VIII. CHIEF METRICAL FORMS: PART I
| Date | Heroic Couplet[243][244] | Octosyllabic Couplet | Ballad Meter | Blank Verse |
| Chaucer (d. 1400)[243][244] | Chaucer | Numerous ballads | ||
| Sir Patrick Spens | ||||
| 1500 | Chevy Chace | |||
| Surrey | ||||
| Spenser[244] | Spenser | Marlowe | ||
| 1600 | Shakespeare | |||
| Wither[243] | P. Fletcher | Jonson | ||
| Cowley[243] | Milton | |||
| Cooper’s Hill[243] | ||||
| Milton | ||||
| Dryden[243] | Butler | |||
| Dryden | ||||
| 1700 | ||||
| Pope[243] | Swift | |||
| Thomson | ||||
| Percy | ||||
| Johnson[243] | ||||
| Chatterton | ||||
| Goldsmith[243] | Goldsmith | Cowper | ||
| 1800 | Coleridge | Coleridge | Wordsworth | |
| Keats[244] | Scott | Scott | Keats | |
| Byron[243] | Byron | Shelley | ||
| Tennyson | ||||
| Arnold[244] | Tennyson | |||
| W. Morris[244] | W. Morris | D. G. Rossetti | Browning | |
| Arnold | ||||
| 1900 | Swinburne[244] | Swinburne |