In Perceforest, Sebille la Dame du Lac, whose castle was surrounded by a river on which lay so dense a fog that no one could see across the water, though not called so, was evidently a fay. The fortnight that Alexander the Great and Floridas abode with her, to be cured of their wounds, seemed to them but as one night. During that night, "la dame demoura enceinte du roy dung filz, dont de ce lignage yssit le roi Artus."[57] In the same romance[58] we are told that "en lysle de Zellande jadis fut demourante une _faee_ qui estoit appellee Morgane." This Morgane was very intimate with "ung esperit (named Zephir) qui repairoit es lieux acquatiques, mais jamais nestoit veu que de nuyt." Zephir had been in the habit of repairing to Morgane la Faee from her youth up, "car elle estoit malicieuse et subtille et tousjours avoit moult desire a aucunement sçavoir des enchantemens et des conjurations." He had committed to her charge the young Passelyon and his cousin Bennucq, to be brought up, and Passelyon was detected in an intrigue with the young Morgane, daughter of the fay. The various adventures of this amorous youth form one of the most interesting portions of the romance. In Tristan de Leonois,[59] king Meliadus, the father of Tristan, is drawn to a chase _par mal engin et negromance_ of a fairy who was in love with him, and carries him off, and from whose thraldom he was only released by the power of the great enchanter Merlin. In Parthenopex of Blois,[60] the beautiful fairy Melior, whose magic bark carries the knight to her secret island, is daughter to the emperor of Greece. In no romance whatever is the fairy machinery more pleasingly displayed than in Sir Launfal, a metrical romance, composed[61] by Thomas Chestre, in the reign of Henry VI. Before, however, we give the analysis of this poem, which will be followed by that of another, and by our own imitations of this kind of verse, we will take leave to offer some observations on a subject that seems to us to be in general but little understood, namely, the structure of our old English verse, and the proper mode of reading it.