DRYDEN.

The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees,

Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;

Three centuries he grows, and three he stays,

Supreme in state, and in three more decays:

So wears the paving pebble in the street,

And towns and towers their fatal periods meet:

So rivers, rapid once, now naked lie,

Forsaken of their springs and leave their channels dry:

So man, at first a drop, dilates with heat;

Then form'd the little heart begins to beat;

Secret he feeds, unknowing in the cell;

At length, for hatching ripe, he breaks the shell,

And struggles into breath, and cries for aid;

Then helpless in his mother's lap is laid.

He creeps, he walks, and, issuing into man,

Grudges their life, from whence his own began;

Retchless of laws, affects to rule alone,

Anxious to reign, and restless on the throne;

First vegetive, then feels, and reasons last;

Rich of three souls, and lives all three to waste.

Some thus, but thousands more, in flower of age,

For few arrive to run the latter stage.

Sunk in the first, in battle some are slain,

And others whelm'd beneath the stormy main.

What makes all this but Jupiter the king,

At whose command we perish, and we spring?

Then 'tis our best, since thus ordain'd to die,

To make a virtue of necessity;

Take what he gives, since to rebel is vain;

The bad grows better, which we well sustain;

And could we choose the time, and choose aright,

'Tis best to die, our honour at the height.

When we have done our ancestors no shame,

But served our friends, and well secured our fame,

Then should we wish our happy life to close,

And leave no more for fortune to dispose.

So should we make our death a glad relief

From future shame, from sickness, and from grief;

Enjoying, while we live, the present hour,

And dying in our excellence and flower.

Then round our death-bed every friend should run,

And joyous of our conquest early won;

While the malicious world, with envious tears,

Should grudge our happy end, and wish it theirs.

Since then our Arcite is with honour dead,

Why should we mourn that he so soon is freed,

Or call untimely what the gods decreed?

With grief as just, a friend may be deplored,

From a foul prison to free air restored,

Ought he to thank his kinsman or his wife,

Could tears recal him into wretched life?

Their sorrow hurts themselves; on him is lost;

And worse than both, offends his happy ghost.

What then remains, but after past annoy,

To take the good vicissitude of joy;

To thank the gracious gods for what they give,

Possess our souls, and while we live, to live?

Ordain we then two sorrows to combine,

And in one point the extremes of grief to join;

That thence resulting joy may be renew'd,

As jarring notes in harmony conclude.

Then I propose, that Palamon shall be

In marriage join'd with beauteous Emily;

For which already I have gain'd the assent

Of my free people in full parliament.

Long love to her has borne the faithful knight,

And well deserved, had fortune done him right;

'Tis time to mend her fault, since Emily,

By Arcite's death, from former vows is free.--

If you, fair sister, ratify the accord,

And take him for your husband and your lord,

'Tis no dishonour to confer your grace

On one descended from a royal race;

And were he less, yet years of service past,

From grateful souls, exact reward at last.

Pity is heaven's and your's; nor can she find

A throne so soft as in a woman's mind--

He said: she blush'd; and, as o'erawed by might,

Seem'd to give Theseus what she gave the knight.

Then, turning to the Theban, thus he said:--

Small arguments are needful to persuade

Your temper to comply with my command:

And, speaking thus, he gave Emilia's hand.

Smiled Venus to behold her own true knight

Obtain the conquest, though he lost the fight;

And bless'd, with nuptial bliss, the sweet laborious night.

Eros and Anteros, on either side,

One fired the bridegroom, and one warm'd the bride;

And long-attending Hymen, from above,

Shower'd on the bed the whole Idalian grove.

All of a tenor was their after-life,

No day discolour'd with domestic strife;

No jealousy, but mutual truth believed

Secure repose, and kindness undeceived.

Thus Heaven, beyond the compass of his thought,

Sent him the blessing he so dearly bought.

So may the Queen of Love long duty bless,

And all true lovers find the same success.

