First, the quantitative character of the ancient rhythms as opposed to the accentual character of English verse. Secondly, the strict separation of rising and falling rhythms. In Middle English we have only the rising rhythm, which, however, sometimes becomes a falling one if the first thesis is wanting. Finally, the absence of rhyme in the poetry of the ancients, whereas in late Middle English poetry--apart from some North-English and Scottish productions written in the conservative, rhymeless form of the alliterative line--rhyme is all but universal. § =161.= The heroic couplet, the most popular and most important metre in later Middle English poetry, was, naturally, first of all influenced by the new classical movement. It was the Earl of Surrey who, by dispensing with the rhyme, first transformed this metre into what is now known as Blank Verse. He adopted the unrhymed decasyllabic line as the most suitable vehicle for his translation of the second and fourth books of the _Aeneid_, written about 1540. In so doing, he enriched modern literature with a new form of verse which was destined to take a far more important place in English poetry than he can have foreseen for it. In its original function, as appropriate to the translation of ancient epic poetry, it has been employed by many late writers, e.g. by Cowper in his version of Homer; but this is only one, and the least considerable, of its many applications. Shortly after Surrey's time blank verse was used for court drama by Sackville and Norton in their tragedy of _Gorboduc_ (1561), and for popular drama by Marlowe in _Tamburlaine the Great_ (1587). From the latter part of the sixteenth century onwards it has continued to be the prevailing metre for dramatic poetry, except for a short time, when its supremacy was disputed by the heroic couplet used by Lord Orrery, Davenant, Dryden, and others. Meanwhile blank verse had also become the metre of original epic poetry through Milton's use of it in his _Paradise Lost_; and in the eighteenth century it was applied to descriptive and reflective poetry by Thomson and Young. It is uncertain whether Surrey invented it himself on the basis of his studies in classical rhymeless poetry, or whether he was influenced by the example of the Italian poet Trissino (1478-1550), who, in his epic _Italia liberata dai Goti_ and in his drama _Sofonisba_, introduced into Italian poetry the rhymeless, eleven-syllabled verses known as _versi sciolti_ (sc. _della rima_, i.e. freed from rhyme). There are at least no conclusive grounds for accepting the latter view, as there are some peculiarities in Surrey's blank verse which are not met with in Trissino, e.g. the occurrence of incomplete lines, which may have been introduced after the model of the unfinished lines found occasionally amongst Vergil's Latin hexameters.