_Give place, ye lovers, here before That spend your boasts and brags in vain; My Lady's beauty passeth more The best of yours, I dare well sayen, Than doth the sun the candle light, Or brightest day the darkest night._ This form of stanza is used with lines of the same metres by many other poets, e.g. by M. Arnold, pp. 195, 197, 256, 318. Similar stanzas of four-foot trochaic (cf. p. 285), or of four-stressed verses, and especially of five-foot verses, are very popular. They are found e.g. in Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, M. Arnold's _Mycerinus_ (first part, p. 8), &c. (cf. _Metrik_, ii, §§ 360, 361). Similar stanzas, however, in which the _frons_ precedes the _versus_, according to the formula _a a b c b c_ (cf. p. 285), do not occur frequently; a rare form, also, is that in which the _cauda_ is placed between the two _pedes_ (cf. p. 285 and _Metrik_, ii, §362). § =268.= Still more popular than the six-lined stanzas, both in the Middle and in the Modern English periods, are those =of seven lines=, which are modelled on Old French lyric poetry, the prevailing type being that of an Old French ballade-stanza, viz. _a b a b b c c_. But it is not before the middle of the fifteenth century that we meet with an example of this stanza consisting of four-foot verses, viz. in Lydgate's Minor Poems (_Percy Society_, 1840), p. 129; a specimen of four-stressed verses occurs in the _Chester Plays_, pp. 1-7 and pp. 156-8. We may, however, take it for granted that this form of stanza was known long before that time, since four-foot verses were used much earlier than those of five feet, and a six-lined stanza of five-foot verses occurs (for the first time, so far as we know) as early as in Chaucer's _Compleynte of the Dethe of Pite_, and subsequently in many other of his poems (e.g. _Troylus and Cryseyde_, _The Assembly of Fowles_, _The Clerkes Tale_) and in numerous other poems of his successors, e.g. in _The Kingis Quair_ by King James I of Scotland. It has been sometimes maintained that this stanza was called _rhyme royal_ stanza because that royal poet wrote his well-known poem in it; this, however, is not so. Guest long ago pointed out (ii. 359) that this name is to be derived from the French term _chant-royal_, applied to certain poems of similar stanzas which were composed in praise of God or the Virgin, and used to be recited in the poetical contests at Rouen on the occasion of the election of a 'king'. Chaucer's verses to Adam Scrivener are of this form and may be quoted as a specimen here (after Skeat's text, p. 118): _Adam scriveyn, if euer it thee bifalle Boece or Troylus to writen newe, Under thy lokkes thou most haue the scalle, But after my making thou write trewe. So oft a day I mot thy werk renewe Hit to corrects and eek to rubbe and scrape, And al is through thy negligence and rape._