CHAPTER V.

THE MAKING OF ENGLISH AND THE SETTLEMENT OF EUROPEAN PROSODY.

Special interest of Early Middle English. Decay of Anglo-Saxon. Early Middle English Literature. Scantiness of its constituents. Layamon. The form of the _Brut_. Its substance. The _Ormulum_: Its metre, its spelling. The _Ancren Riwle_. The _Owl and the Nightingale_. Proverbs. Robert of Gloucester. Romances. _Havelok the Dane._ _King Horn._ The prosody of the modern languages. Historical retrospect. Anglo-Saxon prosody. Romance prosody. English prosody. The later alliteration. The new verse. Rhyme and syllabic equivalence. Accent and quantity. The gain of form. The "accent" theory. Initial fallacies, and final perversities thereof 187