries but of millennia of study,
mistake, reparation of mistake ; and the other a thing
scarcely of yesterday, is not very much, though it is some-
thing. That, however they may fight about details, there
is very general agreement among the classical scholars on
important points, and a chaos of discordance among the
others, may not be much, though it is a little more. The
main and almost hopeless differences are other than these,
and infinitely more important. In the first place, we know
that nearly all Greek and Roman literature, if not all, was
written by persons who were regularly instructed in their
own language ; that grammar, composition, and prosody
1 It has been already said that the Globe though it still indulges in those
extraordinary family-trees of MSS., which look like diagrams of Euclid that
have had bombs thrown into their middles is less eclectic and "improving"
than some others.
CHAP, iv CHA UCER 167
formed part of Greek education from a very early time,
and were transferred to Rome bodily almost before Roman
literature, properly so called, so much as began. That is
to say, all the texts we have, including even the redac-
tions of such poets as Homer and Hesiod, were every
one written and revised on definite principles principles
recognised, taught, learnt, and therefore beyond all doubt
discoverable,'with sufficient pains, from the examination of
a sufficient number of instances.
Nor is this all. Not only do we know that there was
such instruction ; that it was given and that it was received ;
that the results were exposed to pretty sharp grammatical
and rhetorical criticism ; but we actually possess the
documents and the instruments of this criticism and that
instruction. We have in Dionysius Thrax for Greek and in
Varro (incomplete as he is) for Latin, grammatical treatises
representing the earlier part of the century before Christ,
when the great period of Latin was just beginning, and
when, though the greatest periods of Greek were over, its
laws and lessons were only the more jealously preserved,
studied, and handed down. We have a mass of docu-
ments for both stretching over the whole later period ; we
have the help of untiring deblayage clearing away of
rubbish on the part of Renaissance scholars ; and we
have three whole centuries of unremitting attention to the
matter, given by some of the acutest minds of Europe,
and by a vast body of persons, all of whom have been
from their youth trained up in the received and ascertained
orthodoxy of the subject.
Now look on the other picture. There was up to
Chaucer's time absolutely no school- instruction even with
English as a vehicle, let alone any school -instruction in
English itself. We know from the invaluable and should-
be famous passage of his contemporary Trevisa * that,
until the great alteration of social conditions by the Black
Death, English boys learnt Latin and other things at
English schools in and by French. There is not the
1 Anybody who wants this may find it in Morris and Skeat's Specimens,
vol. ii. p. 241.
1 68 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
very faintest spark of evidence that Chaucer ever received
the smallest instruction from anybody how to spell an
English word, to decline an English noun or verb, to con-
struct an English sentence, or to modulate an English
line. It is, on the contrary, about as certain as anything
of which we have not positive evidence can be, that he
never had anything of the sort, and that his successors
for a generation or two never had anything of the sort.
The earliest grammatical and rhetorical dealings with
English that we have date from the sixteenth century;
the earliest prosodic observations from its latter end.
On the one hand, therefore, the classical " scholar's "
problem is to discover the positive and doctrinal principles
of a body of documents
I. Which were originally written under such principles ;
II. Which were, in at any rate some cases (not of
course in all), transcribed by persons acquainted with, and
instructed in, these principles ;
III. Which include formal treatises stating, explaining,
and illustrating these principles themselves, and to no
small extent coinciding with the period of original
writing, to a much larger with that at which the docu-
ments were transcribed.
On the other hand, the Middle English "scholar's"
problem is to discover the positive and doctrinal principles
of a body of documents
I. Which were written when there is no evidence that
any such positive or doctrinal principles existed, and all
but a certainty that they did not ;
II. Which were transcribed by persons under the
same deprivation or limitation ;
III. Which include no pedagogic treatise dealing with
the matter.
I think that to rub this contrast in any further would
be an insult to the intelligence of the reader.
But though, while the art and labour of the classical
scholar consists in revising documents according to a
norm, capable to at least some extent of being inde-
pendently and authoritatively established, that of the
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 169
modern scholar too often consists in extracting from
documents a norm according to his own taste and fancy,
and then according to his own taste and fancy refashioning
the documents in obedience to the norm, not all even of
this latter's work is of such a perilous sort. Palaeography,
though easily abusable, is a real science of a kind,
and can refer to outside and independently contributed
evidence. Some documents are dated ; and the forms in
them are dated likewise by real external and internal
evidence, not " hariolation." And lastly, in our present
department of Chaucer particularly, some scholars have
taken the troublous but most thankworthy method of
printing the MSS. themselves, of giving us the real
property in so far as it exists. A great deal more than
we can at all wish is still left to guess on the part of
those who like guessing, and to confession of uncertainty
on the part of those who do not. But on the whole,
we can make out something, and can even say of this
something, " 'twill serve."
To take, then, those points which have been noticed Solid points
above in order, there can be no dispute (except mere
logomachy) about the general and so to speak prima forms.
facie metrical character of Chaucer's prosody. You
may call a thing an octosyllable, or an iambic
dimeter, 1 or a four-beat verse, but the thing is the same
and unmistakable. So, too, the various stanza -forms
are identical under any dress of words, and so is the
great staple metre of the Canterbury Tales, whether you
call it " riding rhyme," or " heroic couplet," or " rhymed
decasyllabics," or " rhymed five-beat lines," or anything
else that the wit or the perversity of man has invented
or may invent. Whatever each libentius audit, it is there
unmistakable, fully constituted, corresponding to things
of the same kind written five hundred years after Chaucer
1 I would fain enter a protest against a practice common with the com-
pilers of ordinary English grammars and composition-books, and not unknown
among those of better breed of speaking of this line and the next greater as
iambic tetrameters and pentameters. This numeration is quite contrary to
the recognised practice of classical prosody, and likely to cause confusion,
especially in the use of the word " pentameter."
i;o THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
went to his grave. In each case we shall have a good deal
more to say about these forms in the next Interchapter
and in the Appendix. For the present they are data.
The lines. Ascending or descending to the next stage, there is
matter for more legitimate controversy about the com-
position of the lines which themselves compose these
forms. The old and long prevalent idea that Chaucer
could not scan was based upon, or rather was but another
form of, the idea that he could not count ; and this itself,
though partly the result of mere ignorance of the value
of syllables, especially of the final e, had a second cause
in the obstinate heresy, finally formulated as orthodoxy
by Bysshe, that the syllabic composition of English lines
was arithmetically positive and unalterable.
Decapitation Now, as it happened, Chaucer, the first great named
monosyllabic an ^ known poet of English, had, by good luck though he
foot - undoubtedly leant, as we have said, towards the principle
of fixity rather than towards the principle of equivalent
substitution handed in evidence, unchallengeable except
by ignorance, that he was not of this opinion. In regard
to his octosyllables there could indeed never have been
a mistake about the fact, and it was even very difficult,
in face of Milton's adoption of the practice in perhaps
his most melodious and certainly his most popular poems,
to stigmatise it as improper. It was so stigmatised, of
course, by the fanatics of syllabic regularity. But the
actual presence of seven-syllable lines set it down as you
liked to substitution of trochaic for iambic rhythm, anacrusis,
monosyllabic feet, " reversal of beat," " omission of thesis,"
stick on it any earthly or unearthly ticket you pleased
this actual presence remained unmistakable and undeniable,
alike as to its existence in great poets, and its enjoyment by
well-qualified readers.
That he took the same liberty with the decasyllabic
(followed, though more sparingly, again by Milton) was
for a long time much less clearly perceived, and I believe
is still denied or blinked by some people, while it is
obvious that the disapproval of it by the neo-classic critics
would have been still more severe. For myself, I have
CHAP, iv CHAUCER IT i
long ceased to have the slightest doubt of the fact,
which Professor Skeat has established by an invulner-
able array of quotations. It is the fact ; and what is
more, it would be extremely surprising if it were not.
The thing had, as we have seen, been usual in the octo-
syllable for centuries, and it was certain to extend itself
to the longer metre, when at last this came to be tried on
the great scale. I am, however, far from thinking, despite
the mighty authority of its two great practitioners, that
it is a desirable licence : and I would have resisted the
evidence if I could. Instead of adding beauty, as the
companion licence does in the octosyllable, it appears to
me to give (with the very rarest exceptions, if with any)
an ugly jolt and jar in continuous verse, and complete
destruction of all harmony in the stopped couplet. The fact
is, as I have ventured to express it already elsewhere, that
the octosyllable treads too closely on the heels of the
decasyllabic to allow the latter to contract its own stride.
It may extend with advantage with very great advantage :
but that is a different matter, and to it we may come, just
observing that in stanza-work Chaucer is not prone to
avail himself of this licence, and for very obvious reasons. 1
The same prejudice which prevented critics and readers Trisyllabic
in the neo-classic period from observing or, if they observed, eet '
allowing Chaucer's cutting the line short would have ex-
tended, and did extend, to his lengthening it ; and this too
is not dead. That there are trisyllabic feet, as I should
call them, accented syllables with more than one un-
accented between them as I suppose the accent-people
would be obliged by their etiquette to put it, 2 I have no
more doubt than I have that there are monosyllabic feet
or nine-syllable lines. I even think that there are a great
many more of them, that they are in fact of constant
1 The " Lydgatian " monosyllable at the caesura, which Professor Skeat
reluctantly admits as an exception, I reject. The examples given by him are
so few that they are fairly dismissible as copyists' mistakes. And I must
respectfully protest that the lines in Tennyson's Vision of Sin, " Then me-
thought," etc., are no parallel to Chaucer's "acephalous" experiments.
Here the metre is dexterously changed, in a solid block or strophe, to
trochaic.
2 Some of them call it " a double thesis."
172 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
occurrence. And though this makes for my own general
theory, I am rather surprised at it, and am forced to admit
that a good many of these feet are of a fairly "squeezable"
character. The squeezableness, which is important, may
fitly introduce something (to be again and again of course
supplemented with something more) on one of the great
questions of English prosody.
That question is : When we meet in older English
poetry there is not much controversy about the fact,
though there may be some about the law, in regard to
the poetry of the nineteenth century what has just been
called a trisyllabic foot, are we to set it down as really
such ; or to account for it by actual Elision ; or to adopt a
middle course and set it down to Slur? And let it be
observed (to follow the excellent method of Aristotle and
of The Art of Pluck} that by Trisyllabic Foot I mean a
collection of syllables in which full though not necessarily
the same value is given to each ; by Elision the actual
crushing out of one so that the foot becomes dissyllabic ;
and by Slur 1 the compromise which hurries over one
syllable, if it does not quite elide it.
Elision and Any unfaltering answer to the question, at this our
present time of the close of the fourteenth century, is made
difficult by a certain peculiarity of spelling which per-
vades (though by no means consistently) the MSS. and
the early printed editions from the close of the fifteenth
till late into the sixteenth. These writers and printers
did not use the ugly apostrophe, which invaded English
books in the seventeenth century, and persevered into
the eighteenth, under the influence of a definite theory
of scansion, which in turn it undoubtedly strengthened.
But they did run the two words together in the case
of articles, prepositions, and sometimes even pronouns.
Just as we find in Wyatt and Surrey " tembrace " and the
like, so, a hundred years earlier, we find in Chaucer some-
1 I have, as will have been sufficiently evident, no objection to, but a great
liking for, classical terms when they are necessary or even convenient. But with
so excellent an English word as "slur," which exactly expresses the English
practice, I can see no excuse for Synizesis,
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 173
times (not always) " thestat," " tharray," etc., and even " in
thalyghte " for " in thee alyghte." Now is this also a
matter of theory a sprout of the idea that the three
syllables ought to be two ? Or does it express a real
custom of pronunciation ? Were these two words not
merely the first, which might be and in some MSS. is,
" the state," but " tharray " where there is no way out of
the difficulty so pronounced ?
I do not believe they ever were ; but even from my
point this by no means settles the question. I do not,
in the same way, believe that a man ever let such a
monster pass the door of his lips as " monstrorrendin-
formingens," but I feel sure that Virgil scanned " mon-
strum horrendum, informe, ingens," so. Was there anything
similar in Chaucer or was there not ?
The arguments for Elision are, first, the spelling ;
secondly, the undoubted belief of generations, not so far
from Chaucer's own time, that there was elision ; thirdly,
the fact that it exists abundantly and obtrusively, one may
say, in the two grammatics, the two accomplished literary
languages, Latin and French, which Chaucer and others
knew.
The arguments for Slur are, first, the usual ones for
any compromise ; secondly, that even unquestionable
trisyllabic feet are undoubtedly pronounced somewhat
quicker than dissyllabic ; thirdly, that English is notori-
ously addicted to slurring and clipping in pronunciation,
from the extreme cases of Chiselhampton and Cirencester
and Cockburnspath to the lesser ones of Southwell and
Southwark.
Those for actual trisyllabic feet may seem weaker at first, Trisyllables
but to me they become stronger and stronger the more P r P er -
they are considered. One which is, to me, almost sufficient,
is purely historic, and so in reality, if not in appearance,
the most solid possible. It is drawn from the earliness
and the persistence of the undisputed trisyllabic foot in
English. Nobody denies the presence in Anglo-Saxon of
groups of syllables which would naturally, if not neces-
sarily, pass into it when metre was substituted for mere
174 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
rhythm. Its presence in Genesis and Exodus (if not even
earlier) and other poems of the mid-thirteenth century is
undeniable. In all folk-song and ballad-writing it per-
severes, while the persistent and ferocious persecution of it,
and the critical disapproval of it, for two hundred years and
more, cannot drown it or burn it or bury it. Earth and
water and fire may combine against it, but it abides victori-
ously in the air, the element of poetry, and descends again
at the right time.
The second is more controversial, but to me quite
satisfactory. It is only by means of this mixture of
trisyllabic feet that the extraordinary variety and charm
of English poetry a thing acknowledged by those who
are not Englishmen as well as by those who are can be
attained ; and it has been almost invariably by those who
used them most that the attainment has been most
successful and complete. Nay more, just as it has been
said of the Jews in Spain, and of other persecuted races
and families elsewhere, that by changing names they
avoided the persecution directed against them, so the
trisyllabic foot survives at the very time when it seems to
have disappeared in folk-song and theatrical verse. The
Bysshes, and even the Johnsons, cannot prevent persons with
an ear from reading the apostrophe witJi the syllable it
has vainly tried to expel, and giving value to the i and y
syllables to which they impotently refuse value. Such a
captain of the heathen or heretic host as Pope himself
selects a line 1 which derives most of its beauty from a
trisyllabic foot, as his own favourite among his own pro-
ductions : and Shenstone, 2 forty years at least before
Coleridge, vindicates the " dactyl " in English poetry.
