Chapter XII: Part I: Concluded (4)

Does this innovation make good an ethical want in the rough and unschooled original? Or does it perplex the old heroic simplicity with a modern and needless refinement? By right of arms, by gift of the king, with her own gentle consent, Emelie was Arcite's. Death unsinews the hand that held her against the world. Let a few winged moments fleet, and she is his no more. He bows, conquered by all-conquering, alone unconquerable necessity. His love, which had victoriously expelled his cousin's from the field of debate, he carries with him to the melancholy Plutonic kingdom, and leaves the field of debate still--Palamon victor, and Emelie free. Really there seems to be something not only simpler in art, but more pathetic, and even morally greater, in the humble submission of the fierce and giant-like spirit to inevitable decree--in the spontaneous return of the pristine fraternal appreciation when death withdraws the disturbing force of rivalry--and in his voluntarily appointing, so far as he ventures to appoint, his brother in arms and his bride to each other's happiness--than in the inventive display of a compunction for which, as the world goes, there appears to be positively no use, and hardly clear room. Loftily viewing the case, a wrong has been intended by Arcite to Palamon, but no wrong done. He has been twice hacked and hewed a little--that is all; and it cannot be said that he has been robbed of her who would not have been his. Indeed, the current of destiny has so run, that the quarrel of the two noble kinsmen has brought, as apparently it alone could bring, the survivor to wedlock with his beloved. We suspect, then, that the attribution of the motive is equally modern with the style of the not ill-contrived witticism which accompanies the first mention of it--

"Conscience, that of all physick works the last,
Caused him to send for Emily in haste."

But that which, upon the general comparison of the two speeches, principally strikes us, is the great expansion, by the multiplying of the thoughts to which expression is given, by Dryden. With old Geoffrey, the weight of death seems actually to lie upon the tongue that speaks in few interrupted accents. Dryden's Moribund runs on, quite at his ease, in eloquent disquisition. Another unsatisfactory difference is the disappearing of that distinct, commanding purpose or plan, and the due proportion observed upon in the original. That mere cleaving desire to Emelie, felt through the first half in word after word gushing up from a heart in which life, but not love, ebbs, gets bewildered in the modern version among explications of the befallen unhappiness, and lost in a sort of argumentative lamentation. And do but just look how that "in his colde grave," the only word, one may say, in the whole allocution which does not expressly appertain to Emelie, and yet half belongs to her by contrast--is extended, in Dryden, as if upon recollection of Claudio's complaint in "Measure for Measure," until, like that complaint, it becomes selfish.

But there is small pleasure in picking out the poetical misses of John Dryden. It was to be foreseen that he would be worsted in this place of the competition; for the pathetic was not his _forte_, and was Chaucer's. So, too, instead of the summary and concise commendation of his happier cousin to the future regard of the bereaved bride, so touching in Chaucer, there comes in, provoked by that unlucky repentance, an expatiating and arguing review of the now extinct quarrel, showing a liberty and vigour of thought that agree ill with the threatening cloud of dissolution, and somewhat overlay and encumber the proper business to which the dying man has now turned himself--made imperative by the occasion--the formal and energetic eulogy on Palamon. The praise, however, is bestowed at last, and handsomely.

Have we, think ye, gentle lovers of Chaucer, rightly understood the possibly somewhat obscure intention of the two verses at the beginning of our extract--

"But I bequethe the service of my gost
To you?"

We have accepted "service" in the sense which, agreeably to our erudition, it eminently holds the old love-vocabulary--homage, devotion, LOVE; the pure and entire dedication by the lover of his whole being to his lady. In this meaning, the heart continually _serves_, if there should be no opportunity of rendering any useful offices. You will see that Dryden has taken the word in what strikes us as an inferior sense--namely, available service; but then his verses are exquisite. And why, gentle lovers of Chaucer, why think ye does the expiring Arcite, at that particular juncture of his address, crave of his heart's queen softly to take him in her arms? Is it not that he is then about pouring out into her ear his dying design for her happiness? Received so, the movement has great originality and an infinite beauty. His heart yearns the more towards her as he is on the point of giving utterance to his generous proposal. He will, by that act of love upon her part, and that mutual attitude of love, deepen the solemnity, truth, power, impression of his unexpected request. Will he perchance, too, approach her ear to his voice, that grows weaker and weaker?

The two verses appear by their wording to intimate something like all this.

"And softe take me in your armes twey,
For love of God, _and herkeneth what I sey_."

