200 CHAUCER. 



where we must either strike out the second I or put it after 

 speake. 



One often finds such changes made by ear justified by the 

 readings in other texts, and we cannot but hope that the Chaucer 

 Society will give us the means of at last settling upon a version 

 which shall make the poems of one of the most fluent of metrists 

 at least readable. Let anyone compare the Franklin s Tale 

 in the Aldine edition * with the text given by Wright, and he 

 will find both sense and metre clear themselves up in a surpris 

 ing way. A careful collation of texts, by the way, confirms one s 

 confidence in Tyrwhitt s good taste and thoroughness. 



A writer in the ( Proceedings of the Philological Society has 

 lately undertaken to prove that Chaucer did not sound the final 

 or medial e, and throws us back on the old theory that he wrote 

 riding-rime, that is, verse to the eye and not the ear. This 

 he attempts to do by showing that the Anglo-Norman poets 

 themselves did not sound the e, or, at any rate, were not uniform 

 in so doing. It should seem a sufficient answer to this merely 

 to ask whence modern French poetry derived its rules of pro 

 nunciation so like those of Chaucer, so different from those of 

 prose. But it is not enough to prove that some of the Anglo- 

 Norman rhymers were bad versifiers. Let us look for examples 

 in the works of the best poet among them all, Marie de France, 

 with whose works Chaucer was certainly familiar. What was 

 her practice ? I open at random and find enough to overthrow 

 the whole theory : 



Od sa fill* t ke le cela 

 Tut H curags li fremi 

 Di mei, fet-ek&quot; par ta fei 

 La Dameiseli 1 aporta 

 Kar ne li sembla ime boens 

 La dame 1 aveit apclee 

 Et la meiv 1 areisuna. 



But how about the elision ? 



Le paU&quot; esgzrde sur le lit 



Et ek est devant li alee 



Bel*? amie [cf. mi,?, above] ne il me celez. 



La dame ad sa fill* amenee. 



These are all on a single page,$ and there are some to spare. 

 How about the hiatust On the same page I find 



Kar 1 Erceveske i *stoit 

 Pur eus beneistre e ^nseiner. 



* One of the very worst, be it said in passing. 



t Whence came, pray, the Elizabethan commandement, chapelain, surety, and a 

 score of others 1 Whence the Scottish bonny, and so many English words of Romance 

 derivation ending in y ? 



$ Poesies de Marie de France, tome i. p. 168. 



