And kissed him in that tide;
And other lords of great valour
They also kissèd Segramour
In heart is not to hide.(Emaré.)
For that reason, because of the monotonous beat of the tail-rhymes in the middle and at the end of the stanza, it is chosen by the parodists of Wordsworth in the Rejected Addresses when they are aiming at what they think is flat and insipid in his poetry. But it is a form of stanza which may be so used as to escape the besetting faults; the fact that it has survived through all the changes of literary fashion, and has been used by poets in all the different centuries, is something to the credit of the minstrels, as against the rude common-sense criticism of the Host of the Tabard when he stopped the Rime of Sir Thopas.
Chaucer’s catalogue of romances is well known—
Men speken of romances of prys
Of Horn Child and of Ypotys
Of Bevis and Sir Gy,
Of Sir Libeux and Pleyndamour,