In real fact and truth, Chaucer has had nearly as much share in the formation of what is known as the stanza of Spenser as Spenser himself. That stanza is purely the ballet-stave of eight with three close rhymes--with the simple addition by Spenser of an Alexandrine at the close, rhyming with the last verse of the ballet-stave. There are some who trace these ballet-staves to the Latin rhymed church iambics, and the germ of the ballet-stave of eight has been sought in a Latin hymn written by the German monk, Ernfrid, in the ninth century; but they are to be traced more probably (at least in their more perfect shape) to the Romance poetry of the Provençals. The first instance I meet with of the use of the ballet-stave of eight in English verse is in the elegy on the death of our first Edward, written from internal evidence shortly after that period. The rhymes and their arrangement are precisely as in the stanza of Spenser, but the verse is octosyllabic: Alle that beoth of huerte trewe A stounde herkneth to my song Of duel that deth hath diht us newe That maketh me syke and sorrow among. &c. Chaucer was the first who wrote this stanza in the heroic line of ten syllables, and his contribution to the stanza is therefore quite as important as Spenser’s addition of the closing Alexandrine. In this stanza Chaucer has written the whole of the Monk’s Tale, and how entirely it is the stanza of _Childe Harold_, with the exception of the Alexandrine at the end, may be seen from the following example:-- His wif his lordes, and his concubines Ay dronken, while her appetitis last, Out of thise noble vessels sondry wines; And on a wall this King his eyen cast, And saw an hand armles that wrote ful fast, For fere of whiche he quoke, and siked sore. This hand that Balthasar so sore aghast, Wrote _Mane techel phares_ and no more. The _Faëry Queen_ stanza must be regarded as a felicitous discovery rather than invention, and even the merit of the addition becomes diminished by the consideration that Alexandrine verse had become a great favourite amongst his contemporary poets before he used it. It was the favourite metre of a Howard and a Sidney at the commencement of the era of Elizabeth, and is frequently met in our alliterative poems, both early English and Anglo-Saxon. Yet Dr. Johnson has most erroneously represented Spenser as the inventor of the Alexandrine! But so fortunate was Spenser’s completion of the stanza, that all the attempts of Phineas Fletcher, Giles Fletcher, Prior, and even Milton, to improve on it were unavailing, and it may now be regarded as one of the special glories of England.