CHAPTER VI

CONTINUOUS ILLUSTRATIONS OF ENGLISH SCANSION ACCORDING TO THE FOOT SYSTEM

I. Old English Period: Scansion only dimly visible--II. Late Old English with _nisus_ towards Metre: "Grave" Poem--III. Transition Period: Metre struggling to assert itself in a new way--IV. Early Middle English Period: Attempt at merely Syllabic Uniformity with Unbroken Iambic Run and no Rhyme--V. Early Middle English Period: Conflict or Indecision between Accentual Rhythm and Metrical Scheme--VI. Early Middle English Period: The Appearance and Development of the "Fourteener"--VII. Early Middle English Period: The Plain and Equivalenced Octosyllable--VIII. Early Middle English Period: The Romance-Six or _Rime Couée_--IX. Early Middle English Period: Miscellaneous Stanzas--X. Early Middle English Period: Appearance of the Decasyllable--XI. Later Middle English Period: The Alliterative Revival (Pure)--XII. Later Middle English Period: The Alliterative Revival (Mixed)--XIII. Later Middle English Period: Potentially Metrical Lines in Langland (_see_ Book II.)--XIV. Later Middle English Period: Scansions from Chaucer--XV. Later Middle English Period: Variations from Strict Iambic Norm in Gower--XVI. Transition Period: Examples of Break-down in Literary Verse--XVII. Transition Period: Examples of True Prosody in Ballad, Carols, etc.--XVIII. Transition Period: Examples of Skeltonic and other Doggerel--XIX. Transition Period: Examples from the Scottish Poets--XX. Early Elizabethan Period: Examples of Reformed Metre from Wyatt, Surrey, and other Poets before Spenser--XXI. Spenser at Different Periods--XXII. Examples of the Development of Blank Verse--XXIII. Examples of Elizabethan Lyric--XXIV. Early Continuous Anapæsts--XXV. The Enjambed Heroic Couplet (1580-1660)--XXVI. The Stopped Heroic Couplet (1580-1660)--XXVII. Various Forms of Octosyllable-Heptasyllable (late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century)--XXVIII. "Common," "Long," and "In Memoriam" Measure (Seventeenth Century)--XXIX. Improved Anapæstic Measures (Dryden, Anon., Prior)--XXX. "Pindarics" (Seventeenth Century)--XXXI. The Heroic Couplet from Dryden to Crabbe--XXXII. Eighteenth-Century Blank Verse--XXXIII. The Regularised Pindaric Ode--XXXIV. Lighter Eighteenth-Century Lyric--XXXV. The Revival of Equivalence (Chatterton and Blake)--XXXVI. Rhymeless Attempts (Collins to Shelley)--XXXVII. The Revived Ballad (Percy to Coleridge)--XXXVIII. Specimens of _Christabel_; Note on the Application of the _Christabel_ System to Nineteenth-Century Lyric generally--XXXIX. Nineteenth-Century Couplet (Leigh Hunt to Mr. Swinburne)--XL. Nineteenth-Century Blank Verse (Wordsworth to Mr. Swinburne)--XLI. The Non-Equivalenced Octosyllable of Keats and Morris--XLII. The Continuous Alexandrine (Drayton and Browning)--XLIII. _The Dying Swan_ of Tennyson scanned entirely through to show the Application of the System--XLIV. The Stages of the Metre of "Dolores" and the Dedication of "Poems and Ballads"--XLV. Long Metres of Tennyson, Browning, Morris, and Swinburne--XLVI. The Later Sonnet--XLVII. The Various Attempts at "Hexameters" in English--XLVIII. Minor Imitations of Classical Metres--XLIX. Imitations of Artificial French Forms--L. Later Rhymelessness--LI. Some "Unusual" Metres and Disputed Scansions 37