Puttenham (1589) is the first metrician who quotes four-foot trochaic lines; similar verses also occur during the same period in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and other plays.
Whether they were introduced directly on foreign models, or originated indirectly from the influence of the study of the ancients by means of a regular omission of the first thesis of the iambic metres, we do not know. It is likewise uncertain who was the first to use strict trochaic verses deliberately in English, or in what chronological order the various trochaic metres formed in analogy with the iambic ones entered into English poetry.
The longest trochaic lines, to which we first turn our attention, seem to be of comparatively late date.
The eight-foot trochaic line, more exactly definable as the acatalectic trochaic tetrameter (cf. § [77]), is the longest trochaic metre we find in English poetry. As a specimen of this metre the first stanza of a short poem by Thackeray written in this form has been quoted already on page [127]. As a rule, however, this acatalectic feminine line is mingled with catalectic verses with masculine endings, as e.g. in the following burlesque by Thackeray, Damages Two Hundred Pounds:
Só, God bléss the Spécial Júry! | príde and jóy of Énglish gróund,
Ánd the háppy lánd of Éngland, | whére true jústice dóes abóund!
Brítish júrymén and húsbands, | lét us háil this vérdict próper:
Íf a Brítish wífe offénds you, | Brítons, yóu’ve a ríght to whóp her.
While the catalectic iambic tetrameter is a line of seven feet (the last arsis being omitted), the catalectic trochaic tetrameter loses only the last thesis, but keeps the preceding arsis; and on this account it remains a metre of eight feet.