The black and darksome nights: the bright and gladsome days Indifferent are to him: his hope on God that stays; Each little village yields his short and homely fare, &c. : Poly Olbion, 13. In the same century, attempts were made to support this metre without the aid of final rhime. Blennerhasset, a kind of grumbling half-pay officer, thus vents his spleen against the Clergy, in the Mirror for Magistrates: And this I there did finde: they of the cleargie be : 1 The king must wage his warres : he hath no quiet day; : The serving man must serve and crouch with cap and knee; It will be seen, the writer affects alliteration, and never refuses either middle or final rhime, if it readily presents itself. There is a metre of six accents, used by Tuberville and others his contemporaries, in which the accents are often unequally divided between the two sections. A specimen of it may be found in the first volume." 1 Vide his Cadwallader. 2 Vol. 1. p. 275. There was yet another kind of psalm-metre, which seems to have come into fashion soon after the year 1500. It consisted of the fourteen-syllabled verse of the "common metre," preceded by the Alexandrine. In our hymn-books, its verses are divided, and it is called the "short metre." The following lines of Surrey may furnish us with an example: When somer took in hand: the winter to assaile,, With force of might and vertue great : his stormy blasts to quail, "Nothing more good than in the spring: the aire to fele a space, "There shalt thou heare and see: al kindes of birds y-wrought "Wel tune their voice, with warble small as nature hath them tought," &c. : The metre, thus written at length, is but rarely met with, except during the sixteenth century; when it was commonly known by the name of poulter's measure, because the poulterer, as Gaskoyne tells us, " giveth twelve for one dozen, and fourteen for another." CHAPTER VII. THE METRES OF FIVE ACCENTS seem to have been first used in English poems during the fourteenth century, though we have specimens of them in our Romance poetry, which were probably written before the close of the twelfth. The Troubadour had anticipated even this early date, and there is one poem in the Romance of Oc, which Raynouard would fix even before the year 1000. In these older poems, the verse generally consists of ten syllables, with a pause after the fourth; but as the first section is often lengthened, the number of syllables is, in many verses, increased to eleven. The mystery of the Foolish Virgins, which was written, during the twelfth century, partly in Latin, and partly in the Romance of Oc, contains the following staves. They seem to furnish us with the "rhythmus," which gave rise to this metre. It is by no means easy to connect this rhythmus with its metrum. Possibly, the Alcaic verse of eleven syllables * may have been the classical model. If the six syllables, furnished by the two dactyles, be read with three accents, like the latter section of the Asclepiad, † we shall have the cadence of those verses, which lengthen the first section. Ad vos | orare: sorores culpimus). As the last and important accent of the first section falls on the fourth syllable, the fifth may have been looked upon as a merely lengthening syllable, and gradually dropt from the verse, as unessential to the rhythm. If it be said, such fifth syllable is of the same nature as that which is so often found lengthening the first section of the Alexandrine,‡ I would distinguish the cases thus. The Alexandrine lengthens both sections indifferently; while the verse of five accents never lengthens the second, but very frequently the first-the proportion being generally one verse in seven. Again, I do not remember any instance of either section being lengthened in the 66 rhythmus" of the Alexandrine; whereas we have just quoted a Latin verse of five accents, which lengthens the first section. I incline therefore to think, that the lengthening syllables of the Alexandrine are mere foreign additions, grafted on the "rhythmus ;" and that the supernumerary syllable, in the verse of five accents, is, on the contrary, a remnant of its earlier and more perfect structure. I have met with no specimen of this metre, among our English rhythms, before the fourteenth century. In the early half of this century lived Richard of Hampole, who, This verse was used by the later Latin poets, not only in alcaic staves, but sometimes through entire poems. † See p. 229. See p. 230. n. (1). according to Lydgate, turned into English the Prick of Conscience, Richard hermite, contemplative of sentence, Fall of Princes. Now we have two translations of the Stimulus Conscientiæ,-one in the metre of four accents, and another in a loose metre, which seems to have been meant for that of five accents. If this be Hampole's version, it is one of the oldest specimens of the metre now extant. As Richard died in 1348, and Chaucer did not write his great work till 1388, it may have preceded the Canterbury Tales by some forty or fifty years. The following description of the joy, that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,” is taken from one of Warton's extracts. The good|e soule | : schal have in his | heryng|e And of al man er tenes of | musikle The whuche to man|nes her|te: mig te like, The wuch'e schal nevler: ces se ne faylle. And so schil' schal that noys|e bi | and so swetle : 1 Schil, loud. 2 Yhuryd, y-heard. 3 Zare, provided, ready. |