They were enslaved to the old fourteen-syllabled metre, which might or might not be printed in lines of eight and six, but which, in whatever way it was arranged, had a fatal tendency to fall into a rocking-horse movement. We constantly meet with rhymes like these:—
“The hawtye verse that Maro wrote
made Rome to wonder muche,
And mervayle none for why the style
and weightynes was such,
That all men judged Parnassus Mownt
had clefte herselfe in twayne,
And brought forth one that seemed to drop
from out Minervaes brayne.”