If Chaucer had any such meaning, it vanishes wholly in Dryden's version.

On re-surveying the matter at last, we feel the more that the passing over of Emelie from the dead Arcite to the living Palamon, in Chaucer, is by much more poetical when viewed as the voluntary concession and gift of the now fully heroic Arcite, than as, in Dryden, the recovered right of the fortunate survivor. However, the speech, as Dryden has it, is vigorous, numerous, spirited, eloquent, touched with poetry, and might please you very well, did you not compare it with the singular truth, feeling, fitness of Chaucer's--that unparalleled picture of a manly, sorely-wrung, lovingly-provident spirit upon its bed of untimely death.

The process of dying has been considerately delineated by Chaucer. Death creeps from the feet upwards to the breast--it creeps up and possesses the arms. But the intellect which dwelled in the heart 'gan fail only when the very heart felt death. Then dimness fell upon the eyes, and the breath faltered. One more look--one more word--and the spirit has forsaken its tenement. Dryden generalizes all this particularity--and therein greatly errs. But the last four flowing verses of the death-scene are in his more inspired manner, and must be held good for redeeming a multitude of peccadilloes and some graver transgressions. Read them over again--

"Yet could he not his closing eyes withdraw,
Though less and less of Emily he saw;
So, speechless for a little space he lay;
Then grasp'd the hand he held, and sigh'd his soul away."

When years rolling have in a manner exhausted the tears due to the remembrance of the heroic Arcite, a parliament, held upon matters of public interest, gives occasion to Theseus of requiring the attendance of Palamon from Thebes to Athens. The benign monarch, however, is revolving affairs of nearer and more private concern. The national council is assembled; Palamon is in his place, and Emelie has been called into presence. His majesty puts on a very serious countenance, fixes his eyes, heaves a sigh, and begins unburthening his bosom of its concealed purposes. He "begins from the beginning" in this fashion:--

"When the First Mover established the great chain of love, in which he bound the four elements, the mighty ordering proceeded of high wisdom. The same author, himself inaccessible to alteration, has appointed to all natural things the law of transiency and succession. The kinds endure; the individuals pass away. Nature examples us with decay. Trees, rivers, mighty towns, wax and wane--much more we. All must die--the great and the small: and the wish to live is an impiety. Better it is to fall in the pride of strength and in the splendour of renown, than to droop through long years into the grave; and the friend who survives should rejoice in his friend's happy and honourable departure. Wherefore, then, shall we longer mourn for Arcite?" This is the copious preamble. The conclusion is more briefly dispatched. Emelie must accept the hand of her faithful servant Palamon. He wants no persuasion; and the knot of matrimony happily ties up at last their destinies, wishes, and expectations, which the Tale in its progress has spun.

The royal harangue is long; and marked, doubtless, with a sort of artificial solemnity. However, it has a deliberative stateliness and a certain monarchal tone. _We_ do not now, in the Speeches from the Throne, begin regularly from the Creation--but that is a refinement. There has been eloquence of which Chaucer's deep display of philosophy and high deduction of argument is no ill-conceived representation. There is a grandeur in the earthly king's grounding his counsels in those of the heavenly King; and in his blending his own particular act of exerted kingly sway into the general system of things in the universe. The turn from the somewhat magniloquent dissertation to the parties immediately interested--the gentle disposing, between injunction and persuasion, of Emelie's will, and the frank call upon Palamon to come forward and take possession of his happiness, are natural, princely, and full of dramatic grace. Thus,--

CHAUCER.

