Chapter VI

CONTINUOUS ILLUSTRATIONS OF ENGLISH SCANSION ACCORDING TO THE FOOT
SYSTEM

I. Old English Period: Scansion only dimly visible--II. Late Old
English with _nisus_ towards Metre: "Grave" Poem--III. Transition
Period: Metre struggling to assert itself in a new way--IV. Early
Middle English Period: Attempt at merely Syllabic Uniformity
with Unbroken Iambic Run and no Rhyme--V. Early Middle English
Period: Conflict or Indecision between Accentual Rhythm and
Metrical Scheme--VI. Early Middle English Period: The Appearance
and Development of the "Fourteener"--VII. Early Middle English
Period: The Plain and Equivalenced Octosyllable--VIII. Early Middle
English Period: The Romance-Six or _Rime Couée_--IX. Early Middle
English Period: Miscellaneous Stanzas--X. Early Middle English
Period: Appearance of the Decasyllable--XI. Later Middle English
Period: The Alliterative Revival (Pure)--XII. Later Middle English
Period: The Alliterative Revival (Mixed)--XIII. Later Middle
English Period: Potentially Metrical Lines in Langland (_see_ Book
II.)--XIV. Later Middle English Period: Scansions from Chaucer--XV.
Later Middle English Period: Variations from Strict Iambic Norm in
Gower--XVI. Transition Period: Examples of Break-down in Literary
Verse--XVII. Transition Period: Examples of True Prosody in Ballad,
Carols, etc.--XVIII. Transition Period: Examples of Skeltonic and
other Doggerel--XIX. Transition Period: Examples from the Scottish
Poets--XX. Early Elizabethan Period: Examples of Reformed Metre
from Wyatt, Surrey, and other Poets before Spenser--XXI. Spenser
at Different Periods--XXII. Examples of the Development of Blank
Verse--XXIII. Examples of Elizabethan Lyric--XXIV. Early Continuous
Anapæsts--XXV. The Enjambed Heroic Couplet (1580-1660)--XXVI.
The Stopped Heroic Couplet (1580-1660)--XXVII. Various Forms
of Octosyllable-Heptasyllable (late Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Century)--XXVIII. "Common," "Long," and "In Memoriam" Measure
(Seventeenth Century)--XXIX. Improved Anapæstic Measures (Dryden,
Anon., Prior)--XXX. "Pindarics" (Seventeenth Century)--XXXI. The
Heroic Couplet from Dryden to Crabbe--XXXII. Eighteenth-Century
Blank Verse--XXXIII. The Regularised Pindaric Ode--XXXIV. Lighter
Eighteenth-Century Lyric--XXXV. The Revival of Equivalence
(Chatterton and Blake)--XXXVI. Rhymeless Attempts (Collins to
Shelley)--XXXVII. The Revived Ballad (Percy to Coleridge)--XXXVIII.
Specimens of _Christabel_; Note on the Application of the
_Christabel_ System to Nineteenth-Century Lyric generally--XXXIX.
Nineteenth-Century Couplet (Leigh Hunt to Mr. Swinburne)--XL.
Nineteenth-Century Blank Verse (Wordsworth to Mr. Swinburne)--XLI.
The Non-Equivalenced Octosyllable of Keats and Morris--XLII. The
Continuous Alexandrine (Drayton and Browning)--XLIII. _The Dying
Swan_ of Tennyson scanned entirely through to show the Application
of the System--XLIV. The Stages of the Metre of "Dolores" and the
Dedication of "Poems and Ballads"--XLV. Long Metres of Tennyson,
Browning, Morris, and Swinburne--XLVI. The Later Sonnet--XLVII.
The Various Attempts at "Hexameters" in English--XLVIII. Minor
Imitations of Classical Metres--XLIX. Imitations of Artificial
French Forms--L. Later Rhymelessness--LI. Some "Unusual" Metres and
Disputed Scansions 37

BOOK II

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ENGLISH PROSODY

CHAPTER I

FROM THE ORIGINS TO CHAUCER--THE CONSTITUTION OF ENGLISH VERSE

Relations of "Old" to "Middle" and "New" English--generally--and
in prosody--Anglo-Saxon prosody itself--Prosody of the Transition
to Middle English--Contrast in Layamon--Examinations of it:
Insufficient--Sufficient--Other documents The _Ormulum_--The
_Moral Ode_ and the _Orison of Our Lady_--The _Proverbs of
Alfred_ and _Hendyng_--The _Bestiary_--Minor poems--_The Owl
and the Nightingale_ and _Genesis and Exodus_--Summary of
results to the mid-thirteenth century--The later thirteenth
century and the fourteenth--Robert of Gloucester--The
Romances--Lyrics--The alliterative revival--The later fourteenth
century--Langland--Gower--Chaucer--His perfecting of M.E.
verse--Details of his prosody 133

CHAPTER II

FROM CHAUCER TO SPENSER--DISORGANISATION AND RECONSTRUCTION

Causes of decay in Southern English prosody--Lydgate, Occleve,
etc.--The Scottish poets--Ballad, etc.--Dissatisfaction and
reform--Wyatt and Surrey--Their followers--Spenser--The _Shepherd's
Calendar_--The _Faerie Queene_ 161

CHAPTER III

FROM SHAKESPEARE TO MILTON--THE CLOSE OF THE FORMATIVE PERIOD

Blank verse--Before Shakespeare--In him--and after him in
drama--Its degeneration--Milton's reform of it--_Comus_--_Paradise
Lost_--Analysis of its versification, with application of different
systems--Stanza, etc., in Shakespeare--in Milton--and others--The
"heroic" couplet--Enjambed--and stopped--Lyric 173

CHAPTER IV

HALT AND RETROSPECT--CONTINUATION ON HEROIC VERSE AND ITS
COMPANIONS FROM DRYDEN TO CRABBE

Recapitulation--Dryden's couplet--and Pope's--Their
predominance--Eighteenth-century octosyllable and anapæst--Blank
verse--and lyric--Merit of eighteenth-century "regularity" 190

CHAPTER V

THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL--ITS PRECURSORS AND FIRST GREAT STAGE

Gray and Collins--Chatterton, Burns, and Blake--Other
influences of change--Wordsworth, Southey, and
Scott--Coleridge--Moore--Byron--Shelley: his longer poems--His
lyrics--Keats 198

CHAPTER VI

THE LAST STAGE--TENNYSON TO SWINBURNE

From Keats to Tennyson--Tennyson himself--Special example of his
manipulation of the quatrain--Browning--Mrs. Browning--Matthew
Arnold--Later poets: The Rossettis--W. Morris--Mr. Swinburne--Others
207