But this reappearance is conditioned and qualified by a very remarkable fact. There is, as has just been said, pure alliterative verse. It is not, indeed, an exact representation of the old A.S. line. It is somewhat longer than the shorter forms of that line, and very much shorter than the "extended" variety. In some cases, especially in the later examples, the alliteration is richer, extending to four, five, or even six syllables. Most noteworthy of all is the substitution, in the general rhythmical run, of anapæstic-iambic for trochaic basis--a fact the importance of which, in the general history of the morphology of English poetry and of the change from A.S. to M.E., cannot be exaggerated.
But it is also worthy of the most careful remark that, in a relatively large number of instances, the alliterative-accentual system is apparently unable to rely upon itself. It is tempted or driven to borrow metre, or rhyme, or both. Of the two best pieces in the alliterative division, outside _Piers Plowman_, _Gawain and the Green Knight_ combines, with an unrhymed body or _tirade_, a rhymed "bob and wheel" in every stanza; while _The Pearl_, though alliterated almost to the highest possible strength, is strictly metrical and strictly rhymed throughout. Others form their stanzas of lines roughly rhythmed but fairly well rhymed.
[Sidenote: The later fourteenth century.]
By the last quarter of the fourteenth century, therefore, there were in England two contrasted and in a way rival, but, as has been said, overlapping, systems of versification: one a sort of atavistic revival, the other the result of a process--_two_ centuries old to a certainty, and probably nearer _four_--of blending the characteristics of Low Latin and French prosody with those of Old English.
In the three chief poets of the later fourteenth century (Chaucer, Gower, and Langland) we have three object lessons as to the results of this process, which could not have been improved if the course of events had been exclusively devoted to the task of making these results, and the process itself, clear to the student. They had best be taken in reverse order.
Langland represents, in the greatest perfection that can reasonably be expected, the attempt to preserve, or revert to, verse arranged without rhyme, without metre in the strict sense, and depending for its separation from prose upon alliteration, accent, and strong middle pause. In spite of himself, and in consequence of the state of the language, actually metrical lines--decasyllables, Alexandrines, and fourteeners--do appear; but, as a rule, he avoids them either with singular skill or with remarkable luck, and on the whole achieves a consistent medium, not so much dominated as permeated by a sort of anapæstic underhum of rhythm, but otherwise maintaining its independence. Being possessed of great literary and even distinctly poetical genius, he makes it a by no means unsuitable vehicle for his tangle of apocalyptic dreams, and no ill one for the occasional passages of a more mundane description which he interlards. But it is deficient in beauty, if not in vigour; it is clearly unsuited for many of the subjects of poetry; and to any one acquainted with metre and rhyme it constantly suggests the question and complaint, "_Why_ are we to be deprived of these already-won beauties and conveniences, and cut off with this rough makeshift?"