the Welsh, whose system of metre is more intricate than that of any other people. From our Saxon ancestors a scheme of alliterative verse was retained, which became obsolete almost as soon as Piers Ploughman's Visions (one of the most remarkable works in the language) had been composed in it. The extravagant fashion of the Scalds, who strung mythological metaphors into a sort of language which was one continued riddle, had no imitators here; nor has it had any parallel in European literature, except in the short-lived style which Gongora introduced among the Spaniards. But with what care the vernacular poetry was cultivated as an art may be seen in the Metrical Romances, in many of which the stanzas are very graceful, and in others not less curiously elaborate. The first reformation which it underwent was to free it from some gratuitous difficulties, and divest it of the cumbrous ornaments with which it had been overloaded. Chaucer, who is deservedly accounted the Father of English Poetry, effected this. The line of English poets begins with him, as that of English kings with William the Conqueror; and if the change introduced by him was not so great, his title is better. Kings there were before the conquest, and of great and glorious memory too; but the poets before Chaucer are like the heroes before Agamemnon; even of those whose works have escaped oblivion, the names of most have perished.

Father Chaucer, throwing off all trammels. simplified our verse. Nature had given him the ear, and the eye, and the imagination of a poet; and his diction was such as that of all great poets has ever been, and ever will be, in all countries, neither cramped by pedantic rules, nor vitiated by prevailing fashions, nor raised on stilts, nor drooping for want of strength, but rising and falling with the subject, and always suited to it.

The seven-lined stanza of his Troilus and Cresseide 3

3 Sydney seems to have considered this as his greatest poem. "Chaucer," he says, "undoubtedly did excellently in his Troilus and Cresseide, of whom truly I know not whether to marvel more, either that he in that misty time could see so clearly, or that we, in this clear age, go so stumblingly after him."— Defence of Poesy.

was adopted from the Provenceal poets. I know not whether he had any example of the ten-syllable couplet in the poets of France, Provence, and Italy, but the Hermit of Hampole, Richard Rolle, who perhaps himself followed others, had shown him the way in this. That the one form of verse was, in his judgment, as well fitted for grave and lofty subjects as the other, is certain, for in such subjects he has employed them both; but it appears that the couplet took its character in common opinion from his lighter pieces, and was supposed to be adapted for nothing better. And while the "Troilus verse," as King James called it, obtained the dignified title of Rhythm Royal,1 the strain in which the knight related his tale of Palamon and Arcite, and in which "the story of Cambuscan bold" had been pitched, was degraded in public estimation, and distinguished by the contemptuous term of riding rhymes.5 It is a disputed question whether Chaucer's verses be

4"His metre heroical of Troilus and Cresseid is very grave and stately, keeping the staff of seven and the verse of ten: his other verses of the Canterbury Tales be but riding rhyme, nevertheless very well becoming the matter of that pleasant pilgrimage, in which every man's part is played with much decency." Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, p. 50.

"I had forgotten a notable kind of rhyme called riding rhyme, and that is such as our master and father, Chaucer, used in his Canterbury Tales, and in divers other delectable and light enterprises. As this riding rhyme serveth most aptly to write a merry tale, so rhythme royal is fittest for a grave discourse." Gascoigne's Instructor, p. 12. Rithme royal is the seven-lined stanza of Troilus and Creseide. Gascoigne describes it as "a verse of ten syllables, and seven such verses make a staff, whereof the first and third lines do answer, across, in like termination and rhyme; the second, fourth, and fifth do likewise answer each other in terminations; and the two last do combine and shut up the sentence: this hath been called rithme royal, and surely it is a royal kind of verse, serving best for grave discourses." lb. p. 10.

James I. in his Reulis and cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie, says this stanza is called Troilus verse, and that it is to be used for tragical materis, complaintis, or testamentis."

5 Perhaps Shakspeare alludes to this appellation when he describes a still more familiar kind of measure, as the "right butterwoman's rate to market." Sermo pedestris is an expression analogous to riding rhyme.

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James I. speaks of the ten-syllable couplet as an inferior strain, not to be compared with any kind of stanza, ryme," he calls it, “ quhilk servis onely for lang historeis, and zit are nocht verse.”

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rhythmical or metrical. I believe them to have been written rhythmically, upon the same principle on which Coleridge composed his beautiful fragment of Christabel,

that the number of beats, or accentuated syllables in every line, should be the same, although the number of syllables themselves might vary. Verse so composed will often be strictly metrical; and because Chaucer's is frequently so, the argument has been raised that it is always so if it be read properly, according to the intention of the author. But to suppose that it was written as iambic verse, and that the lines were lengthened or shortened to the required measuré by sometimes pronouncing a final syllable, and sometimes letting it remain mute, according to the occasion, is supposing that Chaucer took greater liberties with the common pronunciation, (which must always be uniform,) and relied more on the judgment of the reader, than one who so perfectly understood the character of his mother tongue, and was so well acquainted with the ordinary capacities of men, can be supposed to have done, without impeachment of his sagacity. Be this as it may, it is no slight proof of that sagacity, that he should have

