198 CHAUCER. 



and first of the succeeding Massinger counts for one, because 

 both are supposed to be spoken at the same moment. 



And felt the sweetness oft 



How her mouth runs over. 



Now fifty instances may be cited from Massinger which tell 

 against this fanciful notion, for one that seems, and only seems, 

 in its favour. Anyone tolerably familiar with the dramatists 

 knows that in the passage quoted by Coleridge, the how being 

 emphatic, how her was pronounced how r. He tells us that 

 * Massinger is fond of the anapaest in the first and third foot, as : 



To your more | than mas | culine rea | son that | commands em. H 



Likewise of the second paeon (^_&amp;gt;^^/) in the first foot, followed 

 by four trochees (_ _), as : 



So greedily | long for, | know their | titill ] ations. 



In truth, he was no fonder of them than his brother dramatists 

 who, like him, wrote for the voice by the ear. * To your ; is still 

 one syllable in ordinary speech, and masculine and greedily 

 were and are dissyllables or trisyllables according to their place 

 in the verse. Coleridge was making pedantry of a very simple 

 matter. Yet he has said with perfect truth of Chaucer s verse, 

 Let a few plain rules be given for sounding the final e of sylla 

 bles, and for expressing the terminations of such words as ocean 

 and nation, &c., as dissyllables, or let the syllables to be 

 sounded in such cases be marked by a competent metrist. This 

 simple expedient would, with a very few trifling exceptions, 

 where the errors are inveterate, enable anyone to feel the per 

 fect smoothness and harmony of Chaucer s verse. But let us 

 keep widely clear of Latin and Greek terms of prosody ! It is 

 also more important here than even with the dramatists of 

 Shakespeare s time to remember that we have to do with a lan 

 guage caught more from the ear than from books. The best 

 school for learning to understand Chaucer s elisions, compres 

 sions, slurrings-over and runnings-together of syllables is to 

 listen to the habitual speech of rustics with whom language is 

 still plastic to meaning, and hurries or prolongs itself accord 

 ingly. Here is a contraction frequent in Chaucer, and still 

 common in New England : 



But me were lever than [lever n] all this town, quod he. 



Let one example suffice for many. To Coleridge s rules another 

 should be added by a wise editor ; and that is to restore the 

 final n in the infinitive and third person plural of verbs, and in 

 such other cases as can be justified by the authority of Chaucer 



