But, on the other hand, it must be borne in mind that there are also a great many cases where, as regards the sense, four lines can be considered as an independent whole, when, «e. g.», the speech spoken by a person is contained in four lines, and the words of another person replying to the first follow in the next four lines. Very often also these next four lines contain only a part of the second person’s reply, so that the remainder of his reply falls into the following stanza. This ‘enjambement’ or continuation of the sense, and sometimes of the syntactical construction from one stanza to another, need not, of course, prevent us from admitting the supposition of eight-line stanzas; as, upon the whole, it is met with in all poems composed in stanzas, and as it is frequently used in «Le Morte Arthur» (Harleian MS. 2252, ed. Furnivall), which is written in eight-line stanzas; but as there is no instance known of an eight-line stanza containing four different rhyme-endings, which at this supposition it would be the case with the «Sowdan», the eight-line stanzas containing either three rhyme-endings, as in «Chaucer», or two, as in «Le Morte Arthur», and as in some passages of the «Sowdan» (ll. 1691, 1695, 1699, 1711, 1715), we find Initials placed after four lines, I believe a stanza of four alternately rhyming lines to be the one intended by the composer—a metre which, according to Guest, «History of Eng. Rhythms», ii. 317—‘must have been well known and familiar during the fifteenth century.’ The few eight-line stanzas quoted above, may [p-xlii] then be owing either to the inadvertence of the poet, who somewhat carelessly employed one of the two rhyme-endings of one stanza a third and fourth time in the following one, or, perhaps also, he intentionally retained that rhyme-ending, and he inserted eight-line stanzas amongst those of four verses as a mere matter of variation. It is perhaps not impossible that the retention of this rhyme-ending was not greatly felt. As regards the rhymes themselves, they are both monosyllabic or masculine rhymes, and dissyllabic or feminine ones. Frequently they are used alternating with each other, as in the stanzas beginning with l. 2755. Sometimes we find four feminine rhymes occurring in an unbroken succession, as in ll. 1263–66. But it must be noticed that the number of masculine rhymes is predominant. Thus the stanzas beginning with ll. 3047, 3063, 3123, 1123, 791, 1035, 1271, 1275, 2019, 1311, 1351, 1463, &c., contain only masculine rhyme-endings. The rhymes are not always full and true; there occur many imperfect ones.