§ 17. The two-beat theory, on the other hand, is that each of the two hemistichs of the alliterative line need have only two accented syllables. In England this view was taken by two sixteenth-century writers on verse, George Gascoigne[35] who quotes the line,
No wight in this world, that wealth can attain,
giving as the accentual scheme ` ´ ` ` ´ ` ´ ` ` ´; and by King James VI, whose example is—
Fetching fude for to feid it fast furth of the Farie.[36]
In 1765, Percy, in his Essay on Pierce Plowman’s Visions, pointed out ‘that the author of this poem will not be found to have invented any new mode of versification, as some have supposed, but only to have retained that of the old Saxon and Gothick poets, which was probably never wholly laid aside, but occasionally used at different intervals’. After quoting[37] two Old Norse, he gives two Old English verses:—
Sceop þa and scyrede scyppend ure (Gen. 65),
ham and heahsetl heofena rices (ib. 33);
he continues: ‘Now if we examine the versification of Pierce Plowman’s Visions’ (from which he quotes the beginning—
In a somer season | when softe was the sonne