for the personified abstractions from l. 300 onwards) Montgomerie's allegory, 'The Cherrie and the Slae.'
l. 312. Ytene's oaks. 'The New Forest in Hampshire, anciently so called.'—Scott. Gundimore, the residence of W. S. Rose, was in this neighbourhood, and in an unpublished piece entitled 'Gundimore,' Rose thus alludes to a visit of Scott's:—
Here he with me has joy'd to walk or cruise;
And hence has prick'd through Yten's holt, where we
Have called to mind how under greenwood tree,
Pierced by the partner of his "woodland craft,"
King Rufus fell by Tyrrell's random shaft.'
l. 314. 'The "History of Bevis of Hampton" is abridged by my friend Mr. George Ellis, with that liveliness which extracts amusement even out of the most rude and unpromising of our old tales of chivalry. Ascapart, a most important personage in the romance, is thus described in an extract:—
And full thirty foot was long.
He was bristled like a sow;
A foot he had between each brow;
His lips were great, and hung aside;
His eyen were hollow, his mouth was wide;
Lothly he was to look on than,
And liker a devil than a man.
His staff was a young oak,
Hard and heavy was his stroke."
Specimens of Metrical Romances, vol. ii. p. 136.
'I am happy to say, that the memory of Sir Bevis is still fragrant in his town of Southampton; the gate of which is sentinelled by the effigies of that doughty knight errant and his gigantic associate.'-Scott.
CANTO FIRST.
The Introduction is written on a basis of regular four-beat couplets, each line being technically an iambic tetrameter; ll. 96, 205, and 283 are Alexandrines, or iambic hexameters, each serving to give emphasis and resonance (like the ninth of the Spenserian stanza) to the passage which it closes. Intensity of expression is given by the
