[134] See ten Brink, _Chaucer's Sprache und Verskunst_, § 260.
[136] Cf. King James I, _The Kingis Quair_, ed. by W. W. Skeat, 1883-4.
[139] A long list of the words so treated is to be found in Abbott, _Shakespearian Grammar_, § 460.
[140] Cf. Abbott, § 477; Ellis, _E. E. Pr._, iii. 951-2; _Metrik_, ii, 117-18.
§ =113.= In discussing the English Word-accent and its relationship to rhythmic accent it is necessary to consider the Middle English and the Modern English periods separately, for two reasons. First, because the inflexional endings which play an important part in Middle English are almost entirely lost in Modern English, and secondly, because the word-accent of the Romanic element of the language differs considerably in the Middle English period from what it became in Modern English. In the treatment of each period it will be convenient to separate Germanic from Romanic words.
=A. Germanic words.= The general laws of Germanic accentuation of words, as existing in Old English, have been mentioned above (cf. §§ 18, 19). The same laws are binding also for Middle English and Modern English.
The main law for all accentual versification is this, that verse-accent must always coincide with word-accent. This holds good for all even-beat kinds of verse, as well as for the alliterative line.
The language in all works of the same date and dialect, in whatever kinds of verse they may be written, must obey the same laws of accentuation. For this reason the results derived from the relation in which the word-accent and the metrical value of syllables stand to the verse-accent, with regard to the general laws of accentuation, and especially those of inflexional syllables, must be the same for the language of all even-beat kinds of verse as for that of the contemporary alliterative line, or the verse of Layamon's _Brut_ and other works written in a similar form of verse and derived from the ancient native metre.
Now, when we wish to ascertain the state of accentuation of forms of words no longer spoken the evidence supplied by the even-beat rhythms is especially valuable. This is so, chiefly because it is much more difficult to make the word-accent agree with the verse-accent in this kind of rhythm, in which it is essential that accented and unaccented syllables should alternate continuously, than in the alliterative line, which allows greater freedom both in the relative position of accented and unaccented syllables and in the numerical proportion between the unaccented and the accented syllables.