[Footnote 1: Halliwell says, Preface v f.: ‘It is very incorrectly written, and the copy of the romance of Torrent of Portugal, which occupies 88 pages of the book, contains so many obvious blunders and omissions, that it may be conjectured with great probability to have been written down from oral recitation.’] In consequence, the whole of the philological work on the text had still to be done, and a new edition was plainly necessary; the more that this poem, though not written in the best period of romance poetry, treats of a legendary subject widely spread in the Middle Ages, and is nearly related to another poem, _Syr Eglamour of Artois_. § 2. METRE AND VERSIFICATION. As I mentioned before, the romance of _Sir Torrent_ is composed in the well-known tail-rhymed twelve-line stanza, and belongs to that class of it in which the first and the second couplets have different rhyme-sounds (cf. Koelbing, _Amis and Amiloun_, p. xiv ff.). Only the incompleteness of many stanzas, and the many defects in reference to the rhyme, can excuse Halliwell for not apprehending the character of the metre. As to the structure of the eight lines of the four couplets, each contains (or at least ought to contain) four accents, the _caudæ_ three; but as we, unfortunately, possess only one MS., a conclusive statement on this point is impossible. There is no doubt about the fact that neither the really incorrect rhymes nor the wanting of them can be due to the author of the poem: even when romance poetry was decaying, the poets were fairly perfect rhymers: with all deficiencies in this department, the copyists are to be charged. _Consonant_ rhymes (s. _Schipper Altengl. Metrik_, p. 299) are found in _Torrent_ in the following passages: l. 141 _rode--rode_ ags. _rôd--râd_. 450 _the--the_ ags. _þeón--þe_. 1558 _indede--dede_. 2205 _lay--lay_, _sg.--plr. prt._ _Identical_ rhymes are frequent, especially in the _caudæ_: 81 _stond--stond_. 177 _there--there_. 500 _he--hee_. 1887 _there--there_. 2538 _blithe--blithe_. 39 _take--take_. 342 _bold--bold_, a. s. o. _Assonances_: 195 _bon~--Rome_. 518 _undyrstond--strong_. 537 _name--alone_. 699 _yod--fotte_. 758 _name--tane_. 896 _bryng--wynd_. 1257 _overcom~--Aragon~_. 1768 _man~--cam~_. 2164 _anon~--fome_. 2544 _sithe--hide_. Besides the rhymes we find abundant alliteration, as in most of the Middle English Romances. On alliteration, cf. Regel, Die alliteration in Laȝamon, _Germ. Stud._ I. 171; F. Lindner, The alliteration in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, _Essays on Chaucer_, Pt. III., p. 197 ff. Koelbing, _Sir Tristrem_, p. xxxvii, and _Amis and Amiloun_, p. lxvi. Lindner as well as Koelbing has adopted Regel’s classification, and so shall I. The most frequent is two alliterative words in one verse; they can be classed in the following way:--