[185] So called from a poet Leo of the Middle Ages (c. 1150) who wrote in hexameters rhyming in the middle and at the end. Similar verses, however, had been used occasionally in classic Latin poetry, as e.g. Quot caelum stellas, tot habet tua Roma puellas, Ovid, Ars Amat. i. 59.
[186] See The Oxford Dante, pp. 379–400, or Opere minori di Dante Alighieri, ed. Pietro Fraticelli, vol. ii, p. 146, Florence, 1858, and Böhmer’s essay, Über Dante’s Schrift de vulgari eloquentia, Halle, 1868.
[187] See B. ten Brink, The Language and Metre of Chaucer, translated by M. Bentinck Smith. London, Macmillan & Co., 1901, 8º, § 350.
[188] Stanzas of six and twelve lines formed on the same principle (a a a b b b and a a b b c c d d e e f f) are very rare. For specimens see Metrik, ii, § 363.
[189] Cf. O. Wilda, Über die örtli che Verbreitung der zwölfzeiligen Schweifreimstrophe in England, Breslau Dissertation, Breslau, 1887.
[190] This is a stanza of four iambic lines alternately of four and three feet with masculine endings, usually rhyming a b a b.
[191] Chaucerian and other Pieces, &c., ed. Skeat, Oxford, 1897, p. 347.
[192] This form of stanza is of great importance in the anisometrical ‘lays’, which cannot be discussed in this place (cf. Metrik, i, § 168). In these poems the strophic arrangement is not strictly followed throughout, but only in certain parts; a general conformity only is observed in these cases.
[193] As to this form cf. Huchown’s Pistel of Swete Susan, herausgeg. von Dr. H. Köster, Strassburg, 1895 (Quellen und Forschungen, 76), pp. 15–36.
[194] Cf. R. Brotanek, Alexander Montgomerie, Vienna, 1896.