Chaucer found an Herculean labour on his Hands; and did perform to Admiration. He seizes all Provencal, French, or Latin that came in his way, gives them a new garb and livery, and mingles them amongst our English; turns out English, gowty, or superannuated, to place in their room the foreigners, fit for service, train'd and accustomed to Poetical Discipline.

But tho' the Italian Reformation was begun and finished well nigh at the same time by Boccace, Dante, and Petrarch. Our language retain❜d something of the churl; something of the Stiff and Gothish did stick upon it, till long after Chaucer.

Chaucer threw in Latin, French, Provencial, and other Languages, like new Stum to raise a Fermentation; In Queen Elizabeth's time it grew fine, but came not to an Head and Spirit, did not shine and sparkle till Mr. Waller set it a running. And one may observe by his Poem on the Navy, An. 1632, that Not the language only, but His Poetry then distinguish'd him from all his contemporaries, both in England and in other Nations; And from all before him upwards to Horace and Virgil."

Rymer: Short View of Tragedy, chaps. vi, vii.

This passage was referred to, approvingly, by Dryden, Preface to Fables, as below.

1700

"The Verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not Harmonious to us. They who liv'd with him, and some time after him, thought it Musical; and it continues so even in our Judgment, if compar'd 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. 'Tis true, I cannot go so far as he who publish'd 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; 'tis so gross and obvious an Errour, that common Sense . . . must convince the Reader, that Equality of Numbers in every Verse which we call Heroick was either not known, or not always practis'd in Chaucer's age. It were an easie Matter to produce some thousands of his Verses, which are lame for want of half a Foot, and some times a whole one, and which no Pronunciation can make otherwise."

From the Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern.

Translated

into Verse from Homer, Ovid, Boccace, and Chaucer. With Original Poems. By Mr. Dryden. London, 1700.

1721

"It is thought by some that his Verses every where consist of an equal number of feet, and that if read with a right accent, are no where deficient; but those nice discerning Persons would find it difficult, with all their straining and working, to spin out some of his Verses into a measure of ten Syllables. [Footnote refers to Dryden, Preface to Fables.] He was not altogether regardless of his Numbers; but his thoughts were more intent upon solid sense than gingle, and he tells us plainly that we must not expect regularity in all his Verses." [reference to the passage in the House of Fame, Book III, see citation ante from the 1602 Chaucer.] From the Life of Chaucer by John Dart, revised by William Thomas, prefixed to Urry's Chaucer.

1721

Thomas, in his Preface to Urry's Chaucer, says of Urry's unfinished work: "His chief business was to make the Text more correct and compleat than before. He found it was the opinion of some learned Men that Chaucer's Verses originally consisted of an equal number of Feet; and he himself was perswaded that Chaucer made them exact Metre." ... "He had observed that several Initial and Final Syllables in use in Chaucer's time, and since, had been omitted or added at pleasure in the MSS by unskilful Transcribers, from whence the same Errors crept into the Printed Editions, whereby many Verses were rendered unjust in their Measure." ... "The Final Syllables were for the most part such as might be said rather to be added in the Pronunciation, than by Writing: The chiefest of which, and the most frequently made use of to help out a Verse otherwise deficient, was the Final e, which he always marked with an accent when he judged it necessary to pronounce it." . . . "The next thing to be taken notice of as used for lengthening of words, is the distinct pronouncing of the Termination ed or id in the Preter Tenses of Verbs, and in Participles."

"Another help he saw might be gained by making a discreet use of en, or in, a Termination of Verbs, Nouns, and Adverbs, but most frequently of Verbs." ... “And again the pronouncing of es or is, the Plural Termination of Substantives, and sometimes of Adverbs, and also of is the Termination of the Genitive Case Singular has contributed no small assistance towards the supply of a Foot to many Verses, which must otherwise have halted." . . . "And here likewise it must be observed, that these Terminations are not always to be pronounced, but only where the Metre is deficient without it."

The different opinion of Dart, in the Life prefixed to the Urry Chaucer, may be seen just ante. See also glossary to Urry, s. v. missemetre.

"Tis true, Mr. Speght, in his Edition 1602 affirms, that Chaucer wrote in equal measure; but of other learned Men know I none of the same Opinion; I am sure, none that I have had the Honour particularly to converse with on this Occasion. (Morell quotes Dryden, the Life in Urry's Chaucer, and the eight lines from the House of Fame ending "though som verse faile in a sillable.") "From this last Line, I conclude, that an exact Numerosity (as Bishop Sprat expresses it in his Life of Cowley . . . ) was not Chaucer's main Care; but that he had sometimes a greater Regard for the Sense than the Metre; His Numbers however, are by no Means so rough and inharmonious as some People imagine; there is a charming Simplicity in them, and they are always musical, whether they want or exceed their Complement: The former Case, I have observed, where it happens, is generally at the Beginning of a Verse, where a Pause is to be made, or rather two Times to be given to the first Syllable, as v. 368

Not in Purgatory, but in Hell

Mr. Urry, to make out his ten Syllables, reads it, right in Hell, which right, tho' I am no great Admirer of a Pun, is Wrong, as it renders the Verse very harsh and dissonant: But this is only one Verse among hundreds that are false accented in Mr. Urry's Edition, as may be seen by any one that thinks it worth while to consult the various Readings annexed to this."

