CHAPTER IV

THE ALLITERATIVE LINE IN ITS CONSERVATIVE FORM DURING THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES

A. THE ALLITERATIVE VERSE WITHOUT RHYME.

§ 52. Homilies and lives of the saints in rhythmical prose. Poems in regular alliterative verse 85 53. Use and treatment of words in alliterative verse 87 54. Examples of alliteration 88 55. Comparison of Middle and Old English alliterative verse 90 56. The versification of _Piers Plowman_ 93 57. Modification of forms in the North of England and in the Midlands 95

B. THE ALLITERATIVE LINE COMBINED WITH RHYME.

58. Growing influence of verse formed on foreign models 97 59. Lyrical stanzas: four-beat and two-beat lines 97 60. Forms of structure and versification 99 61. Narrative verse 101 62. Relation between rhyme and alliteration 101 63. Features of alliterative-rhyming lines 105 64. Structures of the _cauda_ 105 65. Two-beat lines in tail-rhyme stanzas 106 66. Rhyming alliterative lines in Mystery Plays 108 67. Alliteration in Moralities and Interludes 109 68. Four-beat scansion of Bale's verses 110 69. Examples of the presence or absence of anacrusis in the two hemistichs 110 70. Entire tail-rhyme stanzas 113 71. Irregular tail-rhyme stanzas: Skeltonic verse 114

C. REVIVAL OF THE FOUR-BEAT ALLITERATIVE VERSE IN THE MODERN ENGLISH PERIOD.

72. Examples from Gascoigne, Wyatt, Spenser, &c. 117 73. Attempted modern revival of the old four-beat alliterative line without rhyme 119 74. Examples of the development of the four-beat alliterative line in reversed chronological order 120 75. Summing-up of the evidence 124

=PART II. FOREIGN METRES=

DIVISION I. THE FOREIGN METRES IN GENERAL