Litheth and lesteneth · and herkeneth aright,
And ye schulle here a talking · of a doughty knight;
Sire Johan of Boundys · was his righte name,
He cowde of norture enough · and mochil of game.
Thre sones the knight hadde · that with his body he wan;
The eldest was a moche shrewe · and sone he bigan.
His bretheren loved wel here fader · and of him were agast,
The eldest deserved his father's curse · and had it at the last.
The goode knight his fader · livede so yore,
That deth was comen him to and handled him full sore.
The goode knight cared sore · syk ther he lay,
How his children scholde · liven after his day.
He hadde ben wyde-wher · but no housband he was,
Al the lond that he hadde · it was verrey purchas.
Fayn he wolde it were · dressed among hem alle,
That ech of hem hadde his part · as it might falle.
(Gamelyn, 1-16.)
(Here l. 8, with the almost certain crasis of "theldest," is a pure iambic fourteener. Elsewhere there are monosyllabic beginnings, contractions of whole or half feet, and great apparent "irregularity," but at the same time nearer and nearer approach to the anapæstic dimeter, which was to become so popular.)
[77] I.e. forms like "hugy" (Sackville), "bleaky" (Dryden), and "paly" (Coleridge). These forms somehow identified themselves with the artificial poetic diction of the eighteenth century, and have, since the early part of the nineteenth, been rather eschewed by poets.
[78] Or, rather, as any one may see from different editions of Dante, the trisyllables which do occur are almost always capable of being "slurred up."
[79] The scheme of the Faerie Queene was sent to Harvey soon afterwards.
[CHAPTER III]
FROM SHAKESPEARE TO MILTON—THE CLOSE OF THE FORMATIVE PERIOD
The high and (it is believed) thoroughly well-deserved praise bestowed upon Spenser at the close of the last chapter must not lead the student to suppose that Spenser worked alone, that he was the sole restorer and perfecter of English prosody at this time, or even that his work included all that was necessary or desirable. That work, as has been pointed out, tended towards the complete restoration of regular and at the same time thoroughly musical and spirited verse, but it kept—except in the early experiments of the Shepherd's Calendar—to the regular side, avoiding much trisyllabic substitution as well as "triple time" generally, and eschewing, likewise, strictly lyrical movements save of the stateliest kind, very much "broken and cuttit"[80] verse, and the like.