Rhyme and scansion tend to limit and hamper it; everything can be said in prose, but not in poetry; to prose no licence need be granted, while poetry must use and abuse it, for prose is free, poetry shackled by its form.
"A Novelist on Novels"
W. L. George
The language had undergone some changes since Chaucer's time, which made his scansion obsolete.
"Brief History of English and American Literature"
Henry A. Beers
Nevertheless there was a controversy over Rowley, hardly less obstinate than that over Ossian, a controversy made possible only by the then almost universal ignorance of the forms, scansion, and vocabulary of early English poetry.
"Brief History of English and American Literature"
Henry A. Beers