“To thee and to the philosophic_all_ strode,
To vouchsafe [vouchësafe] there need is, to correct”;
and further on,--
“With all mine herte’ of mercy ever I pray
And to the Lord aright thus I speake and say,”
where we must either strike out the second “I” or put it after “speake.”
One often finds such changes made by ear justified by the readings in
other texts, and we cannot but hope that the Chaucer Society will give
us the means of at last settling upon a version which shall make the
poems of one of the most fluent of metrists at least readable. Let
anyone compare the “Franklin’s Tale” in the Aldine edition[18] with the
text given by Wright, and he will find both sense and metre clear
themselves up in a surprising way. A careful collation of texts, by the
way, confirms one’s confidence in Tyrwhitt’s good taste and
thoroughness.
A writer in the “Proceedings of the Philological Society” has lately
undertaken to prove that Chaucer did not sound the final or medial _e_,
and throws us back on the old theory that he wrote “riding-rime,” that
is, verse to the eye and not the ear. This he attempts to do by showing
that the Anglo-Norman poets themselves did not sound the _e_, or, at any
rate, were not uniform in so doing. It should seem a sufficient answer
to this merely to ask whence modern French poetry derived its rules of
pronunciation so like those of Chaucer, so different from those of
prose. But it is not enough to prove that some of the Anglo-Norman
rhymers were bad versifiers. Let us look for examples in the works of
the best poet among them all, Marie de France, with whose works Chaucer
was certainly familiar. What was _her_ practice? I open at random and
find enough to overthrow the whole theory:--
“Od sa fill_ë_[19] ke le cela--
Tut li curag_ë_s li fremi--
Di mei, fet-el_ë_ par ta fei--
La Dameisel_ë_ l’aporta--
Kar ne li sembla mi_ë_ boens--
La dam_ë_ l’aveit apelée--
Et la mer_ë_ l’areisuna.”
But how about the elision?
“Le pal_i_’ _e_sgard_ë_ sur le lit--
Et el_e_’ _e_st devant li alée--
Bel_e_’ amië [cf. mi_ë_, above] n_e’i_l me celez.
La dam_e_’ ad sa fill_e_’ amenée.”
These are all on a single page[20], and there are some to spare. How
about the _hiatus_? On the same page I find,--
“Kar l’Ercëveskë _i_ _e_stoit--
Pur eus beneistr_e_’ _e_ _e_nseiner.”
What was the practice of Wace? Again I open at random.
“N’osa remaindr_e_’ en Normandië,
Maiz, quant la guerr_ë_ fu finië,
Od sou herneiz en Puill_e_’ _a_la--
Cil de Baienës lung_ë_ment--
N_e_ _i_l nes pout par forc_ë_ prendre--
Dunc la vil_ë_ mult amendout,
Prisons e preiës amenout.”[21]
Again we have the sounded final _e_, the elision, and the _hiatus_. But
what possible reason is there for supposing that Chaucer would go to
obscure minstrels to learn the rules of French versification? Nay, why
are we to suppose that he followed them at all? In his case as in
theirs, as in that of the Italians, with the works of whose two greater
poets he was familiar, it was the language itself and the usages of
pronunciation that guided the poet, and not arbitrary laws laid down by
a synod of versemakers. Chaucer’s verse differs from that of Gower and
Lydgate precisely as the verse of Spenser differs from that of
Gascoigne, and for the same reason,--that he was a great poet, to whom
measure was a natural vehicle. But admitting that he must have formed
his style on the French poets, would he not have gone for lessons to the
most famous and popular among them,--the authors of the “Roman de la
Rose”? Wherever you open that poem, you find Guillaume de Lorris and
Jean de Meung following precisely the same method,--a method not in the
least arbitrary, but inherent in the material which they wrought. The
_e_ sounded or absorbed under the same conditions, the same slurring of
diphthongs, the same occasional _hiatus_, the same compression of
several vowels into one sound where they immediately follow each other.
Shakespeare and Milton would supply examples enough of all these
practices that seem so incredible to those who write about versification
without sufficient fineness of sense to feel the difference between Ben
Jonson’s blank verse and Marlow’s. Some men are verse-deaf as others are
color-blind,--Messrs. Malone and Guest, for example.
