The very element in common between Layamon and King Horn is, perhaps, the new, the modern phraseology more often than the old phraseology rooted in the past. While, then, there are but few traces of the older English poetic phraseology, there is much in common between King Horn and the romances of the 13th and 14th centuries. The language in King Horn seems to be already again crystallizing into new conventional forms. In spite of the different demands of the metre of Horn from those of the later, more regular, forms of versification, there are a very great number of stereotyped phrases common to King Horn and to the contemporary and succeeding romances composed in the other metre. I have brought together in the Notes a number of instances of this agreement in phraseology. The minor elements, also, are often rather mediæval than Anglo-Saxon, and the customs described, the princess’s manner of receiving visitors, the manner of salutation in meeting and in parting, etc., if truly representing the manners of the time of the composition of King Horn, soon became conventionalized and common to the whole body of Middle English romance. (Cf. Notes to vv. 315, 319, 321, 403, 537, 739, etc.) In these respects the composer of K. H. no doubt at times follows the conventional mode of composition of his time, but he is probably also at times an innovator, for several scenes in Horn seem to have been prototypes directly imitated in later romances in the _Ipomydon_ and in the _Richard Coeur de Lion_. (Cf. Notes to 239 ff., 264.) On the whole, then, we see that the language of King Horn is much less influenced, than one would expect, by older English models. The language of the second growth of story seems to have fallen into new conventional moulds quite independent of the older tradition. § 6. VERSIFICATION. As we have seen, the phraseology of King Horn shows relatively little trace of influence by the older English traditional stereotyped forms of expression. In this respect if Layamon is the link connecting native English poetry with the past, King Horn is the link joining to the newer traditions of poetry, which were forming. For, as we have seen, if King Horn has some phrases in common with Layamon, these are the modern forms of expression more often than the phrases rooted in the older English tradition. And, as we have seen, while King Horn has relatively little of phraseology inherited from the past, it has a multitude of stereotyped phrases in common with the poetry of contemporary and later composition (cf. Notes). In the same way in versification, if Layamon is the link connecting with the Anglo-Saxon mode of versification, King Horn is the link connecting with the newer mode, of Romance or mediæval Latin origin.