[101] Vide Dante, De Vulgari Eloquio.
[102] What is said here of English applies with certain modifications to German, though the almost entire loss of Old German poetry and the comparatively late date of Middle make the process less striking and more obscure, and the greater talent of the individual imitators of French interferes more with the process of insensible shaping and growth. German prosody, despite the charm of its lyric measures, has never acquired the perfect combination of freedom and order which we find in English, as may be seen by comparing the best blank verse of the two.
[103] Of course there is plenty of alliteration in "Alison." That ornament is too grateful to the English ear ever to have ceased or to be likely to cease out of English poetry. But it has ceased to possess any metrical value; it has absolutely nothing to do with the structure of the line.
[104] His instance is Burns's—
"Like a rogue | for for | gerie."
It is a pity he did not reinforce it with many of the finest lines in The Ancient Mariner.
[105] The most accessible History of German Literature is that of Scherer (English translation, 2 vols., Oxford, 1886), a book of fair information and with an excellent bibliography, but not very well arranged, and too full of extra-literary matter. Carlyle's great Nibelungenlied Essay (Essays, vol. iii.) can never be obsolete save in unimportant matters; that which follows on Early German Literature is good, but less good. Mr Gosse's Northern Studies (1879) contains a very agreeable paper on Walther von der Vogelweide. The Wagnerites have naturally of late years dealt much with Wolfram von Eschenbach, but seldom from a literary point of view.
[106] Hildebrand and Hadubrand.
[107] Ed. Bartsch. 6th ed. Leipzig, 1886.
[108] For the verse originals see Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale (Oxford, 1883), vol. i. The verse and prose alike will be found conveniently translated in a cheap little volume of the "Camelot Library," The Volsunga Saga, by W. Morris and E. Magnusson (London, 1888).