Alexandrines. Another point of no inconsiderable interest in connec-
tion with the length of Chaucer's lines opens the question,
" Did he ever use the Alexandrine, or line of normally
twelve syllables ? " I think he did, as in the examples
given below, and I am not much affected by the general
failure to take this view, with its consequent adjustments
1 ' ' The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows. "
2 In the Essays.
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 175
by syncope or elision or other devices. For, in the first
place, it matters to the theories of those who deny that
they should deny it ; and it does not matter to my
theory at all that I should assert it. Secondly, the lines
or some of them scan much better as Alexandrines.
Thirdly, it is reasonable that in the process of " separation
from the heap " this form also should be tried, especially
considering the great prominence of it in French poetry,
which was always more or less a model. Fourthly, we
see historically that there is at least up to Dryden and
sometimes since a constant tendency to take the
Alexandrines as an "easement," now and then, to the
decasyllable. 1
1 We shall trace the further use of this line venerable from its achieve-
ments in Greek and French later ; but it may not be improper to say at
once that it seems to me only an easement, not a staple, in English. I think
it may be well here to give specimens, not only of it, but of the other anoma-
lous or debated lines just mentioned.
Alexandrines :
Westward, | right swich | ano|ther in | the op [posit ; K. T. 1036.
where, of course, those who like may scan
Westward, | right swich | anoth|'r in thop| posit,
if they will, though no MS. is quoted for the contraction.
Others are in some of the places (W. of B. T. 231 ; F. T. 158, 286 ;
Som. T. 462) where they wish to pronounce benedicite "bendisty" or "ben-
city," in spite of the fact that it must have the full five-syllable value in
K. T. 927. See also Sq. T. 20, 75, 480, 515-16.
Acephalous lines :
Passim : the well-known one cited above from the Prologue and usually
mended
Twen|ty bo|kes clad | in blak | and reed,
with
And | a cok|kow sit | ting on | hir hand, K. T. 1072.
will do well enough.
As for the Lydgatian "breakback," the examples quoted by those who
believe in it are such as
My tale is doon for my wit is thinne, M. T. 438.
and
I mean of Mark, Mathew, Luke, and John. Prol. Mel. 33.
For my own part, I am perfectly certain that Chaucer's prosodic wit was
never so thin, and his ear never so thick, as to write the first ; while in the
second, Marke is admittedly possible, and supported by MS. and early print ;
while both are easily mended with syllables that copyists were quite likely
to slip, especially when Lydgate himself had misled them.
176 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
Syllable- We come now to yet another point of great importance,
the question how Chaucer manages the individual syllabic
values which make up his feet or his accent-groups. 1 In
the great majority of words this " accent" is mainly, though
not wholly, identical with that of the present day, and it
is not necessary for any decently-bred modern Englishman
who is acquainted with that secret de PolicJiinelle, the value
of the final e, to accept any unfamiliar pronunciation in
order to get the full metrical and rhythmical value of
Chaucer's lines. Whether the vowels were then differ-
ently pronounced or not I do not know ; there is practi-
cally no evidence on the subject of any kind that I can
admit. But it is certain that if the actual sound has
changed, the relative values of the different sounds have
not. Where we should expect a long vowel before
a single consonant we find it, and we often find that
where a short vowel sound comes before two consonants
it can take the place of a long, though not invariably.
The really and constantly short vowels of modern English
are, as a rule, short also, unless some special stress be laid
on them. These are rules ; but to them we find two
considerable classes of exceptions, which have mainly
become obsolete in English. One of these concerns
proper, especially classical proper, names, the other words
in which the French accent is retained.
It is, indeed, not at all improbable that these two
classes are really, at least in origin, one. The peculiarity
of French accentuation, or rather the dogma of it, is well
known, and Professor Ker, among others, has rightly
drawn attention 2 to the very peculiarly pronounced
values which French, like Low Latin, gives to Latin
words. It is obvious that Chaucer follows the same
system, and that he is followed by all English poets
1 I must, I am afraid, repeat once more that I entirely exclude the previous
or subsequent question as to the cause of this value, whatever it is. I shall
only say that Chaucer is one of the main sources of evidence in favour of the
position that, whether there is quantity in English, or no quantity but only
accent, accent is certainly one of the main agencies in English for the creation
of the thing which / call quantity.
2 In the Dark Ages, as quoted elsewhere.
CHAP, iv CHAUCER 177
down at least to Spenser, who was a very fair scholar in
the classical languages. Milton is about the first to give
the correct quantification. Earlier writers not only shorten
naturally long vowels and lengthen short, but even make a
cretic out of Minerva, as Baudelaire does out of Francisca.
More indubitably, though I think not more really
French is the constant valuation of such words as
" maner," " entrall," etc., according to their French rather
than their English value.
And so we come to one of the hottest of the ash- Rhyme.
places, the question of rhyme, on which, however, I do
not propose to say much. Although I absolutely refuse
to accept the y-ye test, as in the very slightest degree valid
for establishing authenticity, until the Bradshavians give
up Sir Thopas, I believe that Chaucer probably avoided
these rhymes, just as a modern English poet with deli-
cate ear avoids the rhyme of " or " and " ore." l Other-
wise, and with the large exception of that freedom of
shifting the accent which has just been noticed, and which
enables him to make a rhyme of " squire " and " supper "
(" squyer " and " soper "), his rhymes are for the most
part quite modern and normal. Many of them are, of
course, double rhymes, thanks to the e. But I have
always thought that the excision of this exuberance, or
excrescence, which was certainly going on in Chaucer's
own time, was probably much helped by the popularity of
" riding rhyme " in which the doubling is rarely if ever
good, save to produce special and exceptional effects.
It is scarcely necessary to say that, in common with all
poets up to at least the middle of the seventeenth century,
he avails himself of the full syllabic value of words in -ion
and similar endings ; or that, though the modern utter
abhorrence of an identical rhyme, even with changed sense,
does not appear in him, he is not very prone to indulgence
in it.
1 He does it only when he cannot help it, or can help it at such an
expense that the game is not worth the candle ; but he does not regard it as
he regards a rhyme of "Leonora" and "before her," or of "Helen" and
" willing."
VOL. I N
NOTE ON CHAUCERIANA
ACCORDING to ray promise I have excluded from the text
those pieces which, doubtful to almost all, are thought by some
to be certainly spurious. (I am not, of course, speaking of those
which undoubtedly belong to Lydgate or others.) The two most
beautiful and (poetically) most Chaucerian of these, The Court of
Love and The Flower and the Leaf, are in rhyme-royal, as are
The Assembly of Ladies and some others. The Plowman 's Tale
is in eights of eight, alternately rhymed ; La Belle Dame Sans
Merci (such a different one from Keats's !) is partly rhyme-royal,
partly octaves of the ababbcbc type. The Cuckoo and the
Nightingale (a nice thing, whether explicitly Clanvowe or not)
is in an interesting decasyllabic quintet, aabba, of good
capabilities. The extremely curious Tale of Beryn, with its vivid
Prologue (neither of them in the least Chaucerian, for all their
merits), is in Gamelyn metre, somewhat lengthened and
doggerellised.
178
CHAPTER V
LANGLAND AND OTHER ALLITERATIVES
Piers Plowman Its general character The verse compared with
Anglo-Saxon With Layamon Its intrinsic values : Structure
Alliteration Rhymelessness Quality of the lines Qualifi-
cations of the rhythm Other alliterative poems c. 1 400.
WE have now to turn to the Titan of the late fourteenth- Piers
century battle between the older and the newer schools of owman -
English prosody, to the author, whoever he was we call
him " Langland " merely for shortness, and without the
faintest intention of prejudging a debate which is out of
our sphere of the Vision of Piers Plowman and, with
the same provision, of Richard the Redeless}
It is not so necessary now as it would have been but its general
a few (as history counts few) years ago to enter a protest character -
against the notion of Langland as presenting a much more
archaic state of English than Chaucer, but it is still rather
necessary. He was almost certainly, though he may have
been a slightly older man in years than Chaucer, a pretty
exact literary contemporary both of the author of the
Canterbury Tales and of the author of the Confessio
Amantis. And it has been proved, to all but uttermost
philological as well as literary satisfaction, that he is by
no means less copious in French words than the former,
though he certainly is less addicted to French forms than
1 Professor Skeat's Clarendon Press edition (2 vols. , Oxford, 1886) is of
course the standard. But Wright's, in the Library of Old Authors (though
printed in half lines), is more convenient for holding and reading, the presence
of three different texts on the same page in Professor Skeat's being exceedingly
distracting. (His E.E.T.S. ed. avoids this, however.) Whitaker's, the first
and only edition of the " C" text without A or B, is now merely a curiosity ;
and the chief " C " additions are printed in Wright's notes.
179
i8o THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
the latter, and uses dialectic and now obsolete English
words more freely than either. But his subjects, which are
either local, or abstract, or both, give him a greater look of
strangeness than either Chaucer or Gower wears, and this
look is emphasised still more decidedly by the point in
him with which alone we have here to do his metre.
The verse Comparing Langland * with Anglo-Saxon verse, we find
tb in him a much greater regularity. This is not merely
observable in the lengths of the lines, which exhibit
nothing in the least resembling the astonishing variations
of Anglo-Saxon, 2 but in the uniformity of the alliteration
and the correspondence of the hemistichs. Langland is
deliberately, though, as we shall see, not always success-
fully, avoiding the new metrical scansion ; but either
deliberately in order to vie with it, or unconsciously in
consequence of familiarity with it, he adopts, to a very
large extent, its great feature of correspondence within
the lines and between them. Further, the correspond-
1 For an extract let us take nothing more out of the way than the first
score of lines in the first version
In A somer sesun whon softe was the sonne,
I schop me in-to a schroud A scheep as I were ;
In Habile of an Hermite ' vn-holy of werkes,
Wende I wydene in this world wondres to here.
Bote in a Mayes Monvynge on Maluerne hulles
Me bi-fel a ferly A Feyrie, me thouhte ;
I was weori of wandringe and wente me to reste
Undur a brod banke bi a Bourne syde,
And as I lay and leonede and lokede on the watres,
I slumberde in A slepyng hit sownede so murie.
Thenne gon I Meeten A Meruelous sweuene,
That I was in a Wildernesse wuste I neuer where,
And as I beo-heold in-to the Est an-heigh to the sonne,
I sauh a Tour on a Toft triyely I-maket ;
A Deop Dale bi-neothe A dungun ther-Inne,
Wz'tA deop dich and derk and dredful of siht.
A Feir feld ful of folk fond I ther bi-twene,
Of alle maner of men the mene and the riche, '
Worchinge and wondringe as the world asketh.
Suwzme puttew hew to the plough & pleiden hez ful seldene,
In Eringe and in Sowynge swonken ful harde
That monie of theos wasturs In Glotonye distruen.
2 This is an old cause of difference. But it is enough for me to open
Grein-Wulker in the manner of sortilege, and find at once, say, a line of
1 6 syllables followed by a line of 9, or turn, less at random, to the passages
of Genesis, where blocks, of a score or more each, alternate with batches of
half a score and less. Nor does distinction of "extended" and unextended
lines seem to me to alter the fact at all.
CHAP, v LANGLAND AND OTHER ALLITERATIVES 181
ence results in a general note which is still more different
from that of Anglo-Saxon. This latter, as we said, where
it gives us any rhythm that we can recognise at all, gives
us a trochaic one of a staccato and " dribbling " char-
acter, no doubt, but still trochaic. Langland, too, is
trochaic sometimes, but he constantly blends the " double
time " with, and often passes from it into, " triple time,"
the time, as we call it, of the anapaest.
Compared with Layamon, on the other hand, we With
note at first also increased regularity, but a regularity o f Layamon-
quite a different kind. The author of the Brut is like a
teetotum staggering against different objects in his way.
It is to me, after reading him over and over again,
distinctly uncertain whether he meant to write old
alliterative verse and was unable to do so, or whether
he meant to write new octosyllabic couplets and was
unable to do so, in either case with any continuous
regularity. But it is very certain that he oftener achieves
a fairish couplet than a good alliterative stave, and that,
when he does come near to the newer rhythm, he is
distinctly iambic, not trochaic or anapaestic. Now Lang-
land, with his advantage of nearly two centuries, is not in
this quandary. He knows the new metre probably quite
well enough to have written it had he chosen, certainly
quite well enough (which is perhaps even a higher degree)
to avoid falling into it constantly when he does not choose,
though its irresistibleness traps him now and then. 1
Turn now to the consideration of the thing itself as a
rhythmical vehicle and verse - form. We could hardly
have a better example of it, for Langland is certainly
the person of greatest genius (except Dunbar) who has
handled it : and though he has no passage of the same
concentrated union of vigour and grace as The Twa
Maryit Wemen and the Wedo, he has of necessity much
greater range and variety, as well as more intenseness.
The general structure and effect of the verse are clear
1 I do not know that it is necessary to contrast him very minutely with
the authors of William of Palerne and Cleanness, the latter of whom was per-
haps his older contemporary, and the former his not much older predecessor.
He shortens the line, as it seems to me, more than either.
182
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
BOOK II
Its intrinsic
values
structure.
Alliteration.
enough. Perhaps the first essential, and certainly the
first striking, characteristic, is the constitution of the verse
itself as a pair of sharply separated halves which never on
any consideration run syllabically into each other, and
are much more often than not divided by an actual
" stop," if only a brief one, of sense. Their separation is
so absolute and unvarying that it induced Guest to found
on it an Athanasian system of caesura in later English
poetry, and that, for a considerable time after the revival
of the study of Old and Middle English, it was usual to
print the halves in successive lines. This, I feel sure, is
a mistake ; for, in emphasising the fact of the separation, it
obscures that of the combination which undoubtedly
exists, not merely in virtue of the alliteration (to which
we shall come immediately) but as a matter of rhyth-
mical effect on the ear. This effect is not complete, nor
can it receive due realisation in the successive units, until
the double half-line is concluded. It may be said that
the arrangement is merely mechanical, and can make no
difference ; but it does, as any one whose eye and ear
are well enough fitted naturally, and well enough trained
artificially, will soon discover, in reading the same passage
in Wright and Skeat respectively. 1
The second most obvious characteristic is the allitera-
tion. The orthodox dose of this is two alliterated syllables
in the first hemistich which is usually a little the longer
and one in the second. Professor Skeat thinks that fourth,
and, I suppose, still more fifth, alliterations are accidental,
or at any rate not sought after ; but I am not so sure of
this, and it is quite certain that in Langland's successors
this overdosing (as with other drugs) is frequent and
1 I hope it is not impertinent or pedantic once more to recommend strongly
this joint eye-and-ear reading. It does not at all interfere with the under-
standing of the sense or the enjoyment of the poetry, and it puts the mind
in a condition to understand the virtue and the meaning of the prosody as
nothing else can. One of the innumerable privileges of those who have
received the older classical education is that they have been taught (in at
least some cases) to read scanningly. I have accustomed myself for years to read
Middle English, like all English, poetry in the same way ; and any one who
does so will find that very soon the final e, and the libertine accents, and the
rest cease to jar, and the whole thing goes, in good examples, as fluently as
Pope or Tennyson.
CHAP, v LANGLAND AND OTHER ALLITERA TIVES 183
deliberate. But three, which is the old Anglo - Saxon
ration, is no doubt sufficient to give to the line the
peculiar " bind " which, in the absence of definite metre,
and the still more glaring absence of rhyme, it requires.
The third is this absence of rhyme itself an absence Rhymeiess-
which, as we have seen, is by no means characteristic of ness -
all alliterative poetry, but which in Langland is so
complete and striking that it is impossible not to believe
it designed. I mean not merely that the poet deliberately
selected a form where rhyme is unnecessary, but that he
would not have it even if it were accidental. He might
have read Layamon, 1 and have made up his mind not to
fall into the pit of rhyme as Layamon did, so rare is
the presence of even assonanced syllables at the ends of
the double lines, between the halves of the same line,
or between the first halves of two succeeding ones. I
fancy (it may be only fancy) that it is least rare, rare as
it is, in the last case. 2 And what is more remarkable
still, the whole run and fall of the rhythm is so arranged
that the ear does not in the least expect or call for rhyme
that it would hardly even notice it if imperfect rhyme
were there. This is mainly brought about by the great
prevalence of " falling " rhythm, notwithstanding the ana-
paestic tendency already noticed. Both hemistichs, as a
rule, end trochaically, an effect rendered easy of produc-
tion by the abundance of final e's and other suffixes. 3
1 Humanity being what it is, it may be well to say that I have not the
least idea that he did. It is odd, however, that, as one story has it, he was
born at Cleobury Mortimer, and that another makes Layamon priest of Arley-
on-Severn ; for the well-girt man can walk from one place to the other in an
hour and a half, and there is an L in both poets' names.
2 Identical rhymes at this place are rather frequent than not, owing to
Langland's love for parallelism, e.g. C xiii. 65, 66
Ac Reson shal rekene with hym and rebuke him atte laste,
And Conscience a-counte -with hym and caste him in arerages.
But these hardly count.
3 There is no contradiction, as the hasty and those unused to res metrica
may imagine. The addition of a syllable to two anapaests or anapaest-equiva-
lents gives the trochaic ending considered separately. But I ought to mention
that Langland very frequently suggests that doubtful foot (of which much
more, I hope, later), the amphibrach
I sh5p(e) ; me | In shrou | de*s | as I j a | sheep were ; \
though, as elsewhere, when the whole line is taken, it becomes merely anapaestic
(8vi><i/J.fi, if not to Langland), as the dotted bars show.
1 84 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
A fifth obvious characteristic (already glanced at) as
the eye looks down the page, is that there is, though very
far from an absolute, a very considerable equality of length
in the lines. Thirteen syllables is, I take it after repeated
samplings, a fair average length of line : and the very great
majority are not shorter than twelve nor longer than
fourteen, though there is a still greater range between
longest and shortest. So, again, as a sixth, the first
hemistich is generally rather longer than the second ;
though, again, there are plenty of exceptions. But on
the whole the unity of effect, when once the combined
instrument of eye and ear, above spoken of, has been
properly tuned to receive and give it, is very remarkable
indeed, and shows that the measure is no mere patchwork
unnaturally stuck together, but, such as it is, a real and
living rhythmical organism.
Quality of the At the same time, for all its own idiosyncrasy, and for
all the practised and (one may not vainly think) jealous
skill of its artist, it cannot entirely resist the tyrannous
" suck " of the metrical whirlpool. Examples of almost
all the staple lines which English poetry had developed
or was to develop in its natural evolution, and against this
wilful reaction, are to be found with very little searching.
At A vi. 2
To seche that seint in selcouthe londis ;
we have, with the imminent changes which are so freely
scented in the Piers Plowman MSS., and even in the
three versions themselves,
And seek that saint in selcouth lands,
a perfect octosyllabic or iambic dimeter.
The decasyllabic, naturally, is far commoner. We meet
one at the forty-third line of the Prologue itself, where
the very stave-split becomes a normal caesura
In glotonye, God wot, gon heo to bedde.
The Alexandrine, from its nearness to the average
length of Langland's line, is commoner still. With the
CHAP, v LANGLAND AND OTHER ALLITERATIVES 185
dissyllabic value of " tour," which was so soon to come, we
get a perfect one in i. 12
This tour and this toft, quod heo, treuthe is ther-inne.
And almost equally, perhaps more, common is the four-
teener, become a speciality already in English metre, of
which we meet two examples close together early in the
First Book
That dungun in that deope dale that dredful is of siht,
and
That is the Castel of Care [quod heo] whoso cometh therinne, 1
while the Orm metre or fif teener shows itself in this last,
and wherever the last word has a feminine ending.
But these instances are produced, not to show what
Langland was trying to do, but what he sometimes (with
all his skill and all his pains) could not help doing. It
is on the normal forms of the line, as analysed above,
that we must base our judgment of it as a rhythmical
medium of verse.
We find in it the following merits and qualifications Qualifications
for the demerits and disqualifications the survey of the
whole achievement of English prosody up to 1 400, in the
Interchapter, will be a more proper position. In the first
place, though of course deliberately and obstinately refusing
to the ear the charms of metre and rhyme, it really has
something to offer instead. More than a hundred years
ago to say nothing of Percy, a pioneer to whose
sagacity here, as elsewhere, full justice has perhaps
never yet been done though Ellis failed to perceive,
Mitford had no difficulty in perceiving, that there is real
music in Piers Plowman. His ingenious experiment 2 of
tagging a batch of lines with rhyme, so as to bring
them into Tusserian form, perhaps " doctors " the balance
too much, but it is valid in a way. There is music in this
1 This line is very noteworthy, because the comparison of the three
versions shows, almost without a doubt, that Langland perceived the metrical
effect, and deliberately altered it by omitting "quod heo" (which appears in
A) in B and C.
2 Harmony of Language, ed. ii. p. 158.
186 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
metre ; and, what is more, the music is neither un-
pleasant nor monotonous. For the two purposes for
which Langland himself almost exclusively uses it
narrative including description, and argument including
exposition it is by no means ill-fitted, and it is a very
tolerable instrument of dialogue. The alliteration is not
unfrequently a real set-off, and no mean one. English
poetry, when it has been most itself, has always loved
alliteration as a staff, though it may not have been wise
to use it as a crutch. One particular device, quaint but
most effective, is the employment of proper and personal
names x instead of mere class-words or generalities.
Other aiiitera- In short, the process of actual reading, with that
attention to scansion which has been recommended, will
after a sort, and to a certain degree justify this
curious reaction. As an exception, a curiosity, a " sport,"
" Not guilty, but don't do it again," may be, with a quite
sufficient seriousness, the verdict. It will scarcely, after
this examination of Piers Plowman, be necessary to give
one of equal minuteness to the other poems which may
with more or less certainty, probability, or possibility, be
referred to the fourteenth century or the very beginning
of the fifteenth, and which are written in the allitera-
tive form. The admitted Richard the Redeless and the
excluded Piers Plowman's Creed* are written with such
exactness in the same measure with Piers itself, that this
measure is a main warrant for the one, and requires to be
overbalanced by very strong internal evidence to justify
disqualification in the other. The romances in the form
the Thornton Morte d'Arthure, the Destruction of Troy,
the alliterative Alexander poems incline rather to the
model which we have discussed in speaking of Cleanness,
Patience, and William of Palerne, especially of the latter ;
that is to say, there is slightly less variety and idiosyncrasy
about them, they spring less and undulate more. All
1 " Rose the regrater," " Beat Bettris,"
"And [robbed] Margaret of her maidenhead,"
where Rose and Beatrice and Margaret swiftly appear and disappear in the
single allusions.
2 For the Plowman' 's Tale, which is in metre, see p. 178.
CHAP, v LANGLAND AND OTHER ALLITERATIVES 187
are more or less Northern ; all have been, by this man
and that, added to the huge hypothetical baggage, which,
according to a favourite trick of modern scholars, has
been heaped on that rather hypothetical person and very
hypothetical Scot, " Huchowne of the Awle Ryale." But
no one of them requires much individual notice. 1 As for
1 All are in the E.E.T.S. series. In reading them more than once I have
imagined that I observed more rhythmical character in Alexander and Dindimus
than in the companion pieces on the same subject ; a particular monotony and
tendency to repetition in the Destruction ; most vigour, with longer lines and
a slight overdose of alliteration, in the Morte. (These judgments, it may be
necessary to observe, are strictly confined to the prosodic features of the
pieces. ) A short specimen of each may be appended
But whan the watur with the wind the wawus upcasteth,
And thouh hit turne any time to tempest of windus,
Hit ne a-wecheth no wawe nor no watur rereth,
As hit amongus you men is many time founde
That stiue stormus of the wind stiren up the wawus.
But here, whan the wind hath his hugeste blastus,
The clere watur he bi-clipth and closeth hit inne.
Alexander and Dindimus , 483-489.
A ! fonnet folke, why fare ye thus now,
With solas full sore, and sanges of myrthe,
At the weddyng of the weghes, that shall to wo turne?
With hardlayke and harme, that happyn shall after,
Ye dowtles mun degh, for dedes of tho two ;
And your fryndes full fey fallyn to ground,
Your sonys be slayne in sight of your ene ;
Your husbandes hewen with hondys in pesis,
Wyues made wedowys, and wayling for euer.
Cassandra on the Wedding of Paris and Helen,
Destruction of Troy, vii. 3473-81.
Grefe the noghte, Gaynour, fore Codes lufe of hewene,
Ne gruche noghte my ganggynge, it salle to gude turne !
Thy wonrydez and thy wepynge woundez myne herte,
I may noghte wit of this woo, for alle this werlde ryche ;
I have made a kepare, a knyghte of thyne awene,
Overlynge of Ynglande undyre thy selvene,
And that es Syr Mordrede, that thow has mekylle praysede,
Salle be thy dictour, my dere, to doo whatte the lykes.
Thornton Morte, 705-712.
To these and the Langland passage it does not seem necessary to add
others, though the vigorous little Chivaler Assigne (in which the laity may
be excused for not at first recognising " The Knight of the Swan ") is notable
for the frequent shortness of the lines, and especially of the first halves.
I do not think there is an alliterative poem in print that I have not read,
and I find them generally quite agreeable reading ; but their prosodic varia-
tions are not great, though the alliteration sometimes distributes itself
differently. It may be added, that the different modes of indicating the
middle break are kept designedly for the benefit of the reader.
1 88 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK n
the rest of the said baggage, and some Scots poems
which, though even more out of the question as regards
any possible " Huchowne," rank with it in another way,
but are in alliterative rhymed stanza, not in plain con-
tinuous alliteration they have been referred to in the
note on p. 1 1 1 . Dunbar is necessarily reserved for the
next Book.
INTERCHAPTER II
THE survey of the prosodic character of English poetry,
certainly or probably of the fourteenth century, may, from
some points of view, be inferior in importance to that
which we had to undertake in the previous Interchapter.
There is no doubt, at least in the present writer's mind,
that by the year 1300 the fate and the fortune of English
prosody were finally constituted and fixed.
But the products of that early period are com-
paratively, though only comparatively, scanty, and (ignoble
as some high-flying partisans may pronounce the allowance
of such an objection) they are of such a character that
only the real or enforced student, or that, it may be feared,
still rarer person the thorough lover of literature, is
ever likely to take much cognisance of them. We
cannot rationally expect, however much we may desire,
that it should ever be otherwise with the majority of even
tolerably well-educated readers.
With the products of the century to which this Book
has been devoted it is, perhaps (a very small part of them
excepted), not very different actually ; but their state is
more gracious potentially, and as matter of quality and
desert. They are extremely abundant ; their variety does
not fall short of their abundance ; a great deal of them
is actually delightful as reading, as pastime ; not a little
of this is of very high excellence ; and not a little of that
little has the unbroken, if not always the unattacked,
prestige of five hundred years to its credit. Even yet
there is a great deal to be done before fourteenth-century
English poetry is or can be known as it deserves to be ; but
189
190 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK
there is no impossibility that it may become so, not, indeed,
in our time, but partly by our time's efforts.
The contents may be classified in various ways with
reference to prosody, as well as in others which have
little or no reference thereto. Of the first class the most
important classification is, no doubt, into metrical and
alliterative, with the bridge or middle term of alliterative-
metrical. This deserves attention first by itself, and as
such ; afterwards with reference to the characteristics of
the several subdivisions.
Of the fact of the main division there is no question.
I am afraid I must repeat the opinion that enquiry into
its history must be almost entirely speculative, and
enquiry into its probable causes hardly less so. Wright,
indeed, in his Introduction to Piers Plowman, thought that
we could " trace this history with tolerable certainty "
(p. xxviii. 2nd ed.), but he had to fall back, in order to
establish continuity between 1250 and 1350, on the much
less confident statement " there appears little room for
doubting that, during the whole of this time, the pure
alliterative poetry was in use among the lower classes of
society." Despite our much greater advantages, there are
not many now living who know the poetry of this period,
with combined linguistic and literary knowledge, better
than Wright did. Yet it is remarkable that he quotes no
examples, and the consideration just advanced makes it
certain that, if there were any, he would probably have
known and must have quoted them. I can only say that
if any one will supply me with examples of pure alliterative
verse, certainly or even probably dating between 1 200 and
1325, if not even 1350, I shall be very much obliged to
him, and will reform my plan accordingly.
