is to be found in his balades. Indeed, we may go further than this, and say that the weak syllable is seldom tolerated in the other even places of the verse, where the English ear demanded a strongly marked accentual beat. Such a line as ‘Vous me poetz sicom vostre demeine’ (_Bal._ xxxix. 2) is quite exceptional. At the same time he does not insist on ending a word on the fourth syllable, but in seven or eight per cent. of his lines the word is run on into the next foot, as ‘Et vous, ma dame, croietz bien cela.’ This is usually the form that the verse takes in such cases, the syllable carried on being a mute _e_ termination, and the caesura coming after this syllable; but lines like the following also occur, in which the caesura is transfered to the end of the third foot: ‘Si fuisse en paradis, ceo beal manoir,’ v. 3. ‘En toute humilité sans mesprisure,’ xii. 4. So xvi. l. 2, xx. l. 20, &c., and others again in which the syllable carried on is an accented one, as ‘Si femme porroit estre celestine,’ xxi. 2. ‘Jeo ne sai nomer autre, si le noun;’ xxiv. 1. It must be noticed also that the poet occasionally uses the so-called epic caesura, admitting a superfluous unaccented syllable after the second foot, as ‘Et pensetz, dame, de ceo q’ai dit pieça,’ ii. 3. ‘Qe mieulx voldroie morir en son servage,’ xxiii. 2. So with _dame_, _dames_, xix. l. 20, xx. l. 13, xxxvii. l. 18, xlvi. l. 15[K]; and with other words, xxv. l. 8, &c., _aime_, xxxiii. l. 10, _nouche_, xxxviii. l. 23, _grace_, xliv. l. 8, _fame_. In xx. 1 the same thing occurs exceptionally in another part of the line, the word _roe_ counting as one syllable only, though it is a dissyllable in _Mir._ 10942. Naturally the termination _-ée_, as in iii. 2, ‘La renomée, dont j’ai l’oreile pleine,’ does not constitute an epic caesura, because, as observed elsewhere, the final _e_ in this case did not count as a syllable in Anglo-Norman verse. On the whole we may say that Gower treats the caesura with much the same freedom as is used in the English verse of the period, and at the same time he marks the beat of his iambic verse more strongly than was done by the contemporary French poets. MATTER AND STYLE.--As regards the literary character of these compositions it must be allowed that they have, as Warton says, ‘much real and intrinsic merit.’ There is indeed a grace and poetical feeling in some of them which makes them probably the best things of the kind that have been produced by English writers of French, and as good as anything of the kind which had up to that time been written in English. The author himself has marked them off into two unequal divisions. The poems of the first class (i-v) express for us the security of the accepted lover, whose suit is to end in lawful marriage: ‘Jeo sui tout soen et elle est toute moie, Jeo l’ai et elle auci me voet avoir; Pour tout le mond jeo ne la changeroie.’ (_Bal._ v.)