474 Transactions. 



like Swinburne, the heart is at once touched and responds 

 toJ,a lilt in the old ballad-measure. 



7. This long measure, the sixteen-syllabled line, has been 

 especially used by two poets in English — John Gower and Sir 

 Walter Scott. Grower's lines were meant for the eye rather 

 than for the ear — that is, his tales were not to be sung ; he 

 was, too, in close touch with the metrical romances, whose 

 teaching he continued. Scott's lines were certainly meant for 

 the. eye; and though in the first poem written by him in this 

 measure, the " Lay of the Last Minstrel," they are supposed 

 to be sung by an old minstrel, it never passes the supposition : 

 the minstrel did not sing them ; the printer gave them to the 

 eye, not the minstrel to the ear. The point to be noted is this : 

 the eye needs no pause in reading, such as the voice needs in re- 

 citing. Scott deliberately discarded the natural ballad- metre, 

 as in his day it had become the medium of an enormous amount 

 of jingling nonsense ; he admittedly harked back to the metrical 

 romance metre, j r"^ "' 



8. On these remarks a certain statement is to be based. 

 Ballads were originally sung or recited ; the common measures 

 are in twelve, thirteen, or fourteen syllables ; a complete phrase 

 is almost invariably expressed in that number. The inference 

 is that fourteen syllables proved to be the average that could 

 be uttered in one breath ; a breath was taken during the silent 

 foot, and the second line then spoken or sung. The conclusion 

 then is, the breath determined the length of the ballad-line ; 

 and it will be found that almost invariably a breath is taken at 

 the end of each line of fourteen syllables. This is the law : so 

 simple that it seems absurd ; so natural that it is inevitable. 

 In singing the metrical romances — or their latter-day equivalents, 

 Church hymns — a gasp is taken after the sixteenth syllable : 

 it was the awkwardness of this gasp that began the shortening 

 of the second half of the line, and produced the line of fourteen 

 syllables, the true ballad. 



CHAPTER III. 



1. An objection to the conclusion arrived at in the last chapter 

 appears to arise at the very outset. Though ballad-metre was 

 formerly employed as the common medium, that metre is no 

 longer predominant, but has given place to one considerably 

 shorter — that is, the ten-syllabled metre of blank verse. This 

 metre was first introduced into English by Surrey, but was 

 not in that form the popular measure that the rimed heroic 

 of Chaucer proved itself : it was too indefinite ; lines were 

 fused, and the old definite pause was missed. It was therefore 

 as the rimed heroic that the line took firmest root, and was 



