Orm—evidently, from his punctilio about spelling,[55] a man curious and particular about details—adopts the French principle of absolute syllabic uniformity; though he does not accept any of the actually existing French metres, and rejects—possibly to save trouble, possibly as thinking them unsuitable to his sacred subject—both assonance and rhyme. He writes—in the strictest and most humdrum iambic cadence, as of the least-inspired French or Latin poetry—"fifteeners" or combinations of eights and sevens. Of the old long-lined stave he has kept no positive quality but its centre pause, and hardly any important negative one save its rhymelessness. Of the new metre, he has aimed at—he has certainly reached—nothing but its foot-division and consequent rhythm. But he has got these in the most pronounced, if hardly in the most attractive, form. Except for the odd syllable, we are here already in full presence of the jog-trot ballad and hymn "common measure" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nay, this odd syllable itself is of great interest, for it reappears in the sung "breath" or "grunt"—"a":
Your sad one tires in a mile-a, etc.
The Moral Ode and the Orison of Our Lady.
Opinions may differ slightly on the question whether this fifteener is actually the same as the fourteener which later became so common, and which directly engendered the common measure itself; or whether the two were independent attempts to metricise the old long line. It is of course clear that, as final e's dropped off, fifteen would become fourteen in any case. But in two of the poems mentioned above, the Moral Ode and the Orison of Our Lady, although the first-named has many fifteeners, and the last is highly irregular, the set towards iambic seven-foot rhythm is well marked. And there are two still more interesting things about these two poems. We have several versions of the Poema Morale which have been arranged—not on prosodic grounds—in order of chronological sequence. And it is in the highest degree noteworthy that the latest of these forms, like the later version of Layamon, exhibits remarkable touches of prosodic melioration. It is still more important that among the irregular and experimental varieties of the Orison actual iambic decasyllables, and, what is more, something like the decasyllabic couplet, make their appearance nearly two centuries before Chaucer.[56]
The Proverbs of Alfred and Hendyng.
These remarkable lessons in comparison are repeated, with the usual and invaluable confirmation of variety, in the curious documents called respectively the Proverbs Alfred and the Proverbs of Hendyng. The relation, in point of matter, of the latter to the former, and of the former itself to a possible A.S. collection made by the king, or under his auspices, need not concern us. It is enough that our existing Proverbs of Alfred are M.E. in language and early thirteenth century in date; while those of "Hendyng" are perhaps half a century younger. These latter are slightly more modern in language; but this is accompanied by, and no doubt not a little directly connected with, still greater modernisation of form. The earlier rehandler (or some of the rehandlers, for the work is pretty certainly not of one only) evidently stuck as near as he could to his original—words and all. But he was, or they were, in Layamon's state—only more so. Rhyme appears fitfully; regular iambic and trochaic rhythm more fitfully; alliteration most fitfully of all. The various sections are stanza-bundles of short lines or half lines, which, taken singly and printed straight on, might tempt no very hasty, ill-informed, or unintelligent reader to regard them as sheer prose, with an irregular sing-song and jingle here and there. On the other hand, the Proverbs of Hendyng are unmistakable English verse, the stanza called in French rime couée, from the Latin versus caudatus (afterwards common and famous as the six-line stanza in which a very large proportion, if not the majority, of our romances are written). It is a combination of eight- and six-syllabled lines arranged 8, 8, 6, 8, 8, 6, and rhymed aabccb; the rhythm being regularly iambic, and the whole differing in no respect from similar verse of the nineteenth century, and in only one respect from such as Gray's "Cat" ode in the eighteenth. And that one is priceless, for it is the appearance of substitution—the great English characteristic which separates our verse from its French patterns—if patterns they were—which the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries unwisely gave up, for which Shenstone pleaded,[57] and which Chatterton, and Blake, and Southey, and Coleridge restored. Monosyllabic and trisyllabic feet, as shown in the examples,[58] are freely employed; and the result is that a double advantage is secured. The actual shapelessness of one direct parent, the broken-down A.S. versicle, is effectually cured: there is no possibility of mistaking this composition for prose. The possible monotony and sing-song of the other—the regular syllabic French model, long afterwards parodied and exposed immortally in Chaucer's Sir Thopas—is avoided likewise. There is a little assonance, but for the most part quite regular and satisfactory rhyme. There is effective correspondent rhythm, resulting from feet clearly marked, but, as has been said, boldly handled in the English, not the French or Low Latin manner. The stanza is well kept, though the substitution prevents its being a mere mechanic reproduction. In short, there is freedom, and there is order.
The Bestiary.
Not less worthy of study is the Bestiary.[59] Here the direct origins are fortunately known and are of the utmost importance. The ultimate one is the Latin of Thetbaldus in "Leonine" hexameters—that is to say, hexameters with, in this case not very complete or regular, but still unmistakable, rhyme at the cæsura and the end. This gives something of a ready-made correspondence to the old A.S. line with its middle break, and, at the same time, suggests rhyming halves. But there was also at hand a French bestiary by Philippe de Thaun, where the writer, taking the other already established hexameter-trimeter of his own literature, the Alexandrine, breaks it into regular six-syllabled couplets. The Englishman, whoever he was, endeavours to follow this arrangement, and perhaps something more. He has got the six-syllable line and couplet in his ear; he has got even a sort of notion of stanza in addition, and he now and then hears rhyme. But he is a very rough verse-smith, in the Proverbs of Alfred stage or near it, and he is perpetually hitting and missing cadences and constructions which were not to be perfected for long, but half developed—queer creatures rearing themselves from the earth like those in the old woodcuts of the Creation. He has more variety than Layamon, and sometimes more music than the Alfred man; but with them he provides the great museum of examples of English verse in the first stage of making.
Minor poems.
Every now and then, too, he provides us with something that is not rough at all, as in the passage appended,[60] which is perfect modern English rhythm and goes to a well-known carol tune. And of this more perfect craftsmanship, in forms precise enough to bring out the qualities and capacities of the new prosody, the minor and miscellaneous poems of the thirteenth century supply ample and varied instances. There is Romance-six, probably earlier than the Proverbs of Hendyng; "fourteener" metre, more polished than that of the Moral Ode; and, best of all, the beginning, in the Love-Rune,[61] of the great alternately rhymed octosyllabic quatrain, the "long measure" ("common," or the split fourteener, was to be a little later) of a myriad hymns and secular pieces since. This long measure is in some ways more advanced than almost anything of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, displaying equivalence, admitting internal rhyme[62]—prophesying, through Chatterton and Blake, the Great Instauration of Coleridge, Southey, and Scott.