Chapter VI (4)

[31] More will be found on this and the origin of other metres in Bk. IV.

[32] Or possibly

Hwi nul|tu fa|re to | Nor[e]weie,

which is more likely as to "farè" ("farè[n]"), and looks forward to the fashion in which we now say "Norway," but "Gall_o_way." The remark will extend to not a few other scansions.

[33] For origin and explanation see Glossary.

[34] See again Bk. IV. for fuller information on this.

[35] The MS. has the contraction "Sēn."

[36] As in "hips and haws."

[37] From Spenser onward the spelling is modern.

[38] Spenser here takes (as he sometimes continued to do even in _F. Q._) the liberty of shifting the rhyming syllable. There is no doubt that this is not a good liberty. But in struggling out of the fifteenth-century slough Wyatt was constantly driven to it, and it was not till the seventeenth that poets recognised the fact that the easement was more of a disfigurement than it was worth.

[39] "Fallen" is pretty certainly "fall'n."

[40] For more on Shakespeare's blank verse see the close of this chapter and the next Book.

[41] For _Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_, and _Samson Agonistes_, _v. inf._ Book II.

[42] For scanned examples of Shakespeare's complete prosodic grasp in lyric, _v. inf._ pp. 182-3.

[43] See Glossary, "Musical and Rhetorical Arrangements."

[44] For more on the differences of his couplet and Dryden's, see next Book.

[45] Unrhymed termination as far as end-syllable goes.

[46] See next Book.

[47] I regret that in my larger _History_ (iii. 430-431) I did not notice the misprint of "travel"; metrically, however, it makes no real difference.

[48] In fact, there are even much older examples, as in Cleveland's _Mark Antony_ and some things of Dryden's, on one of their possible scansions, see _Hist. Pros._ III. chap. iii.