Andersen.— TAe Verse-unit. 626 



2. The " telescoping " of a Romance and Ballad verse has been referred 

 to in paragraph 8 of Section I. It gives rise to a very popular form of 

 stanza : — 



(1.) This mayilen in a mornc betime 



Went forth, when May was in her prime. 



To get sweet cetywall. 

 The honeysuckle, the harlocke, 

 The lilly and the lady-smocke. 

 To deck her summer hall. 



(Drayton, " Dowsabel," stanza 6.) 



Stanzas such as this would almost suggest that a four-stressed rather than 

 an eight-stressed verse should be adopted as the natural verse-unit. Such 

 a, unit would apply to all eight-stressed verses, whilst it would also apply to 

 a large number of others that must otherwise be regarded as exceptions 

 to the law, and variations of the type ; practically the whole of our Lyric 

 measures would conform to the four-stressed unit. Much of the Romance 

 poetry, moreover, is found in four-stressed riming lines, each full Romance 

 verse thus forming a rimed couplet, as in Scott's " Metrical Romances " : — 



(2.) Fitz-Jamos look round — yet .scarce believed 

 The witness that his sight received ; 

 Such apijarition well might seem 

 Delusion of a dreadful dream. 

 Sir Roderick in suspense he eyed, 

 And to his look the Chief repHed, 

 " Fear nought — nay, that I need not say — • 

 But doubt not aught from mine array." 



(" The Lady of the Lake," canto v, seen, xi.) 



The very punctuation here indicates that each couplet in the above is a 

 practically complete sentence which it would be a violation to divide with 

 a breath. The verse is divided into two equal parts, but is knit or coupled 

 by the rime. That the couplet is a complete whole is, I think, felt instinc- 

 tively, and very few readers, if any, would take a breath after every line. 

 It is not denied that advantage may be and is taken of a break such as that 

 after the line 



" Fear nought — nay, that I need not say — 



but admitting this is only admitting occasional ex<;eptions that do not 

 vitiate the contention that the full Romance verse is the average length of 

 a breath-sentence. The very fact that it is an average implies that there 

 were, and may still be, verses longer or shorter. Every law of classification 

 has its exceptions, but when these exceptions are so small a minority in 

 comparison with the conforming numbers they in no way weaken the law. 



3. Scott's reasons for adopting the " Romantic stanza," as he calls it, 

 are set out in his introduction to the 1830 edition of " The Lay of the Last 

 Minstrel." He rejected the Ballad measure because " The Ballad measure 

 itself, which was once listened to as to an enchanting melody, had become 

 hackneyed and sickening, from its being the accompaniment of every grind- 

 ing hand-organ ; and, besides, a long work in quatrains, whether those of 

 the common ballad, or such as are termed elegiac, has an effect upon the mind 

 hke that of the bed of Procrustes upon the human body ; for, as it must be 

 both awkward and difficult to carry on a long sentence from one stanza to 

 another, it follows, that the meaning of each period must be comprehended 

 within four lines, and equally so that it must be extended so as to fill that 

 space. ... In the dilemma occasioned by this objection the idea 

 occurred to the Author of using the measured short line, which forms the 



