Note 901 — APPENDIX.

Or of thirteen syllables, in what they call a feminine verse. It is remarkable that the French alone have retained this old Gothic metre for their serious poems; while the English, Spaniards, &c. have adopted the Italic verse of ten syllables, although the Spaniards, as well as we, anciently used a short-lined metre. I believe the success with which Petrarch, and perhaps one or two others, first used the heroic verse of ten syllables in Italian poesy, recommended it to the Spanish writers; as it also did to our Chaucer, who first attempted it in English; and to his successors Lord Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyat, &c.; who afterwards improved it and brought it to perfection. To Lord Surrey we also owe the first introduction of blank verse in his versions of the second and fourth Books of the Æneid, 1557, 4to.