In default of such evidence, 1 I can see no logical
1 Professor Skeat in the excellent Essay on Alliterative Verse which he
contributed to Drs. Hales' and Furnivall's Percy MS. nearly forty years ago pro-
duced none, and has never, I think, since produced any ; nor, so far as I am
aware, has any one else, though there is a strange reluctance to admit the lesson.
It is even sometimes urged that "so many books were lost." This reminds
me of the celebrated councillors who said, "There are so many accidents:
and it needs only one to save us ! " I shall be very glad to welcome the accident
when it comes ; meanwhile I stick to the facts. Vide pp. 100 and 126, sup.
ii INTERCHAPTER II 191
alternative to the supposition that the process which we
see beginning at 1 200 with a half-compromise, half-battle
between alliterative rhythm and rhymed metre, and
continuing, always with the latter on the winning hand,
during the early thirteenth, caused the complete, or almost
complete, " diving under " of the former towards the
middle of that century, and that it only "dived up"
again not so very early in the next. The reasons of its
resurrection are probably extra-literary, or literary only
by relation. They may, as Wright thought, have been
in a sense " political " an obscure reaction of nationalist
and democratic movement, opposing foreign or semi-
foreign culture and institutions of all kinds. They may
and there is one of the rare real pieces of evidence for
this in Chaucer's well-known and often -quoted reference
be mainly local, and connected with the release of the
northern and north-western counties from devastation and
barbarism. And, in close connection with this, they may
have had something to do with the great religious literary
movement started in these same northern counties by
Richard Rolle of Hampole. Some of these causes, or
all, or none, with or without others not mentioned,
may have been at work. But we are only busied with
the result the result that does not meet us for the best
part of a century, and does meet us now.
It deserves attention alike because of its curiosity and
because of its failure. It is only a loop or backwater in
the stream of English poetry an unsuccessful attempt at
reactionary rebellion. But it produced some good work ;
it had, though it did not live, some good effects, and
left practically no bad ones after it. And it is very
curious.
We have done, and shall do, justice to its merits ; it
will suffice in this place, only recapitulating those which
belong to the general and permanent course of the history
of English poetry, to turn to its defects. It was un-
doubtedly invaluable as a protest kept up until still
more valuable protestants, in the shape of the ballad, the
altered drama, and other things, were at hand to take it
192 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK
up against the imposition of absolute syllabic uniformity
on English, and against the tyranny of the iamb. Nor
was it useless in giving refuge to archaic and provincial
words, some of which might be, and were, of real poetic
value. But though it did these services to the two great
branches of prosody versification and diction more or
less directly, it did directly very decided ^services. In
the first place, what we call " structural alliteration," as
distinguished from that ornamental alliteration which is one
of the greatest resources of the English poet, necessarily
and inevitably tends towards the employment of words,
not for their sense, nor for their beauty, nor for their real
qualities of any kind, except the very trivial one of
beginning with the right letter. 1 And, in the second
place, it tends to aggravate itself until we get to the
senseless and tasteless stuffings of the line with five or
even six alliterated words.
Moreover, even in Langland we see the great defect
of structural-alliterative the defect which had broken it
up once before, and was to break it up again. For the
ear once accustomed to the sweetness of rhyme, to the
variety and versatility of stanza, to the charm of metrical
rhythm, its poetical equipment must necessarily seem
exceeding poor and beggarly. The very trochaic or
anapaestic rhythm with which it is wont to clothe itself
expresses a sense of the need of some extra-allurement,
of something to differentiate it from prose. Yet one has
regretfully to pronounce the device insufficient. Large
tracts of all the poems except Piers Plowman, and
perhaps some places there, almost fall back into prose,
with a certain recitative roll prose less musical and less
agreeable than the actual prose rhythm of Aelfric
himself. The drawback, observable to some extent even in
metrical poetry during the Middle Ages, that the sense
is too much bound to the line and the line to the sense,
1 Some people, I believe, are able to disguise the triviality by calling
alliteration "head-rhyme." No matter what the authority for this term, it
has always seemed to me self-contradictory. The essence of rhyme is iden-
tity of vowel-sound. The vowel is the body and the soul : consonants are
only " coats and hosen and hats." And see above, p. 1 1 1.
i! INTERCHAPTER II 193
is particularly noticeable in alliterative verses. They often
admit vigour ; they seldom accommodate grace. That
their idiosyncrasy makes all but distinctly gifted poets
intolerable may not be an unmitigated disadvantage ;
that it provides even such poets with a lyre of but one
string is a disadvantage without mitigation of any kind.
On the whole, therefore, and not retracting anything
that has been allowed on the other side, there is a
certain excuse for those writers before the nineteenth
century who, having no special knowledge of Middle
English, failed to detect poetical value in Langland. It
would be rather interesting though, in consequence of
the wide spread of smattering, difficult to take a person,
otherwise fairly well-educated but who had never heard
of Piers Plowman or its metre, and to give him a con-
siderable passage printed as prose and without the middle
mark. No doubt any one with a good ear would, after
a time, detect a certain rough cadence, then a system of
divisions, and after that a certain harmony in this
parallelism. But perhaps even in this case these dis-
coveries would not be immediate, and a dull person with
a blunt ear would probably never make them at all.
Whatever might be said later about the " barbarous-
ness," the " non-naturalness," the " puerility," and so
forth, of rhyme, its rival clearly had nothing, and less
than nothing, to oppose to the application of similar epithets
to its proceedings. That alliteration is in itself not an
uncaressing thing to an English ear may be most
cheerfully admitted. The proscription of it at certain
times has always been a mistake, and has sometimes
been directly associated with the falsest and most
mischievous heresies in English prosody generally. But
it had already, centuries before, proved itself unequal to
the task of supporting alone (or with the help of accent)
the burden of a system of versification, and it was now
making the same confession by resorting constantly, if
not invariably, to an alliance with the very rhyme, the
very foot-scansion, the very stanza-arrangement, which it
might seem bound to repudiate. In that alliance, when
VOL. I O
194 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK
it was reduced to its proper functions, it was destined to
keep a lasting hold on English, and many of the finest
schemes, for instance, of Mr. Swinburne's verse are
almost as conspicuously alliterative as they are metrical
and symphonic. But by itself, not Langland, at one
time in pure English, nor Dunbar, at a later in the
palmiest days of Scots, could make it a safe and sufficient,
much less a permanent, prosodic vehicle.
Very much more must be said as to the larger division
of rhymed poetry the Established Church then, now,
and, let us hope, always, of our prosodic polity. It
exhibits no slavish or tedious uniformity of character-
istic, but ranges from the Tale of Gamelyn^ where the
alliterative scheme takes on the easiest but not the least
engaging undress of rhyme and regular metrical rhythm,
through elaborately artificial compromises between the
two systems, like The Pearl, to the frankly and, in one
case, rather limitedly metrical-rhymed systems of Chaucer
and Gower. Its copia is magnificent : there is the great
body of the English Romances ; the other great body of
sacred poems and treatises in verse ; not a little verse-
chronicle ; the beginnings beyond all doubt, though we
shall for reasons take them in detail later, of drama ; not
a little lyric proper ; the whole works of Chaucer and the
English of Gower, with, as an appendix (also to be
handled in detail later for convenience' sake), the beginnings
of specially Scottish poetry. This is, indeed, as Miss
Austen observes of the provision which Isabella Thorp
thought inadequate, " no niggardly assignment."
It is certainly no uninteresting one from any point of
view, and least of all from ours. For its lessons, manifold
as they are, are uniform, and lead us a long way forward
on the right road which they themselves do so much to
lay and smooth. It would be a great blessing if we knew
the precise date of Gamelyn, for it is a most important
document. But as it happens it really does not matter
1 The advantage of taking this with its ballad successors of the fifteenth
century is so great that I have taken the liberty of postponing it (o the next
Book for example and minuter discussion ; but it must be referred to here.
ii INTERCHAPTER II 195,
whether it is a good deal anterior to Chaucer, which it
may be, or but a little; it is certainly not much later.
Whether it is the work of a man who, at the beginning of
the alliterative and accentual reaction, declined, like a very
sensible man indeed, to give up rhyme and fairly regular
rhythm, or of one who, taught by experience, relapsed
upon them, it tells just the same tale. We know the
popularity of it, and you cannot read fifty lines of it
without discovering the secret of that popularity. The
actual story is a good one, but in the Middle Ages good
stories " simply jostle " one another. It is the form that
gives it a pre-eminent attraction. There is nothing hide-
bound, or pedantic, or offensively literary, about this. But
the rhyme at once enlivens it and keeps it tight and trim ;
the elastic but well-marked rhythm turns the central
pause of the strict unrhymed alliterative stave into a
sound line-division, with added music for the stanza ; and
genially " tumbling " as the general cadence is, the author
knows how to keep his finger on the stops very well
indeed. I thank God for almost everything in English
poetry that is good at all ; but if I knew where the author
of Gamelyn was buried I should make a pilgrimage
thither at the first opportunity, and go to the expense
of an extra cake and candle according to the particular
ritual that might suit the genius loci. 1
The more sophisticated adulteries of alliteration and
rhyme may excite less enthusiasm, as being almost
" faked " things in a useful and expressive term of slang
for which there is no exact literary equivalent. But they
are extremely important for study, and that not merely
from the point of view which has been mentioned
already the confession which they make of the reluc-
tance of alliteration to rely upon itself alone. When
1 It is characteristic of the differences in point of view which make our
subject so difficult to handle, that some people can see little difference between
Gamelyn and Robert of Gloucester. I have not, I think, done injustice to the
latter: I can recognise in him a most refreshing attempt at "swing and
sway," and a not infrequent success in it. But he is only a promising
pupil at a Terpsichorean Academy the Gamelyn man could do " Liver-
pool lurch," or "Boston glide," or anything else you like, in open
ballroom.
196 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK
we come to examine them, we find that all their beauty
of ornamental alliteration belongs to regular rhymed
verse just as properly, while the characteristics which they
do derive from their alliterative -accentual structure are
never an advantage, and sometimes a drawback. The
most beautiful of them beyond all doubt things beautiful
not only by comparison, but intrinsically, poetically, with-
out allowance of any kind are The Pearl and The Pistylof
Susan. In each of these the excessive structural allitera-
tion is a delusion and a snare, the merely accentual
valuation, where that exists, a temptation to slovenliness,
luckily resisted but gratuitously incurred by the poet
In each the alliteration, which is beautiful, and the
variety of equivalence, which is harmonious, might exist
equally well, and do exist in thousands of other instances
without any accentual -all iterative structure at all, but
with pure metrical rhymed, or unrhymed, versification
by feet.
We are therefore left, as concerns the merits of this
group, not less than of that larger and principal body
to which we are coming, with this latter itself, the main
body, the responsible and representative tenant in tail
and owner in fee at once, of English Prosody itself.
The view-point from which we should, as it seems to
me, survey this may be best led up to by a brief criticism
conducted in a fashion as far as possible from carping
or cavilling or chicanery of a phrase of Professor
Macaulay's in his Gower, where, I think, he calls Chaucer
a reformer of English versification. Here, in a certain
loose sense, without going to the absurd extreme which
regards " reform " as a sort of term of beatification, but
taking " reformer " as equivalent to " improver," we may
yield a qualified agreement. But the original and the
only accurate sense of " reformer " is as applied to a
man who improves by going back to some better state
which existed before and has been corrupted. This, in
regard to English poetry and English versification,
Chaucer certainly did not do. We might, indeed, call
him its "/teHbrmer " if we gave that word the sense of his
ii INTERCHAPTER II 197
own version of it the verb parfourne, to complete, perfect,
bring to consummate and supreme efficiency. Neither
was he a " reformer " in the other common, but equally
illegitimate and still more mischievous, sense of " inno-
vator." However paradoxical the statement may appear,
Chaucer introduced nothing new ; he did not, as has been,
I hope, shown, even actually " introduce " the decasyllabic
couplet. Neither in going back to a golden age non-existent,
or existent only in the limbo of Guest, nor in discovering
a Promised Land beyond the Wilderness, did Chaucer
achieve his greatness. It was by using to the very
utmost what already existed, by getting the last pound
of work out of the actual conditions of English poetry, by
doing everything that was possible at the moment, with
the materials accumulated and the methods left him by
his predecessors, that Chaucer is Chaucer.
What those materials and those methods were, and
how they had come into existence cumulatively, every
page of this book has so far, I hope, gone to show. Most
if not all of the materials had been discovered, most if not
all of the methods had been invented, more than half
unwittingly, in something like two centuries at least of
haphazard and tentative practice, under the two great
controlling influences of the original Teutonic mass and
the superinduced French-Latin mould. I have again
and again insisted that in the contact of mould and mass
there was the amplest and the most intricate " give-and-
take " ; that if the one showed itself docile and plastic as
no other language has ever shown itself, the other showed
itself elastic and concessive to a degree equally un-
paralleled. The " rhythm of the foreigner " becomes a
rhythm at which the foreigner stands aghast, or in which he
makes such efforts as the admirable epitaph on Shenstone
by a French admirer ; l the rather poor lexicon, the
1 This plain stone
To William Shenstone.
In his poems he displayed
A mind natural :
At Leasowes he laid
Arcadian fields rural.
198 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY BOOK
narrow grunting register, 1 and the rather complicated
accidence of Anglo-Saxon, become the limitless vocabulary,
the harmony as of all kinds of music, and the admirably
simple grammar or no-grammar of English. As far as
his time admitted, Chaucer avails himself of both sets of
alteration, and it is only unlucky that the grammar had
not profited by shedding as the dictionary had profited by
assumption.
But it had not ; and the consequence was that, for
more than a century to come, the final e and other things
were half-dead hands, clutching at and tripping the
prosodic gait of his imitators and successors. And in the
middle division the (in the literary not the linguistic
sense) phonology of the language yet more mysterious
changes were to ensue, which we shall have to deal with
in the next Book and Interchapter. I am not here
speaking of the mere pronunciation. Some excellent
and revered friends of mine are of opinion that they know
exactly how Chaucer would have read a page of the
Canterbury Tales ; a point on which I regret to say
that I am sceptical with a scepticism immedicable and
not to be convinced. But it does not really matter.