Lo the oke that hath so long a norishing
Fro the time that it ginneth first to spring,
And hath so long a lif, as ye may see,
Yet at the laste wasted is the tree.
Considereth eke, how that the harde stone
Under our feet, on which we trede and gon,
It wasteth as it lieth by the way;
The brode river some time waxeth dry;
The grete tounes see we wane and wende;
Then may ye see that all things hath an end.
Of man and woman see we wel also,
That nedes in on of the termes two,
That is to sayn, in youth or elles age,
He mote be ded, the king as shall a page;
Som on his bed, some on the depe see,
Som in the large field, as ye may see;
Ther helpeth nought, all goth that ilke wey;
Than may I say that alle things mote dey.
What maketh this but Jupiter the king?
The which is prince, and cause of alle thing,
Converting alle unto his propre will,
From which it is derived, soth to telle.
And here againes no creature on live
Of no degree availeth for to strive.
Then is it wisdom, as it thinketh me,
To maken virtue of necessite,
And take it wel, that we may not eschewe,
And namely that to us all is dewe.
And who so grutcheth ought, he doth folie,
And rebel is to him that all may gie.
And certainly a man hath most honour
To dien in his excellence and flour,
Whan he is siker of his goode name.
Than hath he don his friend, ne him, no shame;
And glader ought his friend been of his deth
Whan with honour is yelden up his breath,
Than whan his name appalled is for age;
For all foryetten is his vassalage
Than is it best, as for a worthy fame,
To dien when a man is best of name.
The contrary of all this is wilfulnesse.
Why grutchen we? Why have we heavinesse,
That good Arcite, of chivalry the flour,
Departed is, with dutee and honour,
Out of this foule prison of this lif?
Why grutchen here his cosin and his wif
Of his welfare, that loven him so wel?
Can he hem thank? Nay, God wot, never a del,
That both his soule, and eke himself offend,
And yet they mow hir lustres not amend.

What may I conclude of this longe serie,
But after sorwe I rede us to be merie,
And thanken Jupiter of all his grace,
And er that we departen from this place,
I rede that we make of sorwes two
O parfit joye lasting evermo;
And loketh now wher most sorwe is herein,
Ther wol I firste amenden and begin.

Sister (quod he) this is my full assent,
With all the avis here of my parlement,
That gentil Palamon, your owen knight,
That serveth you with will, and herte and might,
And ever hath done, sin ye first him knew,
That ye shall of your grace upon him vew,
And taken him for husbond and for lord:
Lene me your hand, for this is oure accord.

Let see now of your womanly pitee.
He is a kinge's brother's sone pardee,
And though he were a poure bachelere,
Sin he hath served you so many a yere,
And had for you so gret adversitie,
It moste ben considered, leveth me.
For gentil mercy oweth to passen right.

Then sayd he thus to Palamon the knight:
I trow ther nedeth little sermoning
To maken you assenten to this thing.
Cometh ner, and take your lady by the hond.

Betwixen hem was maked anon the bond,
That highte matrimoine or mariage,
By all the conseil of the baronage.
And thus with alle blisse and melodie
Hath Palamon ywedded Emilie.
And God, that all this wide world hath wrought,
Send him his love, that hath it dere ybought.
For now is Palamon in alle wele,
Living in blisse, in richisse, and in hele,
And Emelie him loveth so tendrely,
And he hire serveth all so gentilly,
That never was ther no word hem betwene
Of jalousie, ne of non other tene.

Thus endeth Palamon and Emilie
And God save all this fayre compagnie.

The whole oration is rendered by Dryden with zealous diligence in bringing out the sense into further effect, and with a magnificent sweep of composition. If there is in the fine original any thing felt as a little too stiffly formal, this impression is wholly obliterated or lost in the streaming poetry of the translator. Dryden may not, on his own score, have been much of a philosopher; but he handles a philosophical thought in verse with a dexterity that is entirely his own. The sharpness and swiftness of intellectual power concurring in him, join so much ease with so much brevity, that the poetical vein flows on unhindered, even when involved with metaphysical notions and with scholastic recollections. The comparison of the following noble strain with the original now quoted, decisively and successfully shows the character of an embellishing transformation, which we have all along attributed to Dryden's treatment of Chaucer. The full thought of the original is often but as the seed of thought to the version, or at least the ungrown plant of the one throws out the luxuriance and majesty of leaves, blossoms, and branches in the other. The growth and decay of the oak in the two, and still more of the human being, are marked instances. Dryden does not himself acknowledge the bold license which he has used in regenerating; he does himself less than justice. The worth of his work is not the giving to modern England her ancient poet, without the trouble of acquiring his language, or of learning to sympathize with his manner. It would almost seem as if that were an enterprise which there is no accomplishing. Rightly to speak, it was not Dryden's. He really undertook, from a great old poem lying before him, to write a great modern poem, which he has done; and in the new Knight's Tale, we see Dryden, the great poet--we do not see Chaucer, the greater poet. But we see in it presumptive proof that the old poem worked from was great and interesting; and we must be lazy and unprofitable students if we do not, from the proud and splendid modernization, derive a yearning and a craving towards the unknown simple antique. Unknown to us, in our first studies, as we read upward from our own day into the past glories of our vernacular literature; but which, when, with gradually mounting courage, endeavour, and acquirement, we have made our way up so far, we find

"Worthy to have not remain'd so long unknown."

