OBSERVATIONS ON THE LANGUAGE OF CHAUCER. 449 
the other hand, there are long passages which appear to be but very slightly cor- 
rupted from the original, the metre being Des and certain plain grammatical laws 
uniformly observed.* 
Whether the day will ever confe e a text of Chaucer will be constructed 
upon just principles, is more than can be predicted. Manuscripts of the Canter- 
_ bury Tales and of Troilus and Cressida are very numerous, but no pains have been 
taken to collect a list of those that are known, or to settle their relative value. 
Had Chaucer been a German, the existing manuscripts would have been zealously 
hunted up, strictly classified, and faithfully compared and studied, and we should 
have had only too many editions. It is not desirable that a new edition of Chaucer 
should be undertaken, until a man is found who is both competent to the task 
and willing to make thorough work with the manuscripts. It is, therefore, perhaps 
to be regretted that Mr. Belle eight neat volumes, recently published, ever saw 
the light, as they are. likely to block the way to something better for a good while. 
That diversity in English which made Chaucer apprehensive of damage to his 
verses may have been so considerable, that we could not be sure of restoring them 
to perfect purity, even if we had several manuscripts of the date 1400 before us. 
But by far the larger part of the irregularities and corruptions with which the text 
is now loaded are undoubtedly of later origin, and there is no reason why, (if we 
are allowed only to take for granted that Chaucer had an ear, and meant to write 
good metre,f) by taking pains enough, by a patient comparison of apparently un- 
* Naturally enough, it is often the less interesting passages which are most incorrect; for instance, the 
Monk's Tale, which almost made *oure ost" fall down for sleep, and seems to have had the same qnem upon 
the copyist. 
+ And whether an attractive and easily intelligible popular SS of the Canterbury Tales is, for moral 
reasons, desirable, is more than I will assert. 
1 Of course, unless Chaucer wrote good metre, there is an end to all inquiry into the forms of his language. 
Nothing can be more absurd than Dr, Nott's theory upon this point (Surrey and Wyatt, Vol. L, Dissertation), 
or more just than Tyrwhitt’s remarks, which, however, did Nott no good. “ The great number of verses, sound- 
ing complete even to our ears, which is to be found in all the least-corrected copies of his works, authorizes us 
to conclude that he was not ignorant of the laws of metre. Upon this conclusion, it is impossible not to ground 
a strong presumption that he intended to observe the same laws in many other verses which seem to us 
: irregular ; and if this was really his intention, what reason can be assigned sufficient to account for his having 
failed so grossly and repeatedly, as is generally supposed, in an operation which every ballad-monger in ofir 
days, man, woman, or child, is known to perform with the most unerring exactness, and without any extraordi- 
nary fatigue?” (Essay, Part. II. $ xii.) Tyrwhitt was perfectly right in saying that the greatest part of Chau- 
cer’s heroic verses, when properly written and pronounced, are of eleven syllables. Whether the eleven-syllable 
verse is as agreeable to us as the decasyllabic, is another matter. Is it not surprising, then, that a man of 
