The construction of this stanza is the same as of the former, but the versification is rather rougher. It, like the other, is very near the Spenserian stanza. But it is not the Spenserian stanza. Friar Bacon and Leonardo da Vinci were very near the discovery of steam, but they did not discover steam, or at all events they did not apply it. The stanzas cited, however, contain the great distinguishing peculiarity of the stanza of Spenser, which is the reduplication of the rhyme, that closes the second and fourth lines, in the fifth--the doubling of the stanza within itself, and turning upon this most musical pivot. And this beauty, like so many other great discoveries, I believe to be probably the result of accident. Add another line to each of the foregoing stanzas, make it rhyme with the first and third, and interpose it between the fourth and fifth lines, and you have the exact _ottava rima_ of the Italians. This ballet-stave is the clear germ of the Spenserian stanza, which with a few _perfectionnemens_ is precisely as it stands. It may be traced more directly to the ballet-stave of eight, but either will suit equally well for illustration. To make this quite intelligible to every reader, Hawes’s stanza becomes the exact _ottava rima_ of the Italians, which Surrey brought into England, and in which Spenser wrote two of his poems, the rhyme of Fairfax’s _Tasso_, of Frere’s _Whistlecraft_, and Byron’s _Don Juan_, by the insertion of the single line which I have added here in italics: Till that I came unto a royal gate, Where I saw standing the goodly portresse, Who askéd me from whence I came of late; To whom I ’gan in every thing express _The various hazards of my chequered fate_, All mine adventure, chaunce, and busynesse, And eke my name; I told her every dell:[B] When she heard this she likéd me right well. The stanza becomes purely Spenserian by the addition of the two lines and one word which I here insert in italics: Till that I came unto a royal gate, Where I saw standing the goodly portresse, Who askéd me from whence I came of late; To whom I ’gan in every thing express All mine adventure, chaunce, and busynesse, _With every accident that me befel_ _Throughout my chequered life--I could no less--_ And eke my name; I told her every dell: When she this _story_ heard she likéd me right well. The ballet-stave of seven is one of the many varieties of Chaucer, who has written in this measure four of his “Canterbury Tales,” and composed a very long poem in it, _Troylus_, of which the following stanza is a specimen (lib. ii. 1030.)