The time is come in which a curious and instructive chapter in English

criticism--a long one too, possibly--might be written on the

Versification of Chaucer, and upon the history of opinions respecting

it. Tyrwhitt laid the basis, in his edition of the _Canterbury

Tales_--the only work of the ancestral poet that can yet fairly be said

to have found an editor--by a text, of which the admirable diligence,

fidelity, skill, and sound discretion, wrung energetic and unqualified

praise from the illaudatory pen of Ritson. But the Grammar of Chaucer

has yet to be fully drawn out. The profound labours of the continental

scholars, late or living, on the language that was immediate mother to

our own, the Anglo-Saxon, makes that which was in Tyrwhitt's day a thing

impossible to be done, now almost an easy adventure. Accomplished, it

would at once considerably rectify even Tyrwhitt's text. The Rules of

the Verse, which are many, and evince a systematic and cautious framing,

no less than a sensitive musical ear in the patriarch, would follow of

themselves. In the mean time, a few observations, for which the

materials lie at hand, are called for in this place, by the collision of

the two great names, Chaucer and Dryden. Dryden says--

"The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us, but

it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was

_auribus istius temporis accommodata_. They who lived with him,

and some time after him, thought it musical; and it continues

so, even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of

Lidgate and Gower, his contemporaries:--there is the rude

sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and

pleasing, though not perfect. It is true, I cannot go so far as

he who published the last edition of him; for he would make us

believe the fault is in our ears, and that there were really

ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine; but this

opinion is not worth confuting; it is so gross and obvious an

error, that common sense (which is a rule in every thing but

matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader that

equality of numbers, in every verse which we call heroic, was

either not known, or not always practised in Chaucer's age. It

were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses

which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole

one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise. We can only

say, that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that

nothing is brought to perfection at first. We must be children

before we grow men. There was an Ennius, and in process of time

a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace; even

after Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax,

before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in

their nonage till these last appeared."

Strange to say, by the changing pronunciation of the language, there

grew with time upon the minds of men a doubt, whether or no the Father

of our Poetry _wrote verse_! The tone of Dryden, in the above passage,

when animadverting upon Speght, shows that that editor, in standing up

for ten syllables, put forth an unusual opinion; whilst the poet, in

alleging the deficiency, manifestly agrees with the opinion of the

antique versification that had become current in the world. _He_ taxes

Chaucer, it will be observed, with going wrong on the side of

deficiency, not of excess; nor does he blame the interchange even of

deficiency and excess, as if the syllables were often nine and often

eleven. His words leave no room for misconception of their meaning. They

are as definite as language can supply. "Thousands of the verses are

lame for want of half a foot, or of a whole one." In this sense, then,

he intends: "That equality of numbers, in every verse which we call

heroic, was either not known, or not always practised in Chaucer's age."

But as Dryden has been severely taken to task by some insignificant

writers of our day for the above passage, let us, not for his

vindication, but excuse, take a moment's glance at Speght's edition

(1602,) which, in Dryden's day, was in high esteem, and had been at

first published on the recommendation of Speght's "assured and

ever-loving friend," the illustrious Francis Beaumout. In his preface,

Speght says--"and his verses, although in divers places they may seem to

us to stand of unequal measures, yet a skilful reader that can scan them

in their nature, shall find it otherwise. And if a verse here and there

fal out a sillable shorter or longer than another, I rather aret it to

the negligence and rape of Adam Scrivener, that I may speak as Chaucer

doth, than to any unconning or oversight in the Author. For how fearful

he was to have his works miswritten, or his verse mismeasured, may

appear in the end of his fifth book of Troilus and Cresside, where he

writeth thus:--

'And for there is so great diversitie,

In English and in writing of our tongue,

So pray I God, that none miswrite thee,

Ne thee mismetre for defaut of tongue'" &c.

How Speght made up the measure to his own satisfaction does not appear;

nor what those methods of pronunciation may have been which Dryden

tried, and which left some thousand verses deficient by half a foot, or

a foot.

But believing Speght's text to be accurate, Dryden could not but believe

in the artlessness and irregularity of Chaucer's versification. Speght's

text is most inaccurate, and altogether undeserving of his own very high

opinion, thus expressed in the Dedication to Sir Robert Cecil--"Now,

therefore, that both by old written copies, and by Master William

Thynn's praiseworthy labours, I have reformed the whole worke, whereby

Chaucer for the most part is restored to his owne antiquitie." In _his_

Chaucer, Dryden met every where such lines as these--

"When that April with his shours sote."

"And small foules maken melodie

That slepen all night with open eie."

"It befell that season on a day."

"Ready to wend in my pilgrimage."

"That toward Canterbury would ride--

The chambres and stables weren wide."

"To tell you all the condition."

"Full worthy was he in his lords warre."

"Aboven all nations in Pruce."

"For to tell you of his array."

We suspect that there was all along a lingering tradition amongst the

learned about the virtue of the Mute E's. Vestiges of the use occur in

the poets of Elizabeth's time. Wallis, the celebrated grammarian, says,

that "with our early poets it is found that that (final) E did or did

not constitute an additional syllable, just as the stricture of the

verse required it." Urry, whose edition of Chaucer was published, not

long after his death, in 1721, knows for vocal the termination in ES, of

genitive singular and of the plural--also the past tense and participle

in ED, which, however, can hardly be thought much of, as it is a power

over one mute E that we retain in use to this day. The final E, too, he

marks for a syllable where he finds one wanted, but evidently without

any grammatical reason. Urry was an unfortunate editor. Truly does

Tyrwhitt say of him, that "his design of restoring the metre of Chaucer

by a collation of MSS., was as laudable as his execution of it has

certainly been unsuccessful." The natural causes of this ill success are

thus severely and distinctly stated, "The strange license in which he

appears to have indulged himself, of lengthening and shortening

Chaucer's words according to his own fancy, and of even adding words of

his own, without giving his readers the least notice, has made the text

of Chaucer in his edition by far the worst that was ever published." One

is not surprised when Tyrwhitt, the model of gentlemanly and scholarly

editor, a very pattern of temperate, equitable, and merciful criticism,

cannot refrain from closing his preface with this extinguishing censure

of his wilful predecessor--"Mr Urry's edition should never be opened by

any one for the purpose of reading Chaucer."

Morell, a scholar, published in 1737 the Prologue and the Knight's

Tale--and he, too, marked at need the Mute E's in his text, but by what

rule Tyrwhitt does not intimate, nor do we now distinctly recollect. He

courageously holds that the numbers of Chaucer "are always musical,

whether they want or exceed the complement." But that cannot well be;

for except in very peculiar cases--such, for example, as the happy line,

"Gingling in the whistling wind full clear"--if the MS. have it so--a

line of nine syllables only must be a _lame_ one--and their frequent

recurrence would be the destruction of all music.

Tyrwhitt urges the reason of pronouncing the final E; namely, that it

remains to us from a language in which it formed a syllable. So from the

Norman French we have _fac_-E, _host_-E, _chang_-E, &c. This is basing

the matter on its true ground. It must, however, be acknowledged with

some sorrow, that this well-schooled, clear-minded, and most laborious

editor did not feel himself bound, for the behoof of his author, to

master, as far as the philology of the day might have enabled him, the

Saxon tongue itself, and learn from the fountain what might, and what

could not be--the language of Chaucer. Imperfect as the study of the

Anglo-Saxon then was, he would thus have possessed a needful mastery

over the manuscripts, upon which, as it was, he wholly depended; and he

would have been saved from some unguarded philological assertions and

whimsical speculations. Wanting this guidance, the work, so well

executed as it is, is a monument only the more to be wondered at of his

indefatigable industry and extraordinary good sense.

Upon any where opening Chaucer, of the many seemingly defective verses,

(Dryden in saying thousands may have exaggerated the number even in

Speght,) by far the greater part will be found recoverable to measure by

that restitution of the Mute E which we since, too exclusively perhaps,

connect with the name of Tyrwhitt. The confidence felt in his text,

however--the only one upon which a metrical scholar dares work--in some

sort justifies the honour. Meanwhile, this metrical theory, from his

time, has been generally received; and the renown of the founder of our

poetry settled on all the wider and firmer basis, when he appears as the

earliest skilled artificer of the verse itself--the ten-syllabled or now

national verse, of Shakspeare, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and Pope.

One starts, therefore, to find a name of such distinction as the late

Laureate's formally opposed to Tyrwhitt, and committed to the opinion

which may seem to have been Dryden's, that the verse of Chaucer is

"rhythmical, not metrical." This hardly self-explicating distinction of

Dr Geo. Fred. Nott's, Southey in his Life of Cowper has explained in set

terms--a verse for which the number of beats or accents is ruled is

rhythmical--for example, the verse of Coleridge's _Christabel_. In that

beautiful poem, the verse is fixed at four beats or accents, but is free

syllabled, having six, seven, ten, twelve, or fourteen. Southey cannot

believe that the prudent and practical Chaucer would have placed his

verse, intended for general reception, in the jeopardy of a reader's

discretion for determining when the verse required the sounding, and

when the silence, of a vowel, by its nature free to be sounded or left

silent, as exigency might require. But he misapprehends the proposed

remedy; and the discretion which he supposes is not given. In the two

languages from which ours is immediately derived, the Anglo-Saxon and

the Norman-French, there are found many final syllables, entirely

dropped in our pronunciation, and many of them in our writing, but which

in the time of Chaucer were all still written, and all with the same

vowel E. The metrical hypothesis, to which Tyrwhitt's labours gave a

lustre, much heightened by the Anglo-Saxon studies abroad and at home of

the present century, bears--first, that in the language of Chaucer's day

these syllables were still audible; and secondly, that Chaucer

consequently employed them in his verse, like any other syllables, with

the due metrical value:--herein not, as the Laureate thought,

overruling, but conforming himself to the use of his mother tongue. To

this more than plausible view, which, if the late studies that have been

taken in the intelligence of Alfred's speech had been made in Tyrwhitt's

day, would not have waited till now for its full establishment, no

objection has yet been raised that seems to deserve the slightest

attention. The Laureate's vanish upon the mere statement. For Dr Nott,

on whom he triumphantly builds, and whose proofs he seems to adopt--he

is the weakest and most wrongheaded of all possible prosers; and, what

is more, his opinions, if they deserve the name, differ _toto coelo_

from Southey's. For we have seen that Southey's ground of distinction is

the number of syllables unrestrained or varying, as in _Christabel_. But

Nott says repeatedly, that the number of syllables is fixed, namely, to

ten; and of the five beats he says not a word.

To extricate Nott's argument (in his edition of Surrey) from

entanglement would not repay a tithe of the trouble; suffice it to say

that he holds that as English verse, before Chaucer, was rhythmical, it

is not likely that Chaucer all at once made it metrical. We answer

first--the question is of a fact offering its own evidence, not of an

anterior likelihood. Secondly--Tyrwhitt's theory that Chaucer, from his

intimacy with the more advanced French and Italian poetry, adopted their

measure, and stamped art upon a poetry till then rude and helpless, has

high natural probability, and agrees to the vehement early extollings of

Chaucer as sovereign master of art. Thirdly--we desire a better proof

and explanation of the difference between rhythmical and metrical verse

than Dr Nott has given, who has placed some extracts from these anterior

poets at the side of some from Chaucer, which prove just nothing.

Fourthly, there _was_ metrical verse in England before Chaucer,

eight-syllabled and _fifteen_-syllabled--if no others. Mr Hallam

(_Introduction to the Literature of Europe_) writes with more

commendation of Dr Nott's accomplishments than they merit; but in the

following excellent passage he shows his usual knowledge of his subject,

and his usual judgment.

"It had been supposed to be proved by Tyrwhitt, that Chaucer's

lines are to be read metrically, in ten or eleven syllables,

like the Italian, and, as I apprehend, the French of his time.

For this purpose, it is necessary to presume that many

terminations, now mute, were syllabically pronounced; and where

verses prove refractory after all our endeavours, Tyrwhitt has

no scruple in declaring them corrupt. It may be added, that

Gray, before the appearance of Tyrwhitt's essay on the

versification of Chaucer, had adopted without hesitation the

same hypothesis. But, according to Dr Nott, the verses of

Chaucer, and of all his successors down to Surrey, are merely

rhythmical, to be read by cadence, and admitting of

considerable variety in the number of syllables, though ten may

be the more frequent. In the manuscripts of Chaucer, the line

is always broken by a caesura in the middle, which is pointed

out by a virgule; and this is preserved in the early editions

down to that of 1532. They come near, therefore, to the short

Saxon line, differing chiefly by the alternate rhyme, which

converts two verses into one. He maintains that a great many

lines of Chaucer cannot be read metrically, though harmonious

as verses of cadence. This rhythmical measure he proceeds to

show in Hoccleve, Lydgate, Hawes, Barclay, Skelton, and even

Wyatt; and thus concludes, that, it was first abandoned by

Surrey, in whom it very rarely occurs. This hypothesis, it

should be observed, derives some additional plausibility from a

passage in Gascoyne's 'Notes of instruction concerning the

making of verse or rhyme in English,' printed in 1575.

'Whosoever do peruse and well consider his (Chaucer's) works,

he shall find that, although his lines are not always of one

selfsame number of syllables, yet being read by one that hath

understanding, the longest verse, and that which hath most

syllables in it, will fall (to the ear) correspondent unto that

which hath fewest syllables; and likewise that which hath

fewest syllables shall be found yet to consist of words that

have such natural sound, as may seem equal in length to a verse

which hath many more syllables of lighter accents.'

"A theory so ingeniously maintained, and with so much induction

of examples, has naturally gained a good deal of credit. I

cannot, however, by any means concur in the extension given to

it. Pages may be read in Chaucer, and still more in Dunbar,

where every line is regularly and harmoniously decasyllabic;

and though the caesura may perhaps fall rather more uniformly

than it does in modern verse, it would be very easy to find

exceptions, which could not acquire a rhythmical cadence by any

artifice of the reader. The deviations from the normal type, or

decasyllable line, were they more numerous than, after

allowance for the license of pronunciation, as well as the

probable corruption of the text, they appear to be, would not,

I conceive, justify us in concluding that it was disregarded.

These aberrant lines are much more common in the dramatic blank

verse of the seventeenth century. They are, doubtless, vestiges

of the old rhythmical forms; and we may readily allow that

English versification had not, in the fifteenth or even

sixteenth centuries, the numerical regularity of classical or

Italian metre. In the ancient ballads, Scots and English, the

substitution of the anapaest for the iambic foot, is of

perpetual recurrence, and gives them a remarkable elasticity

and animation; but we never fail to recognize a uniformity of

measure, which the use of nearly equipollent feet cannot, on

the strictest metrical principles, be thought to impair."

Mr. Guest, in his work, of which we hope erelong to give an account,

brings to the story of English verse far more extensive research than

had hitherto been bestowed upon it; and that special scholarship which

was needed--the Anglo-Saxon language, learned in the new continental

school of Rask and Grimm. His examination of our subject merges in a

general history of the Language, viewed as a metrical element or

material; and hence his exposition, which we rapidly collect _seriatim_,

is plainly different in respect of both order and fulness from what it

would have been, had the illustration of Chaucer been his main purpose.

He follows down the gradual Extinction of Syllables; and in this

respect, our anciently syllabled, now mute E, takes high place, and

falls first under his consideration.

This now silent or vanished Vowel occurred heretofore, with metrical

power, in adopted FRENCH Substantives, as--eloquenc-E, maladi-E; and in

their plurals, as--maladi-ES. And in Adjectives of the same origin,

as--larg-E.

It remained from several parts of the ANGLO-SAXON grammar.--From A, E,

U, endings of Anglo-Saxon substantives--as nam-A, nam-E; tim-A, tim-E;

mon-A, (the moon,) mon-E; sunn-E, (the sun,) sonn-E; heort-E, (the

heart,) hert-E; ear-E, (the ear,) er-E; scol-U, (school,) scol-E; luf-U,

lov-E; sceam-U, sham-E; lag-A, law-E; sun-U, (a son,) son-E; wud-U, (a

wood,) wod-E.--(To Mr Guest's three vowels, add O:--as braed-O (breadth)

bred-E.)--From the termination THE; as--streng-THE; yow-THE.--From a

few adjectives ending in E; as--getrew-E, trew-E; new-E, new-E.--From

adverbs, formed by the same vowel from adjectives; as from beorht,

(bright,) is made, in Anglo-Saxon, beorht-E, (brightly,) remaining with

Chaucer, as bright-E.--Inflexion produces the final E. In substantives,

the prevalent singular dative of the mother speech was in E. Chaucer,

now and then, seems to present us with a dative; as in the second verse

of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, from rot, (root,) rot-E. And Mr

Guest thinks that he has found ONE instance of a genitive plural E from

A; namely, from the earlier ath, (an oath,) genitive plural, ath-A; with

Chaucer--oth, oth-E.

The German family of languages exhibits a fine and bold peculiarity--a

double declension of its Adjectives, depending on a condition of syntax.

The Anglo-Saxon adjective, in its ordinary (or, as grammarians have

called it, Indefinite) declension, makes the nominative plural for all

the genders in E; and this remains as the regular plural termination of

the adjective to Chaucer. Thus we have, in the more ancient

language--eald; plural, eald-E; with Chaucer--old; plural, old-E, &c.

The rule of the extraordinary (or Definite) declension, is thus

generally given by Mr Guest for Chaucer. "When the adjective follows the

definite article, or the definite pronoun, _this_, _that_, or any one of

the possessive pronouns--_his_, _her_, &c.--it takes what is called its

definite form."--(Vol. i. p. 32.) From the Anglo-Saxon definite

declension (running through three genders, five cases, and two numbers,)

remains, to the language that arose after the Conquest, ONE final E.