For this opinion, which was earnestly impugned by my old schoolfellow, James Boswell the younger, and in which I am supported by Farmer and Dr. Nott, (who, I think, has fully established it,) there is the explicit testimony of George Gascoigne, in his Instruction concerning the making of verse in English. He says, " Commonly now-adays in English rhymes, (for I dare not call them English verses,) we use none other order but a foot of two syllables, whereof the first is depressed or made short, and the second is elevated or made long; and that sound or scanning continueth throughout the verse. We have used in times past other kinds of metres. Also our father Chaucer hath used the same liberty in feet and measures that the Latinists do use; and whosoever do peruse and well consider his works, he shall find that although his lines are not always of one self-same number of syllables, yet being read by one that hath understanding, the longest verse, and that which hath most syllables in it, will fall to the ear correspondent with that which hath fewest syllables in it; and likewise that which hath in it fewest syllables shall be found yet to consist of words that have such natural sound as may seem equal in length to a verse which hath many more syllables of lighter accents. And surely I can lament that we are fallen into such a plain and simple measure of writing, that there is none other foot used but one; whereby our poems may justly be called rithms, and cannot by any right challenge the name of a verse. But since it is so, let us take the good as we find it."- Pp. 5, 6.

pitched the key and determined the length of verse, which, after so many experiments, and the lapse of nearly five centuries, have been found to accord best with the genius of the language; and that his "riding rhyme," under the more dignified denomination of the "heroic couplet," should be the measure which Dryden and Pope and their followers have preferred to all others for grave and lofty subjects.

The "ornate style," which is the worst fashion that has ever been introduced into English verse, began in Chaucer's time, and he adopted it in some of his smaller and later. pieces; perhaps as an experiment towards the improvement of a language then in a state in which experiments might allowably be tried perhaps to gratify some of his friends. who admired the new mode: but unless his faculties were impaired by age, of which there is no proof or indication, it is not possible that he could have approved of it himself. His language was what he had learned in the country, in the city, and in the court; what every one could understand, and every one could feel; it was the language of passion and of real life, and therefore the language of poetry: the ornate style was the language of the cloister; it was what any "Latiner" could be taught to write mechanically, without the slightest apprehension that any thing more than versification was required to constitute poetry, and even without ear for that. It was equally pedantic and antipoetical. For more than a century our poetry was overlaid with it. The age after Chaucer was in many respects darker than that which preceded it; his name, however, was held in reverence, and succeeding poets were instructed to look to him as their exemplar, even by those who departed from him most widely in their own practice.

The ornate fashion was suppressed with the monasteries in which it originated; and a new impulse was given to this branch of literature when Surrey introduced into it the forms as well as the character of Italian poetry. The same thing was done at the same time in Spain by Garcilaso de la Vega, and with the same success, each poet having produced a permanent effect upon the literature of his country. Sir Thomas Wyatt's name is associated with Surrey's in this reformation, and that of Boscan with Garcilaso's. The

change in England was greater than in Spain, because metrical versification was here substituted for rhythmical: to Surrey it is that the honor of this improvement must be ascribed; and as Boscan introduced the verso suelto into Spanish, Surrey, with better fortune, gave in English the first example of blank verse. It is uncertain whether he derived it from the Italian or the Spanish, or, which is quite as likely, whether the experiment was the result of his own conception; but in no other language has it succeeded so well as in ours, to which, indeed, it is so excellently adapted, that it might peculiarly be denominated the English metre: in no other could Shakspeare and Milton have found adequate expression for their thoughts.

In those languages wherein any of the earliest specimens of their poetry have been preserved, the verses seem generally to have been short; because, being composed when writing was either unknown or little used, and also being orally transmitted, they were in the first instance more easily endited, and in the second more readily remembered. While the art continued in a rude state, lengthening the line was no improvement; for if four feet were extended to five, it was generally done by the insertion of some useless epithet-and if to a greater length, the verse was then divided by a pause, regularly recurring in the same place. From Chaucer's time the line of five feet (whether in couplets or in stanzas) has been the most approved measure, and from Surrey's the iambic the most approved movement, in all subjects of great pith and moment. In the succeeding age there were many and important exceptions to the use of the measure; to that of the movement, few or none.

The line of fourteen syllables (which, being divided at its usual resting-place, is no other than the common ballad metre) was used in translations of the Eneid and the Metamorphoses; but it is remarkable that Chapman, who employed

7 In the letter to Sir Robert Howard, prefatory to Dryden's Annus Mirabilis," the old translation of Homer by Chapman," is said to be written in Alexandrine, or verses of six feet," the heroic metre of the French. This is one instance of Dryden's inaccuracy when he touches upon the history of his own art; and it is the more remarkable, because Chapman, having translated the Iliad and Odyssey in two different measures, used the Alexandrine in neither.