I may remark here that the metre is sometimes difficult to follow; chiefly
owing to the fact that the line sometimes begins with an accented syllable,
just as, in Milton's L'Allegro, we meet with lines like 'Zéphyr, with
Aurora playing.' The accented syllables are sometimes indistinctly marked,
and hence arises a difficulty in immediately detecting the right flow of a
line. A clear instance of a line beginning with an accented syllable is
seen in l. 23--'Slép', and thús meláncolýë.'
1. The opening lines of this poem were subsequently copied (in 1384) by
Froissart, in his Paradis d'Amour--
'Je sui de moi en grant merveille
Comment je vifs, quant tant je veille,
Et on ne porrait en veillant
Trouver de moi plus travaillant:
Car bien sacies que pour veiller
Me viennent souvent travailler
Pensees et melancolies,' etc.
Furnivall; Trial Forewords, p. 51.
Chaucer frequently makes words like _have_ (l. 1), _live_ (l. 2),
especially in the present indicative, mere monosyllables. As examples of
the fully sounded final _e_, we may notice the dative _light-e_ (l. 1), the
dative (or adverbial) _night-e_ (l. 2), the infinitive _slep-e_ (3), the
adverb _ylich-e_ (9), the dative _mind-e_ (15), &c. On the other hand,
_hav-e_ is dissyllabic in l. 24. The _e_ is elided before a following vowel
in _defaute_ (5), _trouthe_ (6), _falle_ (13), _wite_ (16), &c. We may also
notice that _com'th_ is a monosyllable (7), whereas _trewely_ (33) has
three syllables, though in l. 35 it makes but two. It is clear that Chaucer
chose to make _some_ words of variable length; and he does this to a much
greater extent in the present poem and in the House of Fame than in more
finished productions, such as the Canterbury Tales. But it must be
observed, on the other hand, that the number of these variable words is
_limited_; in a far larger number of words, the number of syllables never
varies at all, except by regular elision before a vowel.
14. The reading _For sorwful ymaginacioun_ (in F., Tn., Th.) cannot be
right. Lange proposes to omit _For_, which hardly helps us. It is clearly
_sorwful_ that is wrong. I propose to replace it by _sory_. Koch remarks
that _sorwful_ has only two syllables (l. 85); but the line only admits of
one, or of one and a very light syllable.
15. Observe how frequently, in this poem and in the House of Fame, Chaucer
concludes a sentence with the _former_ of two lines of a couplet. Other
examples occur at ll. 29, 43, 51, 59, 67, 75, 79, 87, 89; i. e. at least
ten times in the course of the first hundred lines. The same arrangement
occasionally occurs in the existing translation of the Romaunt of the Rose,
but with such less frequency as, in itself, to form a presumption against
Chaucer's having written the whole of it.
Similar examples in Milton, though he was an admirer of Chaucer, are
remarkably rare; compare, however, Comus, 97, 101, 127, 133, 137. The
metrical effect of this pause is very good.
23. The texts read _this_. Ten Brink suggests _thus_ (Ch. Sprache, § 320);
which I adopt.
31. _What me is_, what is the matter with me. _Me_ is here in the dative
case. This throws some light on the common use of _me_ in Shakespeare in
such cases as 'Heat _me_ these irons hot,' K. John, iv. 1. 1; &c.
31-96. These lines are omitted in the Tanner MS. 346; also in MS. Bodley
638 (which even omits ll. 24-30). In the Fairfax MS. they are added in a
much later hand. Consequently, Thynne's edition is here our only
satisfactory authority; though the late copy in the Fairfax MS. is worth
consulting.