Note 102 — Chapter II

In the above instance the rime is sacrificed, and I do not mean that all anomalous lines in Spenser's measure become strict decasyllables when done into ME.; indeed, they do so of course only by accident. My point is that Chaucer's verse as read by the sixteenth-century editors must have often contained just such unmetrical lines as Spenser's. The view I have indicated above is that accepted by W. J. Courthope (History of English Poetry, ii. p. 253). Herford, on the other hand, while having recourse to Chancer's influence to explain Spenser's anomalies, regards the metre in question as derived from the old alliterative line. From this view I am reluctantly forced to dissent. The alliterative line may be readily traced in the mystery cycles, and later influenced the verse of the interludes and such comedies as Royster Doyster; and this tradition may have affected the verse of the later poets of the school of Lydgate, and even the popular ideas concerning Chaucer's metre. But as to the actual origin of Spenser's four-beat line there can surely be no doubt.