I have with fearcenesse mankynde oft tymes corrected, And agayne, I have allured hym by swete promes. I have sent sore plages, when he hath me neglected, And then by and by, most comfortable swetnes. To wynne hym to grace, bothe mercye and ryghteousnes I have exercysed, yet wyll he not amende. Shall I now lose hym, or shall I him defende? In hys most myschefe, most hygh grace will I sende, To overcome hym by favoure, if it may be. With hys abusyons no longar wyll I contende, But now accomplysh my first wyll and decre. My worde beynge flesh, from hens shall set hym fre, Hym teachynge a waye of perfyght ryhteousnesse, That he shall not nede to perysh in hys weaknesse. To our ears, at least, the older miracle-plays were greatly superior. It is interesting to find, however, in this apparently popular mode of “building the rhyme”--certainly not the _lofty_ rhyme, for no such crumbling foundation could carry any height of superstructure--the elements of the most popular rhythm of the present day; a rhythm admitting of any number of syllables in the line, from four up to twelve, or even more, and demanding only that there shall be not more than four accented syllables in the line. A song written with any spirit in this measure has, other things _not_ being quite equal, yet almost a certainty of becoming more popular than one written in any other measure. Most of Barry Cornwall’s and Mrs. Heman’s songs are written in it. Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” Coleridge’s “Christabel,” Byron’s “Siege of Corinth,” Shelley’s “Sensitive Plant,” are examples of the rhythm. Spenser is the first who has made good use of it. One of the months in the “Shepherd’s Calendar” is composed in it. We quote a few lines from this poem, to show at once the kind we mean:-- “No marvel, Thenot, if thou can bear Cheerfully the winter’s wrathful cheer; For age and winter accord full nigh; This chill, that cold; this crooked, that wry; And as the lowering weather looks down, So seemest thou like Good Friday to frown: But my flowering youth is foe to frost; My ship unwont in storms to be tost.” We can trace it slightly in Sir Thomas Wyatt, and we think in others who preceded Spenser. There is no sign of it in Chaucer. But we judge it to be the essential rhythm of Anglo-Saxon poetry, which will quite harmonize with, if it cannot explain, the fact of its being the most popular measure still. Shakspere makes a little use of it in one, if not in more, of his plays, though it there partakes of the irregular character of that of the older plays which he is imitating. But we suspect the clowns of the authorship of some of the rhymes, “speaking more than was set down for them,” evidently no uncommon offence. Prose was likewise in use for the drama at an early period.