Note 15 — OUR LITERARY GUIDES

That Lydgate's verse should occasionally be rough and halting is partly to be attributed to the wretched state in which his text has come down to us from the copyists, and partly to the arbitrary way in which he varies the accent. His heroic couplets in the Storie of Thebes are certainly very unmusical. For the whole question of his versification see Dr. Schick, Introduction to his edition of The Temple of Glas, pp. liv.-lxiii., and Schipper, Altenglische Metrik, 492-500. But neither of these scholars does justice to the exquisite music of his verse at its best.