The discussion, which might have raged for ever among the critics, was happily cut short by the healthy instinct of the poets. Against alliteration the question had already been given by default. Revived, after long disuse, by Langland and other poets of the West Midlands in the fourteenth century, it had soon again been swept out of fashion by the irresistible charm of the genius of Chaucer. The _Tale of Gamelyn_, dating apparently from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, is probably the last poem of note in which the once universal metre is even partially employed. And what could prove more clearly that the old metrical form was dead? The rough rhythm of early English poetry, it is true, is kept; but alliteration is dropped, and its place is taken by rhyme. Nor were the efforts to impose classical measures on English poetry more blest in their results. The very men on whom the literary Romanizers had fixed their hopes were the first to abandon the enterprise in despair. If any genius was equal to the task of naturalizing hexameters in a language where strict quantity is unknown, it was the genius of Spenser. But Spenser soon ranged himself heart and soul with the champions of rhyme; his very name has passed down to us as a synonym for the most elaborate of all rhyming stanzas that have taken root in our verse. For the moment, rhyme had fairly driven all rivals from the field. Over the lyric its sway was undisputed. In narrative poetry, where its fitness was far more disputable, it maintained its hold till the closing years of Milton. In the drama itself, where its triumph would have been fatal, it disputed the ground inch by inch against the magnificent instrument devised by Surrey and perfected by Marlowe. It was during the ten years preceding the publication of Webbe's _Discourse_ (1586) that this controversy seems to have been hottest. From the first, perhaps, it bulked more largely with the critics than with the poets themselves. Certainly it allowed both poets and critics sufficient leisure for the far more important controversy which has left an enduring monument in Sidney's _Apologie for Poetrie_. [Footnote: The most important pieces of Elizabethan criticism are:-- Gosson's _School of Abuse_, 1579. Lodge's _Defence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays_, 1579(?). Sidney's _Apologie for Poetrie_, 1580(?). Webbe's _Discourse of English Poetrie_, 1586. Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_, 1589. Harington's _Apologie of Poetrie_, 1591. Meres' _Palladis Tamia_, 1598. Campion's _Observations in the Arte of English Poesie_, 1602. Daniel's _Defence of Ryme_, 1603.]