66 en notwithstanding his protest against these kinds of verse, has left us specimens of both, for some of his rhythms. are indexed in the margin as cowee," and others as 66 terlacee." Generally, his "cowee" verse is written like his alexandrines; but occasionally we find it written in a form, which may, I think, afford us a clue to the real meaning of the phrase. For Edward's good deed The Baliol gave him, as his meed, }a wicked return! Turn we again to our tale, And on our Gest to speed-} where we a Maddok left. Now is Morgan taken, and Maddok he bends under ; in the following example. "Arm ye now all, that no one him withdraw "How it may best fall out, I have you told the way. "" When ye have the vantage of your en'mies, none shall ye save; "Smite with sword in hand! all Northumberland with right shall ye have! “And all England, moreover, shall for the war be lost-for dread of this! "Scot never began on Englishman such doughty deed to do! may also have been formed from the alexandrine by a duplication of the first section. When the rhiming sections, or (in the other case) the sectional rhimes were included within brackets, the remainder of the verse was written as a kowe-that is, as a tail or pendant; and verse, which admitted of such arrangement, seems to have been called " ryme cowee," or tail-verse. In some kinds of verse, several rhimes were included within the bracket; and hence we may understand the difficulty, which rude and unskilful rhimesters felt in "coppling a kowe,”—that is, I take it, in rhiming the tail or "kowe" with a verse, from which it was separated by so wide an interval. If this interpretation be the true one, the term "copple" does not (as Walter Scott conjectured) mean a rhiming couplet, nor (as Price conjectured) an alliterative couplet, but merely the correspondence which exists between two rhiming lines, whether immediately connected, or widely separated from each other. In "ryme enterlacee," or interwoven verse, Robert of Brunne has written nearly all the latter part of his Chronicle. Several specimens of it have already been laid before the reader, one of which may be found at p. 230. Both these kinds of mixed rhime were known to the Latinist, and at a very early period. In one of the Cotton MSS.* there is a letter, written in rhiming hexameters, which is ascribed to Pope Damasus, who lived in the fourth century. The five first couplets have the interwoven rhime. Cartula nostra tibi portat, Rainolde, salutes ; Other examples may be found at somewhat later periods, and in the tenth and eleventh centuries this rhime was spread over Europe. The "cowee," or tail-verse, was quite as much in favour with the monks as the interwoven. The following versus * Titus, D. XXII. f. 91. caudati are taken from the work of Theodatus, "De contemptu Mundi," and are of the tenth century. Pauper amabilis et venerabilis est benedictus, Hic ubi mergitur, horrida cernitur omnisi mago, &c. There is yet a third kind of mixed rhime, which, though it has had less influence on our English than on certain foreign rhythms, deserves some notice. It may be called the close rhime, inasmuch as one "copple" or pair of rhimes is, as it were, shut up within the other, This, like the interwoven and tail-rhime, seems to have been first used by the Latinist. We have an example of it in the "preludium" to the Life of St. Malchus,* written soon after the year 1100 by Reginald, a monk of Canterbury. It begins thus Prælia gesturus pelago navalia miles Dat pugnæ similes ludos prius, et quasi durus Currit, maturat, secum pugnando jocatur, &c. The staves which resulted from the application of the mixed rhime, were varied by two very simple expedients. Sometimes two or more of these staves were combined together, so as to form a compound-stave; and occasionally some portion of the stave was repeated. This kind of repetition was used by the monk to vary even the classical metres. Thus he obtained a new kind of elegiac metre, by repeating the hexameter-each pentameter being preceded by two instead of the single hexameter required by the classical model. Besides the staves which originated in mixed and continuous rhime, there are others, which have sprung from the use of the Wheel and Burthen. By the latter of these terms I would understand the return of the same words at the close of each stave, and by the former the return of some marked and peculiar rhythm. It would seem when a wheel or burthen once became familiar to the popular ear, it was often used in other staves with a view to recommend them to popular notice. The advantages of classing such compound-staves, according to their wheel or burthen, must be obvious, when we remember such appendage was mostly selected for its fitness-whether the fitness consisted in the sentiment conveyed, in the metrical properties of the wheel or burthen, or merely in the associations therewith connected. Sometimes, however, a burthen has entered into so many different combinations, and has been kept so long afloat in popular favour, that its original meaning has been lost, and it has become little more than a string of articulate sounds, tacked to the end of a stave. Still it possessed a certain convenience, inasmuch as it enabled a mixed company to join readily in a chorus. The bob is a very short and abrupt wheel or burthen, and it seems to have been borrowed from the Troubadour. The name has been used by some of our classical writers, and-to quiet the fastidious reader-has been sanctioned by Johnson. With riche dayntes on des: thi drotes are dight : Ther folo me a ferde: of fendes of helle. They hurle me unhendely: thai harme me in hight; The latest expedient, had recourse to for obtaining variety, was to take some well-known stave, and alter the number of accents in certain of its verses. If the number be lessened, a phrase might be borrowed from King James, and the stave, with much convenience, called a broken one. When the stave is varied by lengthening one of its verses, it is almost invariably fashioned on the model which Spenser has left us, and therefore may be termed a Spenser-stave. Both broken and Spenser-staves were invented during the latter half of the sixteenth century, and some of their varieties still keep a place, among the favourite combinations of English poetry. Having said thus much as to the principles which governed the formation of our staves, we may now shortly notice a peculiarity belonging to many of the older ones. In some poems the leading thought or expression with which a stave concludes, is taken up and repeated in the stave succeeding; in others, the staves are independent of each other, but the different portions of each are knit together by a like artifice. Both these kinds of Iteration are found in the old poems which Pinkerton published under the titles of Sir Gawane and Sir Galuron, and Gawane and Gologras. The stanzas which follow relate part of the interview between Queen Waynour, the gay lady that called King Arthur husband, and the ghost of her mother-who, by the by, seems to have been everyway worthy of the daughter. The ghost is spokeswoman. With rich dainties, on dais, thy nobles are furnished, There follow me a host of fiends from hell! They dash me down cruelly, they torture me toth' height! Was never made, in this world, a more woful wight! It were full hard, for any tongue, my torment to tell— |