It would serve no purpose here to discuss in detail most of the other vernacular productions of the first half of the thirteenth century in English.[92] They are almost without exception either religious--the constant rehandling of the time cannot be better exemplified than by the fact that at least two paraphrases, one in prose, one in verse, of one of the "doles" of the _Ancren Riwle_ itself exist--or else moral-scientific, such as the _Bestiary_,[93] so often printed. One of the constantly recurring version-paraphrases of the Scriptures, however--the so-called _Story of Genesis and Exodus_,[94] supposed to date from about the middle--has great interest, because here we find (whether for the first time or not he would be a rash man who should say, but certainly for almost, if not quite, the first) the famous "Christabel" metre--iambic dimeter, rhymed with a wide licence of trisyllabic equivalence. This was to be twice revived by great poets, with immense consequences to English poetry--first by Spenser in the _Kalendar_, and then by Coleridge himself--and was to become one of the most powerful, varied, and charming of English rhythms. That this metre, the chief battle-ground of fighting between the accent-men and the quantity-men, never arose till after rhymed quantitative metre had met accentual alliteration, and had to a great extent overcome it, is a tell-tale fact, of which more hereafter. And it is to be observed also that in this same poem it is possible to discover not a few very complete and handsome decasyllables which would do no discredit to Chaucer himself. [Footnote 92: Substantial portions of all the work mentioned in this chapter will be found in Messrs Morris and Skeat's invaluable _Specimens of Early English_ (Oxford, Part i. ed. 2, 1887; Part ii. ed. 3, 1894). These include the whole of the _Moral Ode_ and of _King Horn_. Separate complete editions of some are noted below.] [Footnote 93: Wright, _Reliquiae Antiquae_, i. 208-227.] [Footnote 94: Ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., London, 1865.] [Sidenote: _The_ Owl and the Nightingale.] [Sidenote: _Proverbs._]