"Some Verses are charg'd with an additional Syllable that were full before, as v. 1050, 1537, &c. others are as unnecessarily curtailed, for want of knowing, that as Chaucer sometimes gives two Times to one long Syllable, so he often uses two short Syllables, I mean, such as do not require a strong Accent, instead of one, v. 734, 309, 1219, 2056. In others, the Apostrophe or Elision is not observed, when it is necessarily required, v. 214, &c. But what I am more surpriz'd at is, that Mr. Urry very often disallows, the double Rhime, as v. 804, 325, &c. than which nothing can be more absurd."

Morell then says that the final e was anciently pronounced in feminine adjectives and in substantives which from Saxon have been made English by changing a into e, e. g., nama. "However, our author seems to have taken the liberty to use it or not, as it best suited his Metre":

Hickes' Thesaurus is quoted: "Non constat quomodo voces in E foeminino vel obscuro terminatae pronunciandae sunt in carmine: quae metrice forsan, nunc ut monosyllaba, nunc ut disyllaba edenda sunt."

"But give me leave to observe, that he has never used it in any even Place, except the 2d, where it is allowable, especially if the accent be strong upon the 4th.”

Morell assures his readers that he keeps strictly to the orthography of the oldest MSS. He presents some general observations on Chaucer's language, which are in part notes upon medieval orthography. He quotes two passages from Hickes in reproof of Speght, see under Speght's 1602 edition of the Works, Section II D here; and concludes:

"This, then has been my Amusement for some Time, and I hope with no great Detriment to the more severe and decent Studies required by my Place and Character: I believe many a leisure Hour might have been spent worse."

From Thomas Morell's preface to his ed. of the Canterbury Tales.

Upon the line discussed by Urry and by Morell as above it may be noted that Tyrwhitt thought this could "never pass for a verse in any form", and said that Chaucer wrote, according to the best MSS, "Not only in purgatory, but in helle." See Skeat in the revision of Tyrwhitt's Essay for the Aldine Chaucer, note 65.

1755

"Chaucer may perhaps, with great justice, be stiled the first of our versifyers who wrote poetically. He does not however appear to have deserved all the praise which he has received, or all the censure that he has suffered. Dryden, who mistakes genius for learning, and, in confidence of his abilities, ventured to write of what he had not examined, ascribes to Chaucer the first refinement of our numbers, the first production of easy and natural rhymes, and the improvement of our language, by words borrowed from the more polished languages of the continent. Skinner contrarily blames him in harsh terms for having vitiated his native speech by whole cartloads of foreign words. But he that reads the works of Gower will find smooth numbers and easy rhymes, of which Chaucer is supposed to have been the inventor, and the French words, whether good or bad, of which Chaucer is charged as the importer. Some innovations he might probably make, like others, in the infancy of our poetry, which the paucity of books does [not] allow us to discover with particular exactness; but the works of Gower and Lydgate sufficiently evince, that his diction was in general like that of his contemporaries: and some improvements he undoubtedly made by the various disposition of his rhymes, and by the mixture of different numbers, in which he seems to have been happy and judicious." &c.

From Dr. Johnson's history of the English language, prefixed to his Dictionary.

Johnson has previously referred to "Sir John Gower, who calls Chaucer his disciple, and may therefore be considered as the father of our poetry." In this he misquotes the epilogue to the Confessio Amantis, where Gower makes Venus term Chaucer her disciple.

Johnson was censured by Ellis, in his Specimens of the Early English Poets, 1790.

1760-61

"Though I would not with Mr. Urry, the Editor of Chaucer, insert words and syllables, unauthorized by the oldest manuscripts, to help out what seems lame and defective in the measure of our ancient writers, yet as I see those manuscripts, and the first printed editions, so extremely inconstant in their manner of spelling one and the same word as to vary continually, and often in the compass of two lines, and seem to have no fixed orthography, I cannot help thinking it probable, that many great inequalities in the metre are owing to the neglect of transcribers, or that the manner of reading made up for the defects which appear in the writing." (Gray then points out that the prefix y- is derived from the Old English prefix ge-, and that the final syllable of verbs, from the Saxon -an, -en, might also survive in pronunciation.) . . . "Our writers inserted these initial and final letters, or omitted them; and, where we see them written, we do not doubt that they were meant to fill up the measure; it follows, that these Poets had an ear not insensible to defects in metre; and where the verse seems to halt, it is very probably occasioned by the transcriber's neglect." "This was commonly done, too, I imagine, in Chaucer's and Lydgate's time; but, in verse, they took the liberty either to follow the old language in pronouncing the final syllable, or to sink the vowel and abridge it, as was usual, according to the necessity of their versification; .. and though in time the e mute was quite dropped in conversation, yet when the poet thought fit to make a syllable of it, it no more offended their ears than it now offends those of a Frenchman to hear it so pronounced, in verse.”

From Gray's Observations on English Metre, written, Gosse conjectures, at the date above given, printed by Mathias in 1814, and here quoted from Gosse's edition of Gray in four vols., N. Y. 1890, vol. I.

1775

Tyrwhitt, in the Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer, prefixed to his edition of the Canterbury Tales, endeavored to prove:

(1) That the admixture of French in Chaucer's vocabulary was not of his introduction, but represents the normal state of XIV century English.

(2) That the English language was in Chaucer's time a mixture of matter largely French, and of Saxon forms. He rapidly discusses these latter (inflexional endings, etc.), with a number of errors due to his treatment of the language by eye and not by ear, and to his ignorance of dialectal differences in Middle English.

(3) That rime, not a characteristic of Saxon poetry, was es