I try Rutebeuf in the same haphazard way, and chance brings me upon his
“Pharisian.” This poem is in stanzas, the verses of the first of which
have all of them masculine rhymes, those of the second feminine ones,
and so on in such continual alternation to the end, as to show that it
was done with intention to avoid monotony. Of feminine rhymes we find
ypocrisi_ë_, fam_ë_, justic_ë_, mesur_ë_, yglis_ë_. But did Rutebeuf
mean so to pronounce them? I open again at the poem of the _Secrestain_,
which is written in regular octosyllabics, and read,--
“Envi_ë_ fet hom_ë_ tuer,
Et si fait bonn_ë_ remuer--
Envië grev_e_’, envië blec_ë_,
Envi_ë_ confont charit_ë_
Envi_e_’ ocist humilit_ë_,--
Estoit en ce païs en vi_ë_
Sanz orgueil er_e_’ _e_t sanz envi_ë_--
La glorieus_ë_, dam_ë_, chier_ë_.”[22]
Froissart was Chaucer’s contemporary. What was his usage?
“J’avoi_ë_ fait en ce voiaig_ë_
Et je li di, ‘Ma dam_ë_ s’ai-je
Pour vous ëu maint souvenir’;
Mais je ne sui pas bien hardis
De vous remonstrer, dam_ë_ chier_ë_,
Par quel art ne par quel manier_ë_,
J’ai ëu ce comenc_ë_ment
De l’amourous atouch_ë_ment.’”
If we try Philippe Mouskes, a mechanical rhymer, if ever there was one,
and therefore the surer not to let go the leading-strings of rule, the
result is the same.
But Chaucer, it is argued, was not uniform in his practice. Would this
be likely? Certainly not with those terminations (like _courtesië_)
which are questioned, and in diphthongs generally. Dante took precisely
the same liberties.
“Fac_ea_ le stelle a n_oi_ parer più radi,”
“Nè fu per fantas_ia_ giamm_ai_ compreso”
“P_oi_ p_io_vve dentro all ‘alta fantas_ia_,”
“Sol_ea_ valor e cortes_ia_ trovarsi,”
“Che ne ’nvogliava amor e cortes_ia_.”
Here we have _fantasì’_ and _fantasiä_, _cortesì’_ and _cortesiä_. Even
Pope has _promiscuous_, _obsequious_, as trisyllables, _individual_ as a
quadrisyllable, and words like _tapestry_, _opera_, indifferently as
trochees or dactyls according to their place in the verse. Donne even
goes so far as to make Cain a monosyllable and dissyllable in the same
verse:--
“Sister and wife to Cain, Caïn that first did plough.”
The cæsural pause (a purely imaginary thing in accentual metres) may be
made to balance a line like this of Donne’s,
“Are they not like | singers at doors for meat,”
but we defy any one by any trick of voice to make it supply a missing
syllable in what is called our heroic measure, so mainly used by
Chaucer.
Enough and far more than enough on a question about which it is as hard
to be patient as about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. It is easy
to find all manner of bad metres among these versifiers, and plenty of
inconsistencies, many or most of them the fault of careless or ignorant
transcribers, but whoever has read them thoroughly, and with enough
philological knowledge of cognate languages to guide him, is sure that
they at least aimed at regularity, precisely as he is convinced that
Raynouard’s rule about singular and plural terminations has plenty of
evidence to sustain it, despite the numerous exceptions. To show what a
bad versifier _could_ make out of the same language that Chaucer used, I
copy one stanza from a contemporary poem.
“When Phebus fresh was in chare resplendent,
In the moneth of May erly in a morning,
I hard two lovers profer this argument
In the yeere of our Lord a M. by rekening,
CCCXL. and VIII. yeere following.
O potent princesse conserve true lovers all
And grant them thy region and blisse celestial.”[23]
Here is riding-rhyme, and on a very hard horse too. Can any one be
insensible to the difference between such stuff as this and the measure
of Chaucer? Is it possible that with him the one halting verse should be
the rule, and the twenty musical ones the exception? Let us take heed to
his own words:--
“And, for there is so great diversitë
In English, and in writing of our tong,
So pray I God[24] that none miswritë the
Ne the mismetre for defaut of tong,
And redde whereso thou be or ellës song
That thou be understood God I beseech.”
