Meum est propositum in taberna mori.
With a "catch" syllable at each half[166] you get the full accentual iambic fifteener, and the fourteener follows.
Perhaps, though it is difficult to recognise the fourteener-rhythm attributed by Guest and others to Cædmon and later A.S. writers, it is not necessary to look for any foreign sources as other than auxiliary to the development of the metre in English. So soon as a definite iambic mould, with or without trochaic and anapæstic substitution, began to be impressed on the language, the amount of stuff usual in a full line would naturally fall into fourteener shape. It did so, we know, as early as the Moral Ode at least; and barely a century later, it showed its popularity by the abundant use of Robert of Gloucester and the Saints' Lives writers. Nor, although the inevitable and fortunate break-up into ballad eight-and-six encroached on its rights to a large extent, and the alliterative revival still more, did it lose its attraction, as Gamelyn and other things show, till it got half drowned in the doggerel welter of the fifteenth century. From this the earlier Elizabethans fished it out, cleaned and mended it for practice both independently and as part of the "poulter's measure," while the finest example existing was given by Chapman's Iliad in the early seventeenth century. More recently, except in the Sigurd variety, it has been seldom used for long poems, but has served as the vehicle of many of the finest short pieces in the poetry of the nineteenth century.
VII. Doggerel.—In the sense (see [Glossary]) in which this ambiguous word applies to line, it is very important to acquire some notion of its meaning, but rather difficult to put that notion except very hypothetically. It is, in this use, conveniently applied to an enormous mass of verse—sometimes hardly deserving that name, but principally produced in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—which refuses, except occasionally, to adjust itself to any standard, even liberally equivalenced, of iambic octosyllable, decasyllable, Alexandrine, and fourteener, or of the trochaic and anapæstic metres corresponding to some of these, though it comes nearest to the anapæstic division. The pure accentualist may dismiss it as lines of so many irregular beats, and trouble himself no farther. But that, on the principles of this book, will not do. An exceedingly interesting parallel between it (as well as one of its regularised forms, the anapæstic dimeter) and the Spanish long line, or "Arte Mayor," has been drawn by Professor Ker. (See [Bibliography].) But, without either taking or opposing his view, there is no doubt of the existence of this mare magnum of imperfect versification. It seems to have been fed by various streams. In the first place, as we see from the Gamelyn metre, and from some nursery songs (which, though they cannot be older than formed Middle English, may be nearly as old), like "The Queen was in the Parlour," the fourteener had a tendency to break itself into roughly balanced halves of sometimes different rhythm. The Alexandrine, never quite at home in English, would naturally bulge and straddle in the same way. On the regular and continuous anapæstic swing nobody had yet hit for long, though it probably arose in part from this very chaos. But perhaps the most abundant source of all was the attempt to write Chaucerian decasyllables with a constantly altering pronunciation, and the break-down in it. Examples of various forms of doggerel, with their corresponding metres, are given below.[167]
VIII. "Long" Lines.—Beyond the fourteener or fifteener English verse has, until quite modern times, rarely gone. There are sixteeners to be found in fourteenth-century verse, in the disorderly welter of the fifteenth, and (no doubt deliberately used) in the experiments of the Mirror for Magistrates; but neither they, nor any longer still, commended themselves much to any English poet before Mr. Swinburne. His experiments are famous, and some examples of them are given elsewhere. Their spirit and sweep has made not a few readers look on them with favour; but it may be questioned whether any lines beyond seven feet—and whether even six- and seven-foot lines when trisyllabic feet are allowed—do not tend to break themselves up in English. In Mr. Swinburne's own case certainly, and perhaps in some others, the seven-foot anapæstic line of Aristophanes gave the suggestion, while the abundant practice in so-called English hexameters may also have had not a little to do with it.
B. Stanzas, etc.
I. Ballad Verse.—A good deal has been said incidentally about this at several points in the preceding text; but summary, and a little repetition, will not be out of place here. There has been an idea with some that it is a shortened form of the Romance-six (see next article) or rime couée; but this does not seem to the present writer nearly so probable as the supposition of a break-up of the certainly earlier fourteener couplet, which gives it at once.[168] It is, however, not improbable that the crystallising of this was assisted by the hesitation, also noticed in text, between octosyllabic and hexasyllabic couplet. The indecision and vacillation, noticeable in such a piece as Horn, between the four- and three-foot line, would easily settle to alternation more or less regular, and then, with the assistance of the broken fourteener, into quite regular use. We do not, however, find decided examples much before "Judas" and the Gospel of Nicodemus in the late thirteenth century; it is not common in the early mysteries, though there are approaches to it; and it seems first to have secured the popular ear in the much-discussed compositions which give it its name, and which, in English, are very doubtfully to be traced before the late fourteenth century. These, however, "estated" it once for all; though for a long time it was treated with the usual mediæval freedom—wisely restored by Coleridge in the Ancient Mariner—and the exact number of four lines, 8, 6, 8, 6, was not adhered to. The further fixed variations, familiar from Psalm- and Hymn-books, of "L.M." (long measure) or octosyllabic quatrain; "C.M." (common measure), the actual 8 and 6; and "S.M." (short measure) 6, 6, 8, 6, date only from Elizabethan times, the last being a breaking-up of the then favourite "poulter's measure" or alternate Alexandrine and fourteener.
II. Romance-Six or Rime Couée.—As in the case of the ballad-four, much has been said about this earlier. In considering its origin it is particularly desirable to distinguish between the possible source of the principle and the probable derivation of the actual form. The term couée (caudatus), which, as has been pointed out, does not apply very obviously or appropriately to our actual romance-stanza, appears to refer originally to the peculiar jingly infusion of rhyme into Latin hexameters which has been traced back at least to the twelfth century, and the most famous example of which is the original of "Jerusalem the Golden," the De Contemptu Mundi of Bernard of Morlaix—
Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus—
Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus,