196 CHAUCER. 



measure of the Italian and Provencal poets. He reconciled, in 

 the harmony of his verse, the English bluntness with the dignity 

 and elegance of the less homely Southern speech. Though he 

 did not and could not create our language (for he who writes to 

 be read does not write for linguisters), yet it is true that he first 

 made it easy, and to that extent modern, so that Spenser, two 

 hundred years later, studied his method and called him master. 

 He first wrote English ; and it was a feeling of this, I suspect, 

 that made it fashionable in Elizabeth s day to talk pure 

 Chaucer. Already we find in his works verses that might pass 

 without question in Milton or even Wordsworth, so mainly un 

 changed have the language of poetry and the movement of verse 

 remained from his day to our own. 



Thou Polymnia 



On Pernaso, that, with * thy sisters glade, 

 15y Helicon, not far from Cirrea, 

 Singest with voice memorial in the shade, 

 Under the laurel which that may not fade. 

 And downward from a hill under a bent 

 There stood the temple of Mars omnipotent 

 Wrought all of burned steel, of which th entrde 

 Was long and strait and ghastly for to see : 

 The northern light in at the doore s shone 

 For window in the wall ne was there none 

 Through which men mighten any light discerne ; 

 The dore was all of adamant eterne. 



And here are some lines that would not seem out of place in the 

 Paradise of Dainty Devises : 



Hide, Absolom, thy gilte [gilded] tresses clear, 

 Esther lay thou thy mtcicness all adown. 



Make, of your wifehood no comparison; 

 Hide ye your beauties Ysoude and Elaine, 

 My lady cometh, that all this may distain. 



When I remember Chaucer s malediction upon his scrivener, 

 and consider that by far the larger proportion of his verses 

 (allowing always for change of pronunciation) are perfectly 

 accordant with our present accentual system, I cannot believe 

 that he ever wrote an imperfect line. His ear would never have 

 tolerated the verses of nine syllables, with a strong accent on. 

 the first, attributed to him by Mr. Skeate and Mr. Morris. 

 Such verses seem to me simply impossible in the pentameter 

 iambic as Chaucer wrote it. A great deal of misapprehension 

 would be avoided in discussing English metres, if it were only 

 understood that quantity in Latin and quantity in English mean 

 very different things. Perhaps the best quantitative verses in, 



* Commonly pi inted Juiih. 