Nothing can be more exquisitely musical to an English
ear than the poetry of ^Eschylus or of Catullus, pronounced
in that English fashion which we may be perfectly certain
that neither ^-Eschylus nor Catullus ever used, however
ascertain we may be what fashion they did use ; and it is
the same with Chaucer. Perfect poetry according to its
own scheme is always musically transposable into other
schemes ; imperfect poetry will never make music in its
own or in any other.
But this is half (not wholly) a digression. Chaucer,
let it be repeated, caught up and uttered the sum of
English prosodic, as of all other poetic, capacity up to the
time and in the circumstances in which he lived, with
hardly any exceptions save in the direction of pure lyric.
1 Lest this be thought too uncomplimentary to our grandmother tongue,
let me recall Quintilian's acknowledgment of the "harsh repulsive letters,"
the "ox-like lowing" of the m, etc. etc., in Latin.
ii INTERCHAPTER II 199
In order to do this he relinquished perhaps he had
to relinquish something of the full potential compass
of the instrument here and elsewhere. But in other
ways he handed on what he had received from his fathers,
organised, husbanded, and put to the best usury and
development that was at that time possible. There was
much more to be done, but probably he could not have
done it ; it was (whether wholly to our misfortune or not,
is quite an open question) quite possible for his successors
to undo a good deal of what he did, and they very
promptly proceeded to do so. But that the prosody
of English was a prosody of strict correspondence in feet,
yet not of strict correspondence in syllables ; that one
main secret of success in it was the variation of the pause ;
that, while capable of extensive and varied grouping into
stanzas, it admitted likewise of a still more subtle and
much more variable grouping of what we may call line-
sentences into verse-paragraphs ; this he had shown once
for all.
BOOK III
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
201
CHAPTER I
THE DRAMA
The Harrowing of Hell The York Plays The Townley The
Coventry The Chester The rest.
I HAVE decided to put the present chapter first in this
Book between the great poets of the fourteenth century
and their immediate disciples, and for a time, in some
cases, contemporaries of the fifteenth partly because
the dramatic line of the Mysteries shows little of the
breakdown of English- verse proper in the later period,
but mainly because a great deal of it, as this fact may
itself indicate, pretty certainly belongs to the earlier.
With enlarged and corrected methods of enquiry it
has become almost certain that in no case are the
existing MSS. of the four great Mystery cycles, and
their smaller " ekings," older than the fifteenth century
the " York " cycle probably belonging in its oldest part
to the first third thereof, and the " Townley " and
" Coventry " to the last third, while we have no copy
of the " Chester " Plays older than the very last years
of the sixteenth. But the original forms of some of
these almost certainly, and of most of them probably,
date back to the fourteenth. Indeed the oldest play
of all, the Harrowing of Hell^ exists in MS. form from The Harrow-
the early part of this fourteenth century itself. But this, in sf Hel1 -
which is in somewhat irregular and much equivalenced
octosyllabic couplets, not differing from many other
1 This will be found in the Appendix of Mr. A. W. Pollard's extremely
useful collection and selection of Miracle Plays (Oxford, 1890, 4th ed. 1904).
203
204 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK in
early examples of that metre which we have examined,
is very generally and rightly regarded as merely drama
in embryo a dttat, a dialogue-poem, rather than a drama
properly so called.
When we come to the actual representatives of the
English mediaeval play things really performed before
popular audiences we note at first sight one curious
difference from their analogues, in what may be called,
without much exaggeration, the nursing-mother literature
of modern Europe at large. The French Miracle and
Mystery plays, 1 of which we have abundant examples,
are almost wholly in fairly strict octosyllabic couplets,
though at this time they admit a curious variety by
excursion into the fashionable form of the triolet, very
unsuitable as it may seem 2 to dialogue. In place of this
" common measure " the English plays offer us an extra-
ordinary variety, which perhaps shows as well as anything
else the development of English prosody at the time, and
the way in which quite elaborate examples of it could
be written by journeymen verse - smiths, mastered by
popular actors, and welcomed by popular audiences.
For little as we can afford reference to things outside our
own scope and subject, let it be remembered that these
plays were invariably acted by the guilds of the towns to
their fellow-craftsmen and the people at large, in the
streets and places of the towns themselves ; that the
ancestors of Bottom the weaver and Quince the joiner
actually performed them, on the moving stages of pageant-
waggons, to the men of Chester and Coventry and York,
some two hundred years before Shakespeare laughed at
Quince and Bottom themselves.
The York The York Plays? the oldest and the largest collection,
if not that which shows the greatest literary originality,
exhibit a very remarkable variety of metrical experiment,
1 The difference does not concern us here, but it is a pity that it has been
confused in English.
2 It is, however, not so bad as it looks, and in the farces (and the farcical
interludes which are so common) its quaint composition out of different
speeches is sometimes rather effective.
3 Ed. (excellently) by Miss Toulmin Smith (Oxford, 1885).
CHAP, i THE DRAMA 205
and, except in some cases (where there has possibly
been clumsy copying), very considerable metrical accom-
plishment. The two most common forms are the
so-called " Burns metre," which is used in six pieces ; and
another, less crisp and less famous, but much more
elaborate, and by no means ineffective, which is used still
more frequently in no less than twelve. But it will be
worth while to go through the whole.
The very first would give a text for a long sermon (if we
had not preached this already and often) in its combination
of alliterative-rhythmical, with strictly metrical measure; in
its addition, even to the former, of rhyme in the alliterated
portions themselves ; and above all in its trisyllabic feet.
From the opening stanza given below 1 it will be seen
that it is an octave, rhymed ababcddc, thus adopting
In Memoriam arrangement in the second quatrain. In
the first the strong central pause is the main agent
of rhythm, though there are four fairly disengageable
anapaests, rhyming, sometimes singly, sometimes doubly :
in the second these become three only, but the rhyme
always double. It does not strike one as a very good
dramatic medium, but, as recitative, might be very
effective. And above all we see in it the blessed trisyllabic
swing and swell, the variation and sway on the iambic
tramp, of which it may be said that with
The oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree,
They all flourish best in the North Countree
(to which we may add the West). No. II., 2 first of a
1 (God speaks)
I am gracyus and grete, God withoutyn begynnyng,
I am maker unmade, all mighte es in me,
I am lyfe and way unto welth wynning,
I am formaste and fyrste, als I byd sail it be.
My blyssyng o ble sail be blendyng,
And heldand fro harme to be hydande,
My body in blys ay abydande,
Unendande without[yn] any ending.
2 Now sene the erthe thus ordand es,
Mesurid and made by myn assent,
Grathely for to growe with gres,
And wedis that sone away bese went.
206 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK in
baker's dozen of more or less similarly arranged plays,
is in twelve-line stanzas, of which the first eight are
octosyllables, rhyming alternately, the last sixes maintain-
ing the even rhyme, but importing a new odd. The
rhyme-order varies slightly in the different examples, but
the general effect is much the same. This stanza,
like many others, belongs to the class (which we have
formerly discussed) of elaborate metrical experiment,
either directly or indirectly based on French and Pro-
ven^al models. This is interesting and valuable, as
showing the adaptability of the language, its advance, as
we may say, in prosodic education : but it only now and
then "turns up trumps," judging by the actual result.
III. 1 has interest for us as being in one of the great staple
measures, the quatrain of eights, alternately rhymed, and
IV. 2 is in Romance stanza tailed with a quatrain of sixes,
alternately rhymed, and bound together by the b rhyme
throughout. In V. the experiment takes the form of
one of the elaborate alliterative-rhymed stanzas with bobs,
Of my gudnes now will I ges
So that my werkis noharmes hent,
Two lyghtis, one more and one lesse,
To be fest in the firmament ;
The more light to [the] day
Fulle suthely sail be sent,
The lesse lyght all-way
To the nyght sail take entent.
P. ii.
(The first stanza is headed with a long couplet of sixteen and twelve
syllables, Lat. and Eng.)
1 In heuyn and erthe duly be dene,
Of v daies werke, evyn unto the ende
I have complete by courssis clene ;
Me thynketh the space of tham wele spende.
P. 14.
2 Adam and Eve, this is the place
That I have graunte you of my grace
To have your wonnyng in.
Erbes, spyce, frute on tree,
Beastes, fewles, all that ye see
Shall bowe to you, more and myn.
This place hight paradyce,
Here shall your joys begynne,
And yf that ye be wyse
Frome this tharr ye never twynne.
P. 1 8.
( Vide sup. p. 117, and inf. on Montgomerie. )
CHAP, i THE DRAMA 207
or very short lines, in respect of which we have probably
the earliest example in Sir Tristrem ; and VI. is l in the
" Burns " stanza, evidently the most popular (except the
twelve-eight-six, as we may call it) of all. Of the merit
of this metre it is quite unnecessary to speak, and Burns's
own practice has shown how effective it is for soliloquy.
One cannot, on the other hand, say very much for it as a
vehicle of dialogue.
VII. is, again, one of alliterative eleven-line bobbed or
tagged stanzas, of which we have several, sometimes with
the dialogue cunningly interwoven, and resembling, like
the Burns stanza, the French conversation -triolet. On
VIII., with its staves of eights, as on others that
will occur, no very special comment need be made.
They are probably all efforts to avoid the continuous
octosyllabic couplet which, though we find it constantly
in the closely connected " Townley " group, seems to
have displeased the York versifiers. IX. is a fourteen-
lined alliterative stanza, with a body of eights and a tail
of sixes. XIII. (the omitted numbers are replicas of
forms already described) is curiously varied, " like a piece
of music," as Miss Toulmin Smith justly remarks. The
variations extend from a ten-lined stanza turned upside
down from that above noticed (i.e. an octosyllabic quatrain
tailed by a Romance six of eights, both freely equiva-
lenced), which is, if anything, the staple, to an eleven-line
alliterative bob-stanza, and other forms. XIV. is still
more notable, for it 2 is the Burns stanza, with an extra
1 Eve. Sethyn it was so me knyth it sore,
Bot sythen that woman witteles ware,
Mans maistrie should have been more
Agayns the gilte.
Adam. Nay at my speche wolde thou never spare
That has us spilte.
Ed. cit. p. 33.
It seems to be a sort of equivalent for the French jointed triolet noticed above.
2 Ther lorde thai kenne, that wate I wele,
They worshippe hym with myght and mayne ;
The wedir is colde, as ye may feele,
To halde hym warme thei are full fayne
With thare warme breth,
And oondis on hym is noght to layne
To warm hym with.
2 o8 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK m
line in its body, and with that body rhymed alternately
instead of in block. I do not think it is nearly as
successful as the shorter and compacter form. XVI.,
alliterative elevens, very irregularly " bobbed."
XVIII. is an interesting twelve- lined measure taper-
ing in lengths adjusted to the bob system, and
furnished with internal rhyme at the turning - point.
Among its other interests it has that of suggesting the
very short rhymes in the "tedious brief" play of the
Athenian craftsmen, which ten thousand people know
for one who knows its originals. 1 XIX. is in octaves of
sixes, the first quatrain being alternate-rhymed, the last
In Memoriam fashion, and the rhyme-bond being 1358.
XXIV. is in the "lengthened Burns," of which we have
spoken, and which we have here the opportunity of con-
trasting with the " pure Burns," as this comes next.
XXVI. begins with one of the longest alliterative-
rhyme combinations, fourteen lines divided into an octave
of the usual alliteratives and a sixain of three anapaests
each. Then comes a batch consisting of hotch-potch
metres admitting, indeed, but hardly deserving schema-
tisation. These are the Passion pieces, the most popular
of all, those in which the action is most important, and
those in which the interlocutors are most numerous and
the interlocution most subdivided facts which explain
the metrical irregularity.
XXXIII. continues the same subject, but would
appear to be one of the oldest of all, inasmuch as it is
in almost purely alliterative metre rhymed indeed and
roughly stanzaed with bob and wheel, but very irregular
1 Thou luffely lord that last shall ay,
My god, my lorde, my sone so dere,
To thy godhede hartely I pray
With all myn harte holy entere ;
As thou me to thy modir chaas,
I beseke the of thy grace
For all man-kynde,
That has in mynde
To wirshippe the.
Thou se thy saules to saue
Jesu my sone so free
This bone of the I crave. Ibid. p. 1 39.
CHAP, i THE DRAMA 209
in line-length, and very strongly alliterated. XXXIV.,
after an irregular overture, is in the ten-line (six + four)
stanza ; XXXVI. in the thirteen - line alliterative ;
XXXVIII. and XXXIX. in staves of alternately rhymed
couplets, various in length. XLI. turns to quatrains of
three eights, and a last line ranging from eight to four ;
while at the end the three first extend themselves to
irregular decasyllabics and sometimes into anapaestic
dimeters. The description may read like a mere
muddle, but it is nothing of the kind. One sees, as it
were, the prosodist trying the strings and stops of the
lyre of English verse, feeling their marvellous elasticity of
response, and carried away by it a little, yet never to
mere discord. XLI 1 1. goes back to octaves of eight,
and XLV. to the other octave formed of an octo-
syllabic and a hexasyllabic quatrain. XLVIIL, re-
serving XLVI. for special notice, is again in octaves,
and the late added fragment on the Coronation of our
Lady is written in the most aureate language of the
fifteenth century, and in that century's most shambling
decasyllabic couplets. The parenthesised example, No.
XLVI., deserves special mention, because of the extra-
ordinary swing and gusto which is reached by its resolu-
tion (as we may call it) of the alliterative -metrical
compromise. The middle stop is kept in one sense, but
the middle wall of partition which it ordinarily makes, in
the long lines, between the rhythm of the two halves is
" by the help of the Lord, luppen over," as Mause Head-
rigg has it. The full swing of the anapaestic tetrameter or
dimeter is reached in the long lines opening the stanza.
And this is not the most remarkable thing. We are in
full Ingoldsby Legend with the couplet,
But the Pharisees fierce
All his reasons reverse,
and beyond them even into mid -nineteenth century
burlesque in
They dusshed him, they dashed him.
