There is nothing especially garden-like in its appearance; but, doubtless through "apt alliteration's artful aid," the name has become greatly popular, and it would be foolish to quarrel with it, or make any attempt to change it.

A striking characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry is consonantal alliteration; that is, the repetition of the same consonant at the beginning of words in the same line: "Grendel gongan; Godes yrre baer.

Enigmatic constructions, word-plays, words used in forced senses, continual alliteration and difficult rimes produced elaborate form and great obscurity of meaning.

"Catfish and coffee!""Rice cakes for breakfast""All in my eye, Betty Martin""Yarns and Yankees""Shad and shin-plasters""Yams and yaller boys," and so on, in a string of the most irrelevant alliteration and folly, that, like much other nonsense, evoked peals of laughter, by its unexpected utterance, and which at last mollified and brought out Major Favraud himself, from his dignified retirement.

It is the only one of the kind which I remember in the poem, and would have driven some of our old hunters after alliteration mad with envy: "La casa cosa parea bretta e brutta, Vinta dal vento; e la notta e la notte Stilla le stelle, ch' a tetto era tutto: Del pane appena ne dette ta' dotte.

Like most of his poems, it is marked by artistic finish and grace, and many of the lines have a natural beauty of unsought alliteration and assonance.