Yet more. Boccaccio’s _ottava rima_ is almost as regular as that of
Tasso. Was Chaucer unconscious of this? It will be worth while to
compare a stanza of the original with one of the translation.
“Era cortese Ettore di natura
Però vedendo di costei il gran pianto,
Ch’era più bella ch’altra creatura,
Con pio parlare confortolla alquanto,
Dicendo, lascia con la ria ventura
Tuo padre andar che tulti ha offeso tanto,
E tu, sicura e lieta, senza noia,
Mentre t’aggrada, con noi resta in Troia.”[25]
“Now was this Hector pitous of naturë,
And saw that she was sorrowful begon
And that she was so faire a creaturë,
Of his goodnesse he gladed her anon
And said [saidë] let your father’s treason gon
Forth with mischance, and ye yourself in joy
Dwelleth with us while [that] you list in Troy.”
If the Italian were read with the same ignorance that has wreaked itself
on Chaucer, the riding-rhyme would be on its high horse in almost every
line of Boccaccio’s stanza. The same might be said of many a verse in
Donne’s satires. Spenser in his eclogues for February, May, and
September evidently took it for granted that he had caught the measure
of Chaucer, and it would be rather amusing, as well as instructive, to
hear the maintainers of the hop-skip-and-jump theory of versification
attempt to make the elder poet’s verses dance to the tune for which one
of our greatest metrists (in his philological deafness) supposed their
feet to be trained.
I will give one more example of Chaucer’s verse, again making my
selection from one of his less mature works. He is speaking of
Tarquin:--
“And ay the morë he was in despair
The more he coveted and thought her fair;
His blinde lust was all his coveting.
On morrow when the bird began to sing
Unto the siege he cometh full privily
And by himself he walketh soberly
The imáge of her recording alway new:
Thus lay her hair, and thus fresh was her hue,
Thus sate, thus spake, thus span, this was her cheer,
Thus fair she was, and this was her manére.
All this conceit his heart hath new ytake,
And as the sea, with tempest all toshake,
That after, when the storm is all ago,
Yet will the water quap a day or two,
Right so, though that her forme were absént,
The pleasance of her forme was presént.”
And this passage leads me to say a few words of Chaucer as a descriptive
poet; for I think it a great mistake to attribute to him any properly
dramatic power, as some have done. Even Herr Hertzberg, in his
remarkably intelligent essay, is led a little astray on this point by
his enthusiasm. Chaucer is a great narrative poet; and, in this species
of poetry, though the author’s personality should never be obtruded, it
yet unconsciously pervades the whole, and communicates an individual
quality,--a kind of flavor of its own. This very quality, and it is one
of the highest in its way and place, would be fatal to all dramatic
force. The narrative poet is occupied with his characters as picture,
with their grouping, even their costume, it may be, and he feels for and
with them instead of being they for the moment, as the dramatist must
always be. The story-teller must possess the situation perfectly in all
its details, while the imagination of the dramatist must be possessed
and mastered by it. The latter puts before us the very passion or
emotion itself in its utmost intensity; the former gives them, not in
their primary form, but in that derivative one which they have acquired
by passing through his own mind and being modified by his reflection.
The deepest pathos of the drama, like the quiet “no more but so?” with
which Shakespeare tells us that Ophelia’s heart is bursting, is sudden
as a stab, while in narrative it is more or less suffused with pity,--a
feeling capable of prolonged sustention. This presence of the author’s
own sympathy is noticeable in all Chaucer’s pathetic passages, as, for
instance, in the lamentation of Constance over her child in the “Man of
Law’s Tale.” When he comes to the sorrow of his story, he seems to croon
over his thoughts, to soothe them and dwell upon them with a kind of
pleased compassion, as a child treats a wounded bird which he fears to
grasp too tightly, and yet cannot make up his heart wholly to let go. It
is true also of his humor that it pervades his comic tales like
sunshine, and never dazzles the attention by a sudden flash. Sometimes
he brings it in parenthetically, and insinuates a sarcasm so slyly as
almost to slip by without our notice, as where he satirizes
provincialism by the cock
“Who knew by nature each ascensiön
Of the equinoctial in his native town.”
Sometimes he turns round upon himself and smiles at a trip he has made
into fine writing:--
“Till that the brightë sun had lost his hue,
For th’ orisont had reft the sun his light,
(This is as much to sayen as ‘it was night.’)”