472 Transaction*. 



Such lines, again, are not very frequently met with except in 

 solitary instances, but they also have their counterpart in the 

 Alexandrine, forming the measure which, first used in France 

 in the twelfth century, in a poem on Alexander the Great, 

 became the heroic or epic line of French poetry. The line is 

 not easily worked into long poems in English, Drayton's " Poly- 

 olbion " being the only one of any considerable length in which 

 it is employed. It is, however, used with fine effect as a con- 

 cluding line in heroic stanzas such as Spenser's " Faerie 

 Queene " : the stanzas seem to gather body like a wave, and 

 break majestically in the long sweep of the Alexandrine. Part 

 of " Polyolbion " may be quoted to show the effect in reading 

 this line continuously : — 



From wealthy abbots' chests and churls' abundant store, 

 What oftentimes he took, he shar'd amongst the poor ; 

 No lordly bishop came in lusty Robin's way, 

 To him, before he went, but for his pass must pay. 



It will be found that a pause, equal to a foot, is instinctively 

 made after the sixth syllable, so that the metre is practically 

 read as ballad- metre. The same is true of the German metre ; 

 so that it is evident all these metres have a common basis, each 

 assuming the form most compatible to the nature of the people 

 adopting it. 



6. Whilst it has been noted that each ballad-line contains 

 fourteen syllables, a pause at the end of each line must be ac- 

 counted for ; so that each line contains in reality eight feet, 

 seven of which are filled with sound. Proof of this may be 

 adduced from a source rather unexpected — that is, ixom. Church 

 hymns. 



As may be seen from the Robin Hood ballads, the Church 

 and its ministers were held in very scant respect by the ruder 

 classes ; indeed, Bishop Latimer complained to King Edward VI 

 that, passing through a certain town, he let it be known 

 that he would be there on a certain day, and coming to the 

 church he found it locked, it being Robin Hood's Day, and the 

 people to a man preferred celebrating his day to hearing the 

 Bishop. It would therefore appear strange that the Church 

 should ever countenance the perpetuation of a poetic measure 

 which formed the medium in which were preserved the popular 

 tales of the people — tales many of which would nowadays be 

 considered tapu, and many of which were directed against the 

 Church itself. But it was the Church in the first instance that 

 practically gave this metre to the people, in the early metrical 

 romances. This metre of eight-syllabled half-lines was taken 

 from the French, and seemed to be the final outcome of a long 

 evolutionary process in metre in the "European tongues, gradu- 



