§ =81.= The variety caused by the different kinds of caesura in the structure of the metres of equal measures, formed on the principle of a regular alternation of unaccented and accented syllables, is much increased by other causes arising from the different nature of Romanic and Germanic versification. These variations came into existence, partly because the poets, in the early days of the employment of equal-measured rhythms, found it difficult, owing to want of practice, to secure the exact coincidence of the word-accent and the metrical accent, partly because for linguistic or (in the case of the later poets) for artistic reasons they considered it unnecessary to do so. They therefore either simply suffered the discord between the two kinds of accentuation to remain, or, in order to avoid it, permitted themselves licences that did violence either to the rhythmic laws of the verse itself, or to the customary pronunciation of the words as regards the value of syllables (i.e. their being elided or fully sounded) or word-accent. The changes which the equal-measured rhythms have undergone and still undergo from the causes mentioned thus have relation partly to the rhythmic structure of the verse itself, partly to the value of syllables, and partly to the word-accent. From these three points of view we shall first consider the iambic equal-measured rhythm in general (this being the only species used in Middle English, and the one which in Modern English is of most frequent occurrence and influences all the rest), before we proceed to examine its individual varieties. NOTES: [123] Horstmann, _Altenglische Legenden_, _Neue Folge_, p. 244. [124] Percy's _Reliques_, I. ii. 7. [125] Quoted in _Chambers's Cyclop. of Eng. Lit._, i. 242. [126] Ed. by J. Schipper, _Quellen und Forschungen_, xx. [127] In the 'tumbling'--or, to use the German name, the 'gliding' (_gleitend_) caesura or rhyme. [128] For the introduction and explanation of these technical terms cf. Fr. Diez, 'Über den epischen Vers,' in his _Altromanische Sprachdenkmale_, Bonn, 1846, 8vo, p. 53, and the author's _Englische Metrik_, i, pp. 438, 441; ii, pp. 24-6. [129] The occurrence of this licence in Chaucer's heroic verse has been disputed by ten Brink (_Chaucer's Sprache und Verskunst_, p. 176) and others, but see _Metrik_, i. 462-3, and Freudenberger, _Ueber das Fehlen des Auftaktes in Chaucer's heroischem Verse_, Erlangen, 1889. CHAPTER VI VERSE-RHYTHM