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Plentiful text books of high merit, and an elaborate system of oral and written examinations, mark the last stage in its development. The Literary Meeting is a kind of secular Sunday School. The rules of alliterative poetry and the study of Welsh literature and history, and sometimes of more general knowledge, take the place of the study of Jewish history, and psalm, and gospel.
But before we come to Malory himself it is desirable to turn to the branches the chapels, as we have called them, to the cathedral which he also, in some cases at least, utilised in the magnum opus of English prose romance. Of the special Gawain cycle or sub-cycle we have two romances in pure metrical form, and more than two in alliterative, which are above the average in interest.
Eddie verse is governed solely by the latter, and the strophic arrangement is simple, only two forms occurring: couplets of alliterative short lines; six-line strophes, consisting of a couplet followed by a single short line, the whole repeated. Roughly speaking, the first two-fifths of the MS. is mythological, the rest heroic.
Here, however, the Germans forestalled him by their energy in Central Africa. Finally, the Anglo-German agreement of 1890 assigned to Germany all the hinterland of Zanzibar as far west as the frontier of the Congo Free State, thus sterilising the idea of an all-British route from the Cape to Cairo, which possessed for some minds an alliterative and all-compelling charm.
But the most important of the alliterative poems was the Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman. In the second half of the 14th century French had ceased to be the mother-tongue of any considerable part of the population of England. By a statute of Edward III., in 1362, it was displaced from the law courts. By 1386 English had taken its place in the schools.
He came and gave me the details of his descent, the old story of course wine and its alliterative concomitant, conjoined with utter recklessness." "Well, and could you help him?" "I'm glad to say I could. I got him the place of stud-groom to a nobleman in the south of Ireland: he's turned over a new leaf, is perfectly steady, and doing as well as possible."
And in each half there had to be two or more accented syllables. But there might also be as many unaccented syllables as the poet liked. So in this way the lines were often very unequal, some being quite short and others long. Three of the accented syllables, generally two in the first half and one in the second half of the line, were alliterative. That is, they began with the same letter.
The style which, as I said before, I claim to have invented, was the very thing! I noticed, further, that there was a great deal in the title of the lecture. It must be alliterative, antithetical, or, still better, paradoxical. There was profound skill in Artemus Ward's "Babes in the Wood."
One is more astonished at Lyly's power of endurance as author than at his own power of endurance as reader. For the volume is actually readable even at this day. Did Lyly not grow wearied of perpetually riding these alliterative trick-ponies? Apparently not. The book is 'executed' with a vivacity, a dash, a 'go, that will captivate any reader who is willing to meet the author halfway.
But a Cabinet Minister, captured by a cannibal tribe, offers in addition to alliterative possibilities in the headline department, a certain novelty particularly appealing to the English reader who loves above all things to have a shock or two with his breakfast bacon.
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