In addition to the metres already mentioned, wide use was made in Middle English of the Alexandrine (often eombinod with the sept enary, but employed in comparative purity in Robert Mannyng's ('hronicle), the oetosyllabie couplet (extremely frequent). and a of lyric forms. There was considerable imitation of French poetry in its more complicated, as well as its simpler stanza arrangements; and the so called `tail-rhyme stanza' (used with hinnorous effect in Chaucer's Sip Thopas) was fairly com mon in narrative verse. To Chaucer, the first great master of the newel- versification, is due the introduction of two important metres: the 'rhyme i-oval' (seven-line pentameter stanzas rhyming ahabbee), and the decasyllabic couplet. Of the former lie has some 14,000 lines, and of the latter some 16,000; and both measures be came in his hands admirable instruments for narration. The rhyme royal was popular with Chaucer's followers, Lydgate, Oecleve, Dunbar, and dames 1. of Scot land, and was used later by Skelton. Barelay, and Sackville. Shakespeare employed it in The Rape of Lucrere, but since then it has been rare. The pentameter couplet always remained a fa vorite English metre.
The beginning of the imulern English period is marked by no such change in the fundamental principles of VVI'Sifien I ion as that which took Anglo-Saxon and Middle English Chaneer's system has been in all essentials the system of English poets ever since. tIningh the modifications of the language through loss of infleetions, and the like, have eonsiderably altered the teehnieal problems of English poetry. The nature of these changes can best be made to ap pear lire enmparing a few lilies of Chaucer's Kninbt's rah. with Dryden's modernization of the same.
"The Firstiz i'doevere of the valise above. When he first made the faire cheyne of love Greet was theffeet and beigh was his entente; wiste he why and what Dior of he indite, For with that faire eheyne of love he bond The fyr, the eyr, the water and the lond. In certeyn boundes that they may nat flee." Dryden renders the passage: The Cause and Spring of motion from above Hung down on earth the golden chain of Love; Great was the effect. and high was his entent., When peace among the jarring seeds he sent; Fire, flood, and earth and air by this were bound, And love, the common link, the new creation crowned." A complete survey of modern English verse forms lies far beyond the range of this article. It is not possible here to do more than name the commoner metres and give some brief indications of their history.
The long septenary. o• seven-stress line, of which Chapman's Iliad is a famous example, is unusual in modern English. But in its re solved form, printed as quatrains of alternating four-stress and threc-stress verse, it constitutes the 'common metre' of the hymn-hooks; and one of the most frequent ballad stanzas has the smile movement. though perhaps different in origin. The combination of septenaries with Alexandrines made the so-called 'poulter's meas ure,' which was rather popular with Elizabethan writers. Pure Alexandrine measure, like that of Drayton's Po1lloIbio•n, has not been common.
The octosyllabie couplet has been relatively less important in modern than in 'early Eng lish. particularly for narration. It was a good deal used for descriptive and reflective poetry by writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, partly because of the influence of L'illenro and II Penserosa. Butler's Ilialibras gave it a new diameter as a typical metre of satire or burlesque, also well exemplified by Swift. In the nineteenth century it was again adopted for serious narration by Wordsworth, Byron. and Scott.
The various combinations of pentameter verse have undoubtedly been the favorite forms of English metre. The eight-line stanza, imitated from the Italian 'ottava rinia' (rhyming abababee), was introduced by Wyatt and Surrey, and used by Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Harring ton, and Fairfax, chiefly in romantic poetry. In the nineteenth century Keats, Shelley, and other poets wrote it in the romantic spirit, while Byron and Hookham Frere turned it to satirical uses. The 'Spenserian' stanza (whatever the
exact process of its formation) consists of eight pentameter lines (rhyming ababbcbc) with an added Alexandrine. It was invented by Spenser and used in the greater part of his poetry; and it has been imitated by a number of later poets, among them Thomson, Shenstone, Beattie, and Keats. The pentameter couplet, Chaucer's favor ite metre, was used by the Elizabethans for various purposes. But its greatest vogue was in the 'classic' period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it was steadily de veloped and perfected by Jonson, Sandys, Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope. Throughout the, eighteenth century it was the prevailing measure and was written by many poets with strictness and technical skill. In the nineteenth century a freer form, approFaehing the effect of 'blank verse,' was developed by Leigh hunt, Keats, Shelley, and Browning. Alongside of the *heroic couplet' should be mentioned the less widely used 'heroic stanza' (a pentameter quatrain rhyming ahab), best known through Gray's Elegy. Blank verse, or iambic pentameter measure without rhyme, is probably the most distinctive of Eng lish metres, and has served the highest uses. Introduced in the sixteenth century, during the classical reaction against rhyme, it became in the hands of Alarlore and Shakespeare the ac cepted form for English dramatic poetry; and after Milton's use of it in Paradise Lost it was widely adopted for epic and reflective poetry as well. Among the non-dramatic writers who used it in the eighteenth century were Blair, Akenside, Thomson, Young, and Cowper. In the nineteenth century it was very generally written —in highest perfection, perhaps, by Keats and Tennyson, and with great freedom and in dividuality by Browning. (For fuller treatment of the more important lyric forms. sec ODE; SONNET.) It is impossible to take account here of the numerous minor metrical forms, chiefly lyric, of different periods. Some of them have arisen from the imitation of French metres which began in the Middle English period. There was a distinct revival of this in the nineteenth century, represented by the lighter verse of llenley, Dobson, and Andrew Lang, A number of metrical experiments have been made in the effort to reproduce in English the ancient classi cal verse-forms, sometimes preserving even their quantitative scansion. One import ant met re which has been often tried, lint never completely naturalized, is the dactylic hexameter. This was first taken up in the time of the classical Renais sance. and among the poets who attempted it were Stanyhurst and Gabriel Harvey, and even Sidue', and Spenser. The early hexameters were quantitative. In the eighteenth century the measure was revived, largely under German in fluence, by Coleridge and Will in In Taylor. The modern hesnmelers have been for the mogt part accentual in rhythm, and in the hands of Southey, Clough, Longfellow, and Kingsley have attained some real popularity.
ttmLIO6RAPHY• General theory: J. B. Mayor, Chapters on English Metre (2d ed., Cambridge, 1901), a valuable exposition of the usual sys tem of metrics; for recent attempts to develop a new system, compare Sidney Lanier, of English Verse (New York, 1331) ; Dabney, The Musical Basis of English Verse (ib., 1901) ; Lid dell, An introduction. to the Study of Poetry (ib., 1902). For general historical surveys. see Ed win Guest, A History of English Rhythms, edited by W. W. Skeat (London, 18'82) ; J. Sehipper, Englischc Metrik (Bonn. 1S81-38). On the old Germanic verse-forms, see Sievers, Jletrik (Halle, 1392) : also Ten Brink in Paul's Grundriss der germanisehen Philologic (Strass burg, 1901 et seq.), and lialuza, Der ultenglisehe I•ers (1894), both holding the four-aceent theory. On German versifieation, which it has not been possible to include in this article, see for the earlier periods Paul in the Grundriss der ger manischca Philologie, and for the modern periods Westphal, Theorie der acohoehdeutsehen Jlctrik (2d ed., Jena, 1S77) ; Minor, Neukoch deutsche ..1/efrik (2d ed., Strassburg, 1902).