As E | olus hem blew aboute.'
This variation is still admissible, and is, of course, common enough in such poems as Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. It is considered a beauty.
The introduction of two more syllables in lines of the above type gives us a similar variation in the longer line. If, for example, after the word thousand in the third of the above lines, we introduce the word freres (dissyllabic), we obtain the line:—
'Twen | ty thousand freres in a route.'
It is a remarkable fact, that this very line actually occurs in the Canterbury Tales (Group D, 1695); as I have pointed out in the note to l. 2119 of the House of Fame, at p. [286] below. Persistent efforts have often been made to deny this fact, to declare it 'impossible,' and to deride me for having pointed it out (as I did in 1866, in Morris's edition of Chaucer, i. 174); but I believe that the fact is now pretty generally admitted. It is none the less necessary to say here, that there is rather a large number of such lines in the Legend of Good Women; precisely as we might expect to find in a metre which was, in fact, a new experiment. As it is advisable to present the evidence rather fully, I here cite several of these lines, marking off the first syllable in the right way:—
'That | of all' the flour-es in the med-e'; 41.
'Suf | fisaunt this flour to preys' aright'; 67.
'Of | this flour, when that it shuld unclos-e'; 111.
'Mad' | her lyk a daisie for to sen-e'; 224.
'Half | hir beautee shulde men nat fynd-e'; 245.