They lusshed hym, they lasshed hym.
They pusshed him, they pashed hym.
VOL. I P
2io THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK in
The trick of identical beginnings has seldom been pushed
farther, and often more unsuccessfully, than in the piece
quoted in the note, 1 and abundant things throughout are
purely Swinburnian.
The Tffwniey. The Townley Plays? which come (probably) next in
order of time to the York, and which have been thought
to possess some direct connection with them, present one
remarkable and pervading, though not constant, prosodic
difference, if not on the very first page, yet in the very
first play ; and that is the presence of the continuous
octosyllabic couplet. This appears after a batch of
Romance sixes, and the alternation is kept up a very
interesting thing, when it is remembered, first, that the
couplet was the universal metre of French Miracle and
Mystery ; secondly, that these two metres were the staple
of English Romance. Both are well managed indeed it
is well known that the Townley collection shows the most
distinct genius of all the four, especially in a scattered
group which exhibits the usual mediaeval mixture of
solemnity and grotesque with an extraordinarily vigorous
(if sometimes also violent) humour. This is shown in
the second play, or Mactatio Abel, which, with the later
Secunda Pastorum, is the most famous of all our
mysteries. The almost riotous extravagance of the
matter communicates itself to the metre, which ranges
through all sorts of combinations, from the plain couplet
to complicated " thirteens." Medley as it is, however, it
is by no means ineffective, though the occasional differ-
1 I thanke the as reuerent rote of oure reste,
I thanke the as stedfast stokke for to stande,
I thanke the as tristy tre for to treste,
I thanke the as buxsom bough to the bande,
I thanke the as leeffe the lustiest in lande,
I thanke the as bewteous braunche for to bere,
I thanke the as flower that neuere is fadande,
I thanke the as frewte that has fedde us in fere,
I thanke the for euere,
If they repreue me
Now schall thei leue me !
Thi blissinge giffe me
And douteles I schall do my deuere.
2 Ed. England and Pollard, E.E.T.S., 1897. " Townley" or " Townrfey"
is optional.
CHAP, i THE DRAMA 211
ence of a single line, between stanzas clearly of the same
general scheme, shows singular carelessness. But the
third or " Ark " Play (which must pretty certainly be by
the same hand) shows that the unknown author, when
he chose, could observe the most elaborate rules punctu-
ally enough. It is written in a nine-line stanza, 1 which
might almost as well be a thirteen for the first lines are
Alexandrines with middle- as well as end-rhymes, and
might as well or better be written as sixes. They are
completed by the usual " bob-wheel " a four, three eights
and a six, bcccb. This adapts itself very well to the
opening speech of Noah, which is a dignified address to
the Divinity, and to God's reply. But it might not seem
equally well suited to the action which follows, in which,
according to the general mediaeval practice, Noah's wife
is made to play the part of a comic shrew, though not
here, as in some cases, a drunken one. Still the author
pieces up the stanzas, and even the lines, with conversation
quite deftly. The fourth, Abraham, is in octaves of
eights, and contains one of those echoing and unforget-
table lines which inferior poetries so rarely yield us, but
which in English we have almost from the first
The land of vision is full far.
V. the short (because imperfect) Isaac is in very
good equivalenced couplets, 2 as is the next, Jacob, while
VII. (The Prophets) is in Romance sixes. But in Pharaoh
(VIII.) we come back to variety, both of line and stanza.
- l Myghtfull God veray, Maker of all that is,
Thre persons withouten nay, oone God in endles blis,
Thou maide both night and day, beest, fowle and fish,
All creatures that lif may wrought thou at thy wish,
As thou wel myght :
The son, the moyne, verament
Thou maide : the firmament,
The starres also full fervent
To shyne thou maide ful bright.
P. 23.
2 Com nerje son | and kys | me
That I | may feyl|e the smell | of the. |
The smell | of | my son | is like
To a feld | with flow|ris or ho|ny bike.
P. 49.
212 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK HI
The former oscillates between eight and six, and the eights
and sixes are batched, sometimes in octaves and some-
times in fours, rather more than thirty of each, with
certain anomalies, which are probably again mere care-
lessness. From IX. to XI. the two types recur alone
or mixed. The first "Shepherd's" Play (XII.), the
goodness of which has been rather obscured by the
second, and of Mak its hero, employs the nine-thirteen
stanza above analysed, as does the Secunda itself, the
author, in all cases of need, showing the same extra-
ordinary knack of piecing and " part-metring," as we may
say. XIV. is in the Burns stanza the first appearance
here of that favourite Northern medium but its incon-
siderable length is not unbroken. XV. takes the short
and much " bobbed " thirteen, rhymed rather uncertainly,
and XVI. the other thirteen compressed to nine. XVII.
is in the octave of 88868886 aaabcccb, with the sixes
changed for fours, but shifts after a time to Romance
sixes. XVIII., though by no means altogether successful,
and metrically very irregular, is interesting from its very
irregularity. It is difficult to read without feeling nearly
sure that the author was, so to speak, groping for the
" common measure " of eight and six in quatrains. But it
plays a sort of blind-man's buff with him, and he is con-
stantly miss-catching in its place the quatrain of eights,
less frequently that of sixes, and sometimes a muddle of
all three. These things are quite as instructive, and to
any one well broken to the sport, quite as interesting as
the finished measures ; but we should have to give not
merely a stanza or two, but the whole piece, to illustrate
them fully. It forms one of the best texts for a special
sermon on the subject. And the play contrasts most
remarkably with the next (XIX.) on John the Baptist,
where the octave of eights is maintained without any
great effort throughout. XX. begins the Passion, where
we expect irregularity, and find it to an extent better
indicated in a note, 1 it being sufficient for the text to say
1 In XX. (Conspirocid) there are at least half-a-dozen types of stanzas
besides the couplet. These types vary in themselves as thus :
CHAP, i THE DRAMA 213
that the old hand of Cain reappears in a new sense. The
" Buffeting " play (Colaphisatio] is regular enough in the
nine - line form, but the Flagellation again takes wide
licences, and the Crucifixion itself surpasses all in this
respect.
In the extraordinary play called The Talents, XXIV.,
Pilate begins with parcel Latin-English in the nine-line
stanza before settling to the octave in triplets, only to
rove from it again into endless stanza-phases, some of them
singularly vigorous. XXV. returns to the irregular
common measure, and XXVI. to the Burns stanza, much
varied, which is continued in XXVII. XXVIII. goes
Or that | this nyght | be gone |
Alone | will ye | leyf me ; |
For in | this night | ilkon |
Ye | shall fro | me flee, |
to
Now loke | youre hart | ys be gre|fyd noght
Nawther|e in dre|de ne | in wo
Bot trow | in God | that you | has wroght
And in me | trow ye | also,
while the second and third lines often undoubtedly extend to the full eight,
as in
Thou shall | deny | me ty|mes three.
In the Flagellation complete fourteeners of excellent swing without middle
rhyme (as well as others with) appear, as this, which I have purposely given
in modern spelling :
For like as on both sides the iron the hammer maketh plain.
In the Crucifixion Our Lady has a song in two beautiful stanzas, arranged on
the same middle-rhyme note, besides others in variant :
Alas ! may euer be my sang, whiles I may lyf in leid,
Me thynk now that I lyf to lang to se my barne thus blede
[Jews] lues wyrke with hym all wrang, wherefore do they this dede ?
Lo, so by they have him hang they let for no drede.
Why so
His fomen is he emang ? No freynde he has, bot fo.
Alas Dede ! thou dwellys to lang ! whi art thou hid fro me,
Who kend the to my childe to gang ? All blak thou makys his ble.
Now witterly thou wyrkys wrang, the more I will wyte thee,
But if thou will my harte stang, that I myght with hym dee,
And byde :
Sore syghyng is my sang, for thyrlyd is his hyde !
Ibid. p. 270.
The last word is a curious instance of what all wide-ranging students of
poetry know the ill-luck of poets in the changed or restricted use and
association of words which they cannot foresee.
214 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK in
from Romance sixes to Alexandrines, while XXIX.,
XXX., and XXXI. are once more a pot-pourri, requiring
bewildering enumeration to give their schedules and prac-
tically the citation of the whole pieces (which are long)
to illustrate the bones clothed with verse flesh and blood.
It is almost sufficient to say that no ingredient of line or
stanza is new, though the gallimaufry may be freshly
reconstituted in each case.
The presence of this gallimaufry, with the other pres-
ence of the continuous couplet as an alternative, gives
the main importance, for us, of the Townley cycle. It is
open to any one to contend that, as both it and the York
have an at least probable relation to the Cursor Mundi,
this last feature is a direct survival from the great Middle
English " Scripture History." It is open, I think, to any
one else to hold that this presence is evidence of a
relapse of an awakening to the consciousness that
drama wants a staple metre, which could not, for the
time, be the far superior vehicle of blank verse. And
this seems to me to suit better with the explanation of
the mixed multitude of metres we have surveyed.
The Cmentry. The third, or " Coventry " series l (it is, of course, a
matter of no moment for us whether it is really the
Ludus Coventriae or not) is believed to be of about the
same date as the Townley in direct transcription, but
there cannot be much doubt that all the collections repre-
sent fourteenth -century work, less or more re-handled.
From the general fact of their constitution by a large
number of smaller units, themselves not quite homo-
geneous, general impressions are not easy to receive from
any of the series, and not likely to be very trustworthy
when received. As a rule, however, the " Coventry "
group conveys one of rather less extreme metrical variety,
and of a certain drift towards length of line, not distantly
approaching, in some cases, the ponderous, lolloping
doggerel of the early sixteenth-century drama, which, by
reaction, helped to bring on blank verse itself. Indeed,
side by side with this, or rather as part of it, there is not
1 Ed. Halliwell (London, 1841).
CHAP, i THE DRAMA 215
a little evidence of desertion of the octosyllable formerly
the great staple of verse, dramatic and non-dramatic for
the decasyllabic, after a fashion which supports l the theory
of natural rise of the longer from the shorter measure.
But the plan of orderly analysis is too valuable to desert.
The "Prologue" presents at first sight no great differ-
ence from the earlier cycle, being the now familiar " thir-
teen " of an octave and two short lines with mono-rhymed
triplet between them, which we have seen so often. But
there is here a curious variation which, though it may
be present elsewhere, is here particularly noticeable. The
line-constituents of the octave vary from long doggerel
lines, heavily alliterated, to quite neat and succinct octo-
syllables of the " rhythm-of-the-foreigner " pattern. But
an odd process of compensation is in some cases notable.
When the octave is long the bob and wheel are short,
and when the octave is of strict, or nearly strict, eights,
the bob and wheel considerably extend themselves.
This metre, with drops into 88868886 octaves, per-
severes steadily in the first three plays of the actual
cycle, and begins the fourth, changing in this latter to
other octaves in a line which hesitates between the deca-
syllabic and the " tumbling " alliterative. 2 V., VI., and
VII. are octaves of irregularly equivalenced eights,
rhymed ababbcbc, the same tendency to lengthen the line,
however, being noticeable, reaching in VIII. a quite in-
ordinate extent. 3 IX. exhibits the same sort of thing,
with differences ; but X. relapses upon thirteens and the
octave, and XL is mainly this last, while XII. introduces
1 See, for instance, most of the plays, in which this cycle is particularly rich,
on the conception and birth of Christ.
2 Some of the breakdowns are very plastic, as in II., where Eve, falling
into the beautiful rhythm noticed above, says (spelling purposely modernised)
Alas | that ev|er that speech | was spo|ken
That the | false an | gel said | unto me ; |
Alas, | our Ma|ker's bid | ding is bro|ken,
For I | have touched | his own | dear tree.
8 Another to the pilgrims and poor men : the third for them with me abide.
For my barrenness he may amend this himself, and thou list, to-morrow.
(Spelling again modernised to bring out the effect. The close is a "thirteen"
and a quatrain. )
2l6
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
BOOK III
that frequent and Protean variety, the dizain, consisting
of a Romance six and a quatrain " long " or common. 1 The
same measures continue in varying doses till XVI.,
the " Adoration of the Shepherds," in which, as in the
next, the " Adoration of the Magi," combinations of very
short lines appear as a change. All the rest, I think,
are more or less made up of the same metres, so that
we have for a general result besides that significant
lengthening of the line which has been noted side by side
with the shorts a slightly greater variety of " make-up,"
to match the slightly less variety of the ingredients used.
The whole cycle is a sort of lucky-bag, in which you may
dip and get very different things. But its lesson is, on
the whole, a more strictly fifteenth-century one than that
either of York or of Townley a lesson of transition.
The Chester. The excessively corrupt state of the text of the fourth
or " Chester " series, of which we only possess copies, the
oldest of them dating from the extreme end of the six-
teenth century, would make it superfluous in any case to
analyse it with the fulness which we have given to the
others. But through all this corruption we can see a
general lesson which has nothing new for us. There is
fair evidence that the cycle in its originals was pretty
old it may, perhaps, have been the oldest of all and
this is confirmed by the prosody, in which the commonest
metres are alternately rhymed octosyllabic quatrains, or
the favourite arrangement of an octave consisting of
two mono-rhymed triplets, with fourth and eighth lines
(sixes) rhymed together.
The rest. So also the examination of the two large series may
relieve us from that of the Digby and Macro collections,
and of the few isolated examples, which have nothing
new to show. The word " relieve " must not be misunder-
stood, and is to be taken with strict reference to prosody.
1 We have noticed, and shall notice, more than once the frequency of this
combination. It is not surprising, the two stanzas separately being, and to be,
the most popular metres of all and perhaps the eldest after the octosyllabic
couplet itself. To build with both of them is exactly what would occur
naturally, in that more unschooled than scholastic process of prosodic experi-
ment and development which I believe to have taken place in our poetry.
CHAP, i THE DRAMA 217
The Digby Magdalene is perhaps the most interesting
English miracle-play of a serious kind, and for the due
comprehension of the historic connection of our drama
simply invaluable ; and the Macro Castell of Perseverance
vast, enormous, exemplary may be shuddered at by
Frivolity, but must be accepted by Knowledge. Still,
they and their fellows have little that is new prosodically,
and nothing that is necessary for us to analyse. 1
1 It is in the classification and analysis of the numerousYand complicated
metres of these plays, and of the miscellaneous poems in Bk. II. Chap. III.,
that oversights are most likely to occur. I have done my best to avoid
them, and can only promise gratitude to any one who will let me know of
slips.
