They looked a manly, generous generation; Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick, Their accents firm and loud in conversation, Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick, Showed them prepared, on proper provocation, To give the lie, pull noses, stab and kick; And for that very reason, it is said, They were so very courteous and well-bred. (JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE: _The Monks and the Giants._ 1817.) With every morn their love grew tenderer, With every eve deeper and tenderer still; He might not in house, field, or garden stir, But her full shape would all his seeing fill; And his continual voice was pleasanter To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill; Her lute-string gave an echo of his name, She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same. (KEATS: _Isabella._ 1820.) As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow, And wished that others held the same opinion; They took it up when my days grew more mellow, And other minds acknowledged my dominion: Now my sere fancy "falls into the yellow Leaf," and Imagination droops her pinion, And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk Turns what was once romantic to burlesque. (BYRON: _Don Juan_, canto iv. st. 3. 1821.) Of the _ottava rima_, as used by Frere and Byron, Austin Dobson says: "It had already been used by Harrington, Drayton, Fairfax, and (as we have seen) in later times by Gay; it had even been used by Frere's contemporary, William Tennant; but to Frere belongs the honor of giving it the special characteristics which Byron afterward popularised in _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_. Structurally the _ottava rima_ of Frere singularly resembles that of Byron, who admitted that _Whistlecraft_ was his 'immediate model.' ... Byron, taking up the stanza with equal skill and greater genius, filled it with the vigor of his personality, and made it a measure of his own, which it has ever since been hazardous for inferior poets to attempt." (Ward's _English Poets_, vol. iv. p. 240.) Byron may indeed be said--in the words of the present specimen--to have turned what was commonly a romantic stanza "to burlesque." _aabaabbab_ O hie honour, sweit hevinlie flour degest, Gem verteous, maist precious, gudliest. For hie renoun thow art guerdoun conding, Of worschip kend the glorious end and rest, But quhome in richt na worthie wicht may lest. Thy greit puissance may maist avance all thing, And poverall to mekill availl sone bring. I the require sen thow but peir art best, That efter this in thy hie blis we ring. (GAWAIN DOUGLAS: _The Palace of Honour._ ab. 1500.) _ababcccdd_