CHAPTER VII

THE METRICAL TREATMENT OF SYLLABLES

§ 95. General remarks on formative and inflexional syllables 151 96. Treatment of the unaccented _e_ of words of three and four syllables in Middle English 152 97. Special remarks on individual inflexional endings 154 98. Treatment of _-en_ in Middle and Modern English 155 99. The comparative and superlative endings _-er_, _-est_ 156 100. The ending _-est_ 157 101. The endings _-eth_, _-es_ (_'s_) 158 102. The ending _-ed_ (_'d_, _t_) 158 103. The ending _-ed_ (_-od_, _-ud_) of the 1st and 3rd pers. sing. pret. and plur. pret. of weak verbs 159 104. The final _-e_ in Middle English poetry 160 105. Examples of the arbitrary use of final _-e_ 161 106. The final _-e_ in later poetry of the North 162 107. Formative endings of Romanic origin 163 108. Contraction of words ordinarily pronounced in full 165 109. Amalgamation of two syllables for metrical purposes 166 110. Examples of slurring or contraction 167 111. Other examples of contraction; apocopation 168 112. Lengthening of words for metrical purposes 169