_E.g._ Indefinite--strong; definite, strong-E;--indefinite--high;

definite--high-E.

The Verb ends the first person singular, and the three persons plural,

of the present tense, and makes imperative and infinitive, in E. The

past tense generally ends in DE or EDE; (Mr Guest has forgotten TE;)

sometimes in ED.

As for those two principal endings, the genitive singular in ES, which

is the Anglo-Saxon termination retained, and the plural in ES, which is

the Anglo-Saxon ending obscured--they happen hardly to fall under Mr

Guest's particular regard; but it is easily understood that the

Anglo-Saxon hlaford, (lord,) gen. sing. hlaford-ES, had, in Chaucer's

day, become lord, lord-ES;--and that scur, (shower,) plural scur-AS, of

our distant progenitors had bequeathed to his verse--shour, shour-ES.

Legitimate scepticism surely ceases when it thus appears that ignorance

alone has hastily understood that this vowel, extant in this or that

word, with a quite alien meaning and use, (--_e.g._ for lengthening a

foregoing vowel--softening an antecedent consonant,)--or with none, and

through the pure casualty of negligence or of error, might at any time

be pressed irregularly into metrical service. Assuredly Chaucer never

used such blind and wild license of straightening his measure; but an

instructed eye sees in the Canterbury Tales--and in all his poetry of

which the text is incorrupt--the uniform application of an intricate and

thoroughly critical rule, which fills up by scores, by hundreds, or by

thousands, the time-wronged verses of "the Great Founder" to true

measure and true music.

To sum up in a few words our own views--First, if you take NO account of

the mute E, the great majority of Chaucer's verses in the only

justifiable text--Tyrwhitt's Canterbury Tales--are in what we commonly

call the TEN-syllabled Iambic metre.

Secondly, if you take account of the metrical E, the great majority of

them appear, if you choose so to call them, as ELEVEN-syllabled Iambic

verses, or as the common heroic measure with a supernumerary terminal

syllable.

Thirdly, if you take NO account of the disputed E, a very large number

of the verses, but less apparently than the majority, appear as wanting

internally one or two syllables.

Fourthly, if you take account of the said troublesome E, almost

universally these deficient measures become filled up to the due

complement--become decasyllabic or hendecasyllabic, as the case may be.

Fifthly, if you consent to take account of this grammatical metrical E,

no inconsiderable number of the verses--ten-syllabled or

eleven-syllabled, by technical computation--acquire one or two

supernumerary syllables distributed, if one may so speak, _within_ the

verse--and to be viewed as enriching the harmony without distorting or

extending the measure, after the manner of the _Paradise Lost_.

Finally, (for the present,) whether the verses in general fall under our

usual English scheme of the one-syllabled ending, or end, as the Italian

for the most part do, dissyllabically, has been disputed by those who

agree in the recognition of the metrical E. To wit--shall the final E of

Mr Guest's rule, ending the verse, and where it would, consequently,

make a hypercatalectic eleventh syllable, still be pronounced--as

Tyrwhitt, although not anxiously, contends? If the grammatical rule is

imperative within the verse, as much, one would think, must it be so at

its termination. That Chaucer admits the doubled ending we see by

numerous unequivocal instances from all moods of the verse, mirthful and

solemn; these show a versification friendly to the doubled ending; and

must go far to remove any scruple of admitting Tyrwhitt's conception of

it as generally hendecasyllabic.

Let the position of Chaucer in the history of his art be considered, and

it will be seen that those who maintain a systematic art in him have a

relief from objections greater than those who should enquire concerning

perhaps any other poet. In the formation of his verse, and the lifting

up of a rude language, more than Dante himself, a creator! What wonder,

then, if he should sometimes make mistakes, and that some

inconsistencies remain at last irreducible? If the method undertaken

draws the irreducible cases into a narrower and a narrower compass, that

sufficiently justifies the theory of the method against all gainsayers.

This copious, and, possibly, tedious grammatical display of this once

active metrical element, was forced from us as the only proper answer to

the doubt revived in our own day on the versification of Chaucer. We are

too prone to believe that our forefathers were as rude as their speech,

and their speech as they; but this multitude of grammatical delicacies,

retained for centuries after the subjection of the native language by

conquest, and systematically applied in the versification of the great

old poet, shows a feeling of language, and an authentic stamp of art,

that claim the most genial and sympathizing respect of a refined

posterity, to their not wholly unrefined, more heroic ancestors.