§ =48.= It was owing to the use of these two more strongly accented syllables in each verse which predominate over the other syllables, whether with secondary accents or unaccented, that the poets, who wrote in this metre, found it possible to regard the different kinds of verse they employed as rhythmically equivalent. These were as follows: (1) purely alliterative lines with hemistichs of two stresses, (2) extended lines of this kind with secondary accents in the middle of the hemistich, (3) rhyming-alliterative or merely rhyming lines with a feminine ending and a secondary accent in the middle of the verse, or with a masculine ending and two secondary accents, one on the last syllable, as is also the case with the corresponding verses mentioned under the second heading. These two last-mentioned verse-forms are very similar to two popular metres formed on the model of Romanic metres. The former of them--the hemistich with three stresses (one of which is secondary) and feminine ending, together with the much rarer variety that has a masculine ending--resembles the sections of the Alexandrine; and the hemistich with a masculine ending (more rarely a feminine) and four stresses (two of which have secondary accents only) is similar to the short four-beat couplet, and also to the first section of the Septenary line (the second section being similar to the former three-beat group). It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that this metre of Layamon in its different forms (that of the purely alliterative line included) is in several Middle English poems, chiefly in _The Bestiary_, employed concurrently (both in separate passages and in the same passage) with the above-mentioned foreign metres formed on Romanic or mediaeval-Latin models. By this fact the influence of the Romanic versification on the origin and development of this form of the native verse gains increased probability.[102] The limits of our space do not permit of further discussion of this peculiar metre, which, as presented in the extant examples, appears rather as in process of development than as a finished product, and of which a complete understanding can be attained only by elaborate statistical investigation. C. The progressive form of the alliterative line, rhymed throughout. 'King Horn.' § =49.= The further development of the Layamon-verse is very simple and such as might naturally be expected from its previous history. The use of final rhyme becomes constant, and consequently alliteration, although remnants of it still are noticeable even in short lines connected together, becomes more and more scarce.[103] The unaccented syllables are interposed between the accented ones with greater regularity; and among the unaccented syllables the one (or, in some sub-species of the verse, more than one) which is relatively stronger than the rest receives full metrical stress, or at least nearly approaches the fully-stressed syllables in rhythmical value.