So, Dryden has done honour and rendered service to his mighty predecessor--truer honour and better service--not by superseding, but by guiding and impelling towards the knowledge of the old Knight's Tale.

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.

INDEX TO VOL. LVII.

About a bonnet, 242.

Aden, town of, 206.

Advice to an author, on the novel and the drama, 679.

AEsthetics of dress:
--A case of hats, 51
--No. II. about a bonnet, 242
--No. III. the cut of a coat and the good of a gown, 608
--No. IV. minor matters, 731.

Affliction of childhood, the, by the English Opium-Eater, 274.

Agriculture, Practical, 298.

Almaden, the quicksilver mines of, 186.

Anacreon's grave, from Goethe, 175.

Apparition of the Brocken, the, by the English Opium-Eater, 747.

Ariosto, remarks on, 404.

Arnold's history of Rome, vol. iii., review of, 752.

Betham's Etruria Celtica, review of, 474.

Blind girl, to a, 98.

Bonnet, about a, 242.

Book of the Farm, review of, 298.

Borodino, an ode, 30.

Bravo, character of, 601.

Breeze, the, from Goethe, 173.

British critics, North's specimens of, No. I. Dryden, 133
--No. II. Dryden and Pope, 369
--No. III. Dryden, 503
--No. IV. Dryden on Chaucer, 617
--No. V. the same, concluded, 771.

British history during the eighteenth century, 353.

Brothers, the, from Goethe, 176.

Cairo, town of, 210.

Calm at sea, the, from Goethe, 173.

Campagna of Rome, the, 546.

Case of hats, a, 51.

Cattaro, sketches of, 34.

Cavalier's choice, from Goethe, 174.

Cennino Cennini on painting, 717.

Cervantes, remarks on, 8.

Ceylon, sketch of, 204.

Chapman's Homer, remarks on, 381.

Chaucer, Dryden on, 617, 771.

Chosen rock, the, from Goethe, 177.

Coleridge and opium-eating, 117.

Comfort in tears, from Goethe, 170.

Confessions of an English Opium-eater, a sequel to. Introductory notice, 269
--Part I. The affliction of childhood, 274
--Part I. continued, 489.
--Part I. concluded, The Palimpsest, 739
--Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow, 743
--The apparition of the Brocken, 747
--Finale to Part I., Savannah-la-Mar, 750.

Critics, the British--_see_ British.

Cuba, insurrection in, 605.

Cut of a coat, the, 608.

Dance of death, from Goethe, 167.

Dante, characteristics of, 2, 9.

Death trance, from Goethe, 177.

Delta, stanzas written after the funeral of Sir David Milne, by, 766.

Desert, journey across the, 204.

Draining land, on, 299.

Drama and the novel, the, 679.

Dress, aesthetics of, a case of hats, 51
--No. II. about a bonnet, 242
--No. III. The cut of a coat and the good of a gown, 608.

Dryden as a critic, 133, 369, 503--as a translator, 511--on Chaucer, 617, 771.

Dumas, M., the three guardsmen by, 59.

Egypt, sketches of, 286.

Englishwoman in Egypt, the, 286.

Etruria Celtica, review of, 474.

Etudes des Sciences Sociales, review of, 529.

Evening, from Goethe, 173.

Exculpation, from Goethe, 179.

Fairest flower, the, from Goethe, 168.

Fasti of Ovid, translation from the, 94.

Forced sale, the, 99
--Chap. II., 103
--Chap. III, 107
--Chap. IV., 111.

France, state of manners, &c., in, before the Revolution, 705.

George III., review of Walpole's memoirs of, 353.

German-American romances
--The Viceroy and the Aristocracy, or Mexico in 1812
--Part I., Introduction, 251
--Chap. I., 257--Chap. XI., 262
--Part II., 331
--Chap. XVIII., 333
--Chap. XIX., 340
--Chap. XX., 345
--Chap. XXIII., 349
--Part III., 561
--Chap. XLI., 572
--Chap. XLII., 575.

Gillman's life of Coleridge, strictures on, 117.

Glance at the Peninsula, 595.

Goethe--_see_ Poems.

Good of a gown, the, 608.

Grant to Maynooth, the, 647.

Hannibal, 752.

Hats, a case of, 51.

History, on translating, 507.

Holy family, the, from Goethe, 178.

Homer, on the translation of, 507.

Homer, Dante, and Michael Angelo, 1.

Homeward bound, 18.