CHAPTER II
Ungracious
state of the
subject.
Lydgate
and his
reputation.
THE SUCCESSORS OF CHAUCER
Ungracious state of the subject Lydgate and his reputation His
older panegyrists His recent defenders The Minor Poems -
London Lickpenny The Story of Thebes The Temple of Glass
The Assembly of Gods The Secrets of the Philosoffres The
Two Nightingale Poems The Pilgrimage and other octo-
syllabic poems Occleve An interim lesson from the pair
The last group Hawes The Con-version of Swearers The
Pastime of Pleasure Barclay Skelton His " doggerel "
The " Skeltonic " verse.
THE successors of Chaucer (a phrase usually including his
younger contemporaries, especially Lydgate and Occleve)
occupy, as many people know who have never opened a
page of their writing, a peculiar and most unenviable
pillory. There is hardly a literary historian who does
not " spare " them " a curse." This special kind of passing,
parenthetic, and sometimes actually silent abuse has very
few parallels in literature ; and when the abusers conde-
scend to give reasons, which is not always the case, these
reasons are most frequently drawn from our own division
of the subject. So that without recapitulating these in
general, for they will come out sufficiently in the handling
we may proceed with some zest, unattractive as the
subject is generally considered, to that handling itself,
and to the orderly accumulation of the facts of the case
before delivering judgment on them.
In age very probably, in length of life it would seem,
in bulk of work almost without doubt, and in contem-
porary and immediately posthumous fame without any
doubt at all, the primacy among these persons is due to
218
CHAP, ii THE SUCCESSORS OF CHAUCER 219
John Lydgate. 1 The fifteenth century, and even great
part of the sixteenth, did not hesitate to rank him with
Chaucer and Gower in a trinity of patternhood for
English poetry. Not merely men like Hawes, whose
genius, though perhaps superior to his own, was of the
same kind, but men like Dunbar, whose concentrated
and fiery quality might seem most alien from his fecund
but flaccid voluminousness, heaped eulogies upon him.
The early press did him yeoman's service ; and the
Elizabethan critics, if they were not so extravagant in
his praise as their fathers and grandfathers, yet spoke
respectfully of him, and in particular assigned him " good
verse." While not retaining the shadowy name-greatness
of Chaucer in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
he escaped the occasional contempt ; and in the middle
of the latter century he found a singular champion
in Gray, who probably transmitted interest in him to
Coleridge, and who actually commits himself to the state-
ment that Lydgate "surpasses Gower in smoothness." It
is, however, noticeable that all Gray's illustrations are
taken from the Falls of Princes only ; and though he
seems to have known of other work of Lydgate's, it is not
quite clear to what extent he knew it.
The approval, such as it is, of Elizabethan critics like His older
Webbe and Puttenham will not stand much examination.
It is traditional, not to say ignorant, in character ; it is
vague in expression ; and it is largely conditioned, if not
quite coloured and covered, by one consideration. These
critics (as the fuller handling of them in the next volume
will, I hope, show) were almost entirely dominated by the
subject- theory of poetry, and by the narrowest ideas of
syllabic uniformity. How little they cared for real poetic
music is shown sufficiently by the approval that they
1 For some years past the E.E.T.S. has most properly devoted itself to
the provision, at last, of a complete Lydgate, the issues of which up to date
will be cited (and sometimes criticised) infra. Till almost the end of the
nineteenth century there was nothing accessible, outside the MSS. and the
very rare and costly printed originals, except the Tale of Thebes and a few
other pieces in Chalmers (under the head of Chaucer) and the Minor Poems
edited by Halliwell for the Percy Society (London, 1840).
220 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK m
extended to the creaking abominations of classical
" versing." Lydgate, in the work which they chiefly knew
of his the same Falls of Princes dealt with grave and
stately subjects just after their liking, and they probably
gave him the benefit of antiquity for the defects of form,
which, even on their standard, he exhibits.
We, on the other hand, may also give him, and Occleve,
and the rest, benefit of a certain kind, which will be fully
set forth in the Interchapter to this Book. But mean-
while they must underlie, as all other fellow-sinners since
must underlie, the reproach of not knowing the main
business of the poet, which is to get poetical music out
of the language which he uses. There may be mitigating
circumstances to urge against too heavy punishment for
the crime but, as for the gravity of that crime itself, I
myself do not see how the most ingenious advocate who
respects facts can argue for an acquittal.
But here some one will perhaps cry " Softly, sir ! Are
you quite certain that the fault is not in your own ear?
Did not people, and sometimes people of positive genius,
attribute, at least to Lydgate, no small share of definitely
metrical and poetical charm ? " The demurrer is quite a
fair one prima facie ; but it is not hard to deal with it.
Who are the main praisers and what are their praises ?
They have been mentioned briefly already, and may be
classed thus i. Dunbar and Hawes for persons of real
worship at the beginning of the sixteenth century ;
2. The common contemporaries and immediate successors ;
3. The Elizabethan critics, already despatched. Now
those in Class 2 were mostly very dull dogs ; indeed they
were all directly or indirectly pupils of Lydgate, and
they were certain not merely to ignore but to fail to see
his faults, because they were their own. Benedict Burgh,
for instance, the chief of these pupils, can give his master
points, as we shall see, for prosodic and poetical amousia
of all kinds. The same, though he was not stupid and
was a poet now and then, is the case with Hawes. In
Dunbar genius and poetry had a much greater part. But
Dunbar was in a manner a foreigner : he was writing
CHAP, ii THE SUCCESSORS OF CHAUCER 221
literary standard English (so far as he did write it)
almost as we write Latin verses, and it would have been
very ungenerous of him if he had abused his nearest and
most copious pattern and master, however much he him-
self bettered that master's instruction. In addition to
which let it be remembered that in all these men the
critical sense was not at all, or was hardly, born ; they
all had that astonishing indiscriminateness that " Groves
of Blarney " promiscuity which marks the literary appre-
ciation of the Middle Ages wholly, and in only a little less
degree that of the Transition.
The praise of Gray and Coleridge has been sufficiently
discounted already. But if they were too complimentary,
and if neither knew quite enough, a younger contemporary
of Gray, an elder contemporary of Coleridge, who knew
Lydgate very thoroughly indeed, more than made up the
balance by #7zcomplimentariness. With his usual polite-
ness Ritson, after an immense catalogue 1 of work by or
attributed to Lydgate, boxes one of his ears as that of a
" prosaic, voluminous, and drivelling monk," and brings him
up again by smiting the other in regard to his " drawlings,
in which there are scarcely three lines together of pure and
accurate metre." And although Ritson's violence of lan-
guage and temper did him no good, the busy and ever-
increasing study of older English literature did certainly,
for this reason or that, neglect Lydgate remarkably during
the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, with the
exceptions noted above. The Early English Text Society,
as also noted, has at last buckled to the task, though
there is still very much to do. 2
1 Bibliotheca Poetica (London, 1802), pp. 66-90. Some of Lydgate's
recent German editors and champions have been nearly as severe on Ritson
himself. There is nothing to be said for his temper or his manners ; but the
man who knew what he knew a hundred years ago is not to be belittled by
those who have profited (or not) by nearly four generations of his and others'
labour. As for Warton, his observations on Lydgate, though numerous
enough, are rather gingerly, and seem to avoid focussing themselves up into
a definite criticism. "Verbose" and " languid " find themselves side by side
with " harmonious " and " elegant " ; and must feel rather inclined to say to
them, " What on earth &tz you doing here?"
2 I hope it is not ungracious to express a wish that the whole task a
gigantic one, I admit had been entrusted to one person, and that person an
222 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK in
His recent Some of the editors of these reprints, animated no
doubt, in part at any rate, by chivalrous devotion to their
client, have been wroth with Lydgate's decriers, 1 and
especially with Ritson. The line of defence is, of course,
obvious to find fault with the presentation of the texts,
and to say that those who (as some even of themselves
have done) depreciate the monk's versification, do so
merely from reliance on a bad text. Unfortunately the
retort is not less obvious that a so-called " critical " text,
with its pickings from this manuscript and that, or its
reconstruction of a single one according to manufactured
rules, may to some extent restore prosodic system, but
will always be subject to the doubt whether it in the least
resembles what the poet wrote. But some have gone
further still, relying on that singular idea (not German
only, but entertained by the Germans with greater
freedom and natvetf than by any other nation, or by any
class of students of literature save the minor classical
rhetoricians), that if you can, in this or that fashion, reduce
things to some sort of classification, you have done all
that can possibly be required of you. Thus Dr. Schick, 2
Englishman. Foreigners can do prose well enough, but their editing of verse is
almost inevitably unsatisfactory, while the distribution of the task among many
different hands, native and foreign, makes it almost impossible that even
identical, let alone probably correct, views of prosody will be taken. Of
course I know what my friend Dr. Furnivall would say, and say truly : but
it is a pity.
1 Who include even such an admirably competent and well-willing Middle
English authority as Dr. Skeat.
2 I cannot refrain (grateful as I am to him and others for the texts they
have given us) from illustrating Dr. Schick's attitude to English prosody by
a line which he does not approve
In Wiltshire of England two priestes there were.
This, he decides, has no metre at all, or can only be scanned as an introduc-
tion of " Firdausi's line." I am not ashamed to confess that "having" no
Persian I am ill at Firdausi's numbers (are they amphibrachs or anti-
bacchics ?) ; but I wish no English poet had ever written a worse line than
this. For it is clear to any Englishman that Lydgate may have meant
In Wilt | shire of | England | two priests | there were ;
or this
In Wilt | shire of Eng | land two | priestes | there were ;
or may have indulged in that very English metre the anapaestic dimeter,
CHAP, ii THE SUCCESSORS OF CHA UCER 223
the editor of the Temple of Glass, agreeing in the main
with Dr. Schipper, though not as to his scanning of lines,
says that Lydgate has five types of the " five-beat "
line.
These five types are, put briefly in the language of
this book :
A. The typical decasyllabic with normal run.
B. A form with an extra syllable before the caesura.
C. One with a syllable too few at the caesura.
D. The nine-syllable Chaucerian type.
E. A line with a trisyllabic beginning.
Classification est, and apparently nothing more is thought
necessary : though we find to our surprise that, after all,
Lydgate is " a doggerel poet " who has not " a sensitive
ear for rhythm." Between this and Ritson there does not
seem much more than the differences of a less and a more
violent vocabulary. Unfortunately we cannot let Drs.
Schick and Schipper off with a mere conviction for
inconsistency. Let us examine these types a little more
carefully. As to A and E nothing need be said. The
first, of course, " standeth crowned," and the last will
receive, from me at least, an extra prize for a valuable
championship of true liberty. D, I have said, is, I think,
a mistake, but it is a mistake made in following Chaucer,
and so venial. B, I should account for as a line with a
trisyllabic foot in this case or that, and pass it readily as
such, though I should say that Lydgate's use of it is
generally clumsy and inharmonious, justifying Ritson's
black-mark, if it had been less truculently applied. But
as for C, 1 which we are told is " peculiar to Lydgate," or
which often in the fifteenth century intrudes even where it seems to have no
business
In Wilt | shire of Eng|land two pries |tes there were ;
or, lastly, that this may be one of the "walkings" of our "ghost" the
amphibrach itself. At any rate, if Dan John had never done anything worse,
he would certainly not have incurred Ritson's censure nor mine.
1 E.g. Dr. Schick's own illustrations from the Temple of Glass
For specheles nothing maist thou spede.
If eny word in the be myssaide.
Sith noon but she may thi sores sound.
224 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK in
at any rate peculiarly Lydgatian, " more developed in his
works than anywhere else," " very common," etc. I can
only say that the form seems to me incurable, intolerable,
hopelessly characteristic of " a doggerel poet without a
sensitive ear for rhythm." The commoner it is, the more
fully developed, the more peculiarly Lydgatian, the clearer
is it that Lydgate was a bad metrist. The case is prac-
tically given away. But we shall not take unfair advan-
tage of the giving, and as usual examine the texts seriatim,
and seriously.
The Minor With regard to the Minor Poems, it may be granted to
Poems. j-jjg objectors above cited that a more careful edition of
them, distinguishing those which are certainly Lydgate's
from those which are not, and giving MS. collations, is
much needed. Yet it may be much doubted whether any
substantial mending is possible. The prevailing metre is,
as we should expect, rhyme-royal, which Chaucer had
made popular, of which he had given numerous and
admirable patterns, and which, by its precise and yet not
too exacting prosodic arrangement, was well calculated to
keep stumbling versifiers from actual falling. Unluckily
the opening poem, on Henry the Sixth's entry into London
after his coronation at Paris, is one of the very worst of
all, and one of the most seemingly impossible to mend.
One can hardly even imagine more shambling metre and
beggarly phrase than that of the passage cited below. 1
Others are somewhat better " The Marriage between an
Old Man and a Young Wife " (Lydgate is always better
at the satiric than at the serious), the " Horse, Goose, and
Sheep," of which Halliwell strangely gave but part, and
1 (Absolutely & la fortune du pot and not quite so bad as some. )
Ther whas the bisshope of Rouchester allso
The dene of Poulys, the chanons everychon,
Of dew os thei oughte to doo,
On procession with the Kyng to goon,
And thoughe I cannot reherse them on by oone,
Yet dar I sey as in ther entent
To do theyre dever fulle truely they ment.
If this be not doggerel, the word has neither connotation nor denotation in
English.
CHAP, ii THE SUCCESSORS OF CHA UCER 225
especially " The Churl and the Bird." In some pieces
Lydgate accepts or attempts the ballade form : and he has
several combinations of octosyllables and decasyllabics,
with some novelties, especially the very interesting measure
of " London Lickpenny," the best known and by far the
best and brightest of his efforts.
It has been said that Lydgate is better at light
subjects than at heavy ones, his lack of sheer poetry being
less apparent in them, and his prosodic shortcomings
benefiting by the universal allowance to comic verse,
while his actual sense of fun is by no means dull. The
huge translation of the Pilgrimage of Man is full of
humorous passages, for the most part quite intended, and
several of the minor poems are really amusing. But
London Lickpenny is the best and most sustained of London
all, not merely from the point of view of students Q { Llck P enn y-
manners and customs, but from that of lovers of literature.