Hood, Thomas, stanzas to the memory of, by B. Simmons, 768.

Husbandman, the, from Goethe, 175.

Isabel, Queen of Spain, character of 598.

Janus, from the Fasti of Ovid, 94.

J.D. To a Blind Girl, by, 98
--Stanzas by, 314.

Juvenal, remarks on, 516.

King in Thule, the, from Goethe, 166.

Lebrun's Lawsuit, 705.

Leon, General, 606.

Letters of the Dead, by B. Simmons, 114.

Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow, by the English Opium-Eater, 743.

Lopez, character of, 601.

Love's Hour-Glass, from Goethe, 176.

Lucretius, remarks on, 517.

Malmesbury's Diary and Correspondence, review of, 315.

Malta, 215.

Marriage unequal, from Goethe, 178.

Marston; or, Memoirs of a Statesman
--Part XV., 75
--Part XVI., 461
--Part XVII., 679.

Matanzas, insurrection at, 605.

Maynooth, 647.

Merrifield, Mrs., translation of Cennino Cennini on Painting, by, 717.

Mesmerism, 219.

Mexico in 1812
--Part I., 251
--Part II., 331
--Part III., 561.

Michael Angelo, 1, 15.

Midnight Watch, the
--Chap. I., 424
--Chap. II., 431
--Chap. III., 439
--Chap. IV., 444.

Milne, Sir David, stanzas written after the funeral of, by Delta, 766.

Milton, critiques on, 5, 503.

Modern Political Economy, remarks on, 529.

Mohammed Ali, 215.

Montenegro, a ramble in, 33.

Muse's mirror, from Goethe, 179.

My first spec in the Biggleswades, 549.

Narvaez, characte of, 599.

New love, from Goethe, 179.

North's Specimens of the British Critics, No. I., Dryden, 133
--No. II., Dryden and Pope, 369
--No. III., Dryden, 503
--No. IV, Dryden on Chaucer, 617
--the same, concluded, 771.

Novel and the Drama, the, 679.

O'Donnell, governor of Cuba, 605.

Opium-Eater, a sequel to the confessions of the, introductory notice, 269
--Part I. The affliction of childhood, 274
--Part I. continued, 489
--concluded; the Palimpsest, 739
--Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow, 743
--the apparition of the Brocken, 747
--Finale to Part I., Savannah-la-Mar, 750.

Overland passage, the, 204.

Ovid's Fasti, translation from, 94.

Painting, Cennino Cennini on, 717.

Park, the, from Goethe, 178.

Parting precepts, by B. Simmons, 114.

Pauperism, increase of, 531.

Peel, E. Borodino, an ode by, 30.

Peninsula, a glance at the, 595.

Perfect bliss, from Goethe, 176.

Philomela, from Goethe, 177.

Phoebus and Hermes, from Goethe, 179.

Ping-Kee's view of the stage, 415.

Poems and ballads of Goethe, No. III. The waterman, 165
--the king in Thule, 166
--the dance of death, 167
--the fairest flower, 168
--sorrow without consolation, 170
--comfort in tears, ib.
--to a golden heart, 171
--welcome and departure, 172
--evening, 173
--a calm at sea, ib.
--the breeze, ib.
--the cavalier's choice, 174
--retribution, 175
--poems after the manner of the antique; the husbandman, ib.
--Anacreon's grave, ib.
--the brothers, 176
--Love's hourglass, ib.
--warning, ib.
--solitude, ib.
--perfect bliss, ib.
--the chosen rock, 177
--the death-trance, ib.
--Philomela, ib.
--sacred ground, ib.
--the park, 178
--the teachers, ib.
--marriage unequal, ib.
--holy family, ib.
--exculpation, 179
--the muses' mirror, ib.
--Phoebus and Hermes, ib.
--a new love, ib.
--the wreaths, 180
--the Swiss Alp, ib.

Poetry:
--Borodino, an ode, by E. Peel, 30
--Janus, from the Fasti of Ovid, 94
--to a blind girl, 98
--Vanities in verse, by B. Simmons, 114
--the tower of London, by Thomas Roscoe, 158
--the poems and ballads of Goethe, No. III. 165
--stanzas by J. D., 314
--stanzas written after the funeral of Sir David Milne, by Delta, 766
--stanzas to the memory of Thomas Hood, by B. Simmons, 768.

Poetry, on the translation of, 507.

Political economy, remarks on modern, 529.

Pompeii, 218.