There is no such vivid picture of old London anywhere,
.and the vividness is very greatly assisted by the metre, 1
in which the rhyme-royal of eights, instead of making a
stumbling effort at syllabic uniformity, swings with an
ease and sureness of equivalence, contrasting most satis-
factorily, but, from another point of view, most strangely,
with the knock-kneed halting of his usual verse. And,
independently of its individual merit, the thing connects
itself most interestingly as the work of a known writer,
highest ranked of his own later contemporaries in what
some call " art-poetry," with those popular adespota, which,
1 Unto the Rolls I gat me from thence,
Before the clarkes of the chauncerye,
Where many I found earnyng of pence,
But none at all once regarded mee.
I gave them my playnt uppon my knee :
They lyked it well when they had it reade,
But lackyng money I could not be sped.
Etc. etc.
Few pieces exhibit the life given by trisyllabic equivalence better than this.
The refrains in other poems are not seldom good, as
All slant in change like a mydsomer rose.
But they may have been second-hand.
VOL. I Q
226 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK in
as we shall see, go some way to remove the reproach of
the century in matters prosodic.
The story of That reproach is most certainly not removed by the
Story of Thebes, though, once more, the protest ot the
defenders about a bad text must be allowed for what it is
worth. 1 Sure one may be, at any rate, that not many
worse texts, whether the fault be the fault of author,
copyist, or printer, exist, out of the fifteenth century and
the early sixteenth. And one may feel very nearly sure
that the abundance of such texts at this time is not
purely a coincidence. No doubt by a sufficient exercise
of eclecticism, and especially by that " touching up the
final e's" of which Dr. Furnivall has spoken (with the
mixture of frankness and humour which endears him to
all who know him personally, and should do so to many
who only know his writings), you may do much. But
what you never will do, without sheer rewriting, is to get
out of Lydgate, especially in his decasyllabic verse, any
kind of flowing or poetical metre. It is not merely that
the five precious types, and that most precious of all, the
broken-backed " C," swarm and wriggle " like crushed
frogs," as Dirk Hatteraick says of the unlucky gauger.
Unless you do something more than " touch up " you will
find it impossible to resist the conclusion that there are
frequent octosyllabic lines in the piece, and, what is more,
that the actual octosyllabic couplet is to be found there. 2
Challenging, as the thing almost insanely does, a direct
comparison with the Knights Tale, its deficiencies no
doubt come out even more strangely, and are presented
as even more hideous than they are. But they are
hideous enough in themselves.
The Hyperion (not merely a stock phrase here, as will
be seen) and the satyr are most glaringly contrasted in a
1 Not for more. And, as it so happens, we have both London Lickpenny
and part of the Story carefully edited in Professor Skeat's Specimens (3rd
ed. Oxford, 1880).
2 In the Skeat version, which is sure to have had all that can be done for
it, a passage of fourteen lines, or seven couplets, contains five octosyllabic
lines, one of them apparently catalectic, and three couplets which would be
much better if frankly octosyllabic. (Specimens, ed. cit. p. 28, 11. 1077-90.)
CHAP, ii THE SUCCESSORS OF CHA UCER 227
pair of passages which Professor Skeat has duly brought
together, but the prosodic and poetic lesson of which he
has mercifully refrained from drawing. Every one
knows Chaucer's really magnificent lines in the Knights
Tale (633-638), where individually excellent verses make a
perfect whole
The busy larke, messager of day,
Salueth in hire song the morwe gray,
And fyry Phebus ryseth up so brighte
That al the orient laugheth of the lighte.
And with his stremes dryeth in the greves
The silver droppes honging on the leves.
Lydgate in Story of Thebes, 1250 sg., writes
Ther he lay to the larke song
With notes newe hegh up in the ayr.
The glade morowe rody and right fayr,
Phebus also casting up his bemes
The heghe hylles gilt with his stremes.
Here the whole is a creaking discord. And as for the
parts line 3 is individually tolerable ; I would be so in an
octosyllabic poem, but is here quite out of place ; 2 can just
be made so by touching up the e's and allowing hiatus at the
caesura ; but 4 is either the abominable " C " or a single-
syllable first - foot line ; and 5 is apparently the latter.
Every line but one wants an apology of some kind : and
the whole team hirples, and pulls in different directions,
after a fashion partly comic and partly disgusting.
Turning to the new critical or edited texts, it is The Temple of
natural to take first the elaborately commented Temple of Glass '
Glass^ to which reference has been made. This consists
of a heroic prologue and epilogue, and of a body of some
1 20 rhyme - royal stanzas. The first is interesting,
because the editor has not scrupled to do the " touching
up " where the state of the MSS. was not gracious, nor to
insert chevilles of his own when the early printers do not
satisfy him. By all which spiritings, and by the help of
his Five Types, he has got things into a kind of shape.
1 Ed. J. Schick, E.E.T.S., London, 1891.
228 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK in
But the shapelessness of it after all will be best shown by
an example. 1
And the same may be said of the rhyme -royal, 2 re-
membering always what has been observed of that metre
and its effects on poets of this time.
The Assembly The Assembly of Gods* has been denied to Lydgate
(as, for the matter of that, have the Temple of Glass and
many other pieces), but, as it seems to me, with no good
reason. Its editor believes in "critical" editing, and observes,
with a coolness which I do not know whether to admire
or not, that fifteenth-century MSS. are not much to be
depended on, as we know the disuse of the e made scribes
put in words to patch up. The remark is .a little far-
ranging, and might be applied to the nineteenth and
twentieth ; but that need not matter to us. Dr. Triggs is,
however, not one of those happy persons who, so long as
they can classify irregularities, seem to regard them as no
irregularities at all, very much as if, when the calendar of
the Central Criminal Court has been made out, and the
offences classified, the prisoners were then to be dismissed
1 The opening
For thought, constreint, and greuous heuines,
For pensif , , and for heigh distres,
To bed I went nov this othir night,
Whan that Lucina with hir pale light
Was joyned last with Phebus in Aquarie,
Amyd Decembre, when of Januarie
Ther be Kalendes of the newe yere.
2 Stanza 16
This is to sein douteth neuer a dele
That ye shal have ful poss[ess]ion
Of him that ye cherissh nov so wel,
In honest maner, withoute offencioun,
Because I cnowe your entencion
Is truli set in parti and in al
To loue him best and most in special.
3 Ed. O. L. Triggs, E.E.T.S., London, 1896. Dr. Triggs's coolness is
almost excessive. He admits that Mr. Lowell may be right in speaking of
Lydgate's " barbarous jangle " : it is " probably correct " if Chaucer is taken as
standard. But "O.F. verse, with its great variety of lines and measures"
(what this means I do not know; the syllabic regularity of O.F. is nearly
impeccable), " and Chaucer's own verse forms" may have caused licence. " If
we forego a fixed metre and read the lines with their natural accentuation, a
fairly good rhythm is secured. " Dr. Pangloss is nowhere with Dr. Triggs !
CHAP, ii THE SUCCESSORS OF CHAUCER 229
without a stain on their characters. He honestly schedules
the lines in the Assembly as follows : 2 fourteen-syllable
lines, 5 thirteen, 47 twelve, 210 eleven, 546 ten, 179
nine, and 7 eight. To which for convenience we may add
the similar enumeration of Mr. Steele, the editor of the
Secrets of the Philosoffres * (like the Assembly written in The Secrets of
rhyme-royal, and, as concerns part of it, certainly Lyd- thePhllos ff res -
gate's) ; I fourteener, 2 thirteeners, 46 Alexandrines, 223
eleven syllables, 989 of the normal size, 287 nine syllables,
40 eight, and 2 seven.
The great similarity of these results, the fact that
one of the pieces is as certainly Lydgate's as anything that
we have, and the commendable refusal of both editors to
adopt the process of " touching up," make it worth while
to base some comments upon them. As for a third edited
text, the Two Nightingale Poems, 2 we have made-up The Two
rhymes-royal with editorial buckwashing, and the uni-
formity, such as it is, is naturally greater. But prosodic,
as distinguished from arithmetical, correctness is very little
better attained.
It has been generally admitted by those who have exam-
ined Lydgate's versification, whatever the view which they
may have taken of it in general, that he is very much less
to seek in the octosyllable than in the decasyllabic. The
decasyllabic, although, as we have seen, an early if not The Ptigrim-
frequent or regular product of the imposition of foot-
scansion on English language, was, as we have seen also, poems.
a very late comer to any considerable extent, and though
rarely fortunate in its chief introducer, was not unmixedly
lucky in the time and circumstances of its introduction.
It had been brought in just as the great changes in regard
to the final e and other matters were beginning, and the
result was that Chaucer's followers had to apply Chaucer's
metre to pronunciation which was every day ceasing to be
Chaucerian. The octosyllable, on the other hand, was of the
most ancient house of distinctively English that is Middle
English poetry. It had shown itself, struggling but
1 E.E.T.S., London.
2 Ed. Otto Glauning, E.E.T.S., London, 1900.
230 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK in
holding its own, at the very birth thereof; it had steadily
triumphed ; it had never been cast out or held under ;
and, best of all, it had, from all but the earliest period,
adapted itself to the two systems, uniform and equiva-
lenced, of syllabic metring. It was thus perhaps prepared
to meet any change in pronunciation, any difficulties of
form ; its general rhythm being so planted in the
English tongue and ear that nothing could drive it out or
smother it.
Therefore, whether we meet it in the ambitious and
precise allegorising of Reason and Sensuality^ or in the
enormous and fantastic excursions of the Pilgrimage? or
in Guy, or in the Saints' Lives, or where not, we note in
it a competence which Lydgate, prosodically speaking,
never possesses, or at least displays, elsewhere. 3 He is licen-
1 Ed. Sieper, E.E.T.S., London, 1901 sq. The preciseness even extends
to the metre, and Lydgate is often content with a simple catalexis when he
wants a change.
2 Ed. Furnivall, E. E.T.S. , London, 1899 sq. Here is a passage from
this (which for the last half-dozen years has been my " Baruch," though I do
not know that I have been more successful in my exhortations than La Fon-
taine was in his). The Pilgrim, elaborately armed and exhorted by " Grace -
Dieu," has rather reluctantly set out, and meets a young lady "off queynte
array," and well feathered. He takes a great fancy to her, tells her so with
much plainness, and wants to know who she is. She is Youth, she says, and
proceeds to expound her attributes and habits with a charming frankness.
Wise and goody persons may say this or that
But offal thys I do no cure, Now at the dees, etc.
I will be ffethryd and go ffle,
And among, go sporte me :
Pleye at the cloos, among, I shal And the ffyn of my entent is
And somewhyle rennyn at the bal To folwe the lust of my corage,
Wyth a staff mad lyk an hook ; And to spende my yonge age
And I wyl han a kampyng crook ; In merthe only, and in solace,
Ffor I desyre in my depos Ffolowe my lustes in ech place :
Ffor to han non other croos. Therto hooly I me enclyne,
And, among, I wyl nat spare Rather than to han doctryne
To hunt for hert, ffor buk and hare ; Off ffader, moder, thogh they be wyse,
Somtyme fysshe and cachche ffowlys, Al ther techyng 1 despyse ;
And somtyme pleyen at the bowlys ; And in no thyng ys set my cure
Among, shetyn at bessellys, But my lustys to procure.
And after pleyn at the merellis, Ed. fit. p. 305, 11. 11,178 sq.
3 It is perhaps only fair to give here first Lydgate's own confession and
apology as to res metrica (with the rather unkind caution that this may be a
piece of false humility, imitated, like so much else, from Chaucer, but without
the saving grace of Chaucer's irony), and also the stanza which Warton has
pronounced "harmonious and elegant."
CHAP, ii THE SUCCESSORS OF CHAUCER 231
tious enough, but then the licences of the octosyllable were
an old theme, and he must indeed have been a clumsy or
a disorderly person who could not content himself with
them. One note, indeed, there is of the prosodic and
poetical weakness which besets Lydgate here as elsewhere
the use of tags and stuffings for the verse which is so
constant and so shameless in the romancers, especially in
his own contemporary Lonelich. 1 But otherwise there is
not so much fault to find with him. He is here weak,
but not utterly inharmonious or halting. In his inten-
tionally decasyllabic verse he is utterly halting and inhar-
monious. But further remarks on these defects of his
will be best postponed till we have given some notice to
Occleve, the traditional partner of his sin, and still further
ones till we have also surveyed their fifteenth and early
sixteenth century followers.
Occleve 2 is interesting to the general literary historian Occleve.
as a " moon " of Lydgate, as the source of some not unlively
sketches of manners, as a fresh rehandler of one famous
story, and as the rather dull teller of another. But he has,
for the historian of English prosody, one special and
almost singular merit. 3 Nobody has ventured to say that we
have a single piece of Chaucer in Chaucer's own hand ; and
The first is from the Troy Book :
And trouthe of metre I sette also asyde ;
For of that art I hadde as tfw no guyde [observe this]
Me to reduce whan I went a-wronge :
I toke none hede nouther of shorte nor longe.
The other from the Life of Our Lady :
O thoughtfull herte, plonged in distresse
With slombre of slouth this long wynter's night !
Out of the slepe of mortall hevinesse
Awake anon, and look upon the light
Of thilke sterre, that with her bemys bright
And wyth the shynynge of her stremes merye
Is wont to glad all our hemisperie.
It may be admitted that the Stella Marts has shone kindly on her poet
here.
1 They wish us now to call him Loz/elich. I decline he is most unlovely ;
and besides, the next authority is sure to put the back, or make it something
else.
2 Ed. Furnivall and Gollancz, E.E.T.S., London, 1897 sq.
3 Gower, see ante, may come near, but not quite up to him.
232 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOK HI
Lydgate-study has not progressed far enough for us to be
certain whether anything or nothing of his is in such a
state. But there appears to be good reason for believing,
on the tolerably solid ground of handwriting, 1 that we
have much, if not most, of Occleve's own work in Occleve's
own hand. This is what we want most of everything,
and before everything. By the help of this we can see
that, whatever Lydgate may have done, Occleve did do
his best to get ten syllables into each line. His work is
almost wholly decasyllabic, and commonly in rhyme-royal
with a few octaves. The result of examining it is very
curious. By using or rej 
