CHAUCER. 201 



What was the practice of Wace ? Again I open at random. 



N osa remaindn? en Normandie, 

 Maiz, quant la guerr&amp;lt;? fu finie, 

 Od sou herneiz en Puill^* ala. 

 Cil de Baienes lungt-ment 

 NV zl nes pout par force prendre 

 Dune la vile mult amendout, 

 Prisons e preies amenout.* 



Again we have the sounded final e, the elision, and the hiatus. 

 But what possible reason is there for supposing that Chaucer 

 would go to obscure minstrels to learn the rules of French versi 

 fication 1 Nay, why are we to suppose that he followed them at 

 all ? In his case as in theirs, as in that of the Italians, with the 

 works of whose two greater poets he was familiar, it was the 

 language itself and the usages of pronunciation that guided the 

 poet, and not arbitrary laws laid down by a synod of verse- 

 makers. Chaucer s verse differs from that of Gower and Lyd- 

 gate precisely as the verse of Spenser differs from that of 

 Gascoigne, and for the same reason that he was a great poet, 

 to whom measure was a natural vehicle. But admitting that he 

 must have formed his style on the French poets, would he not 

 have gone for lessons to the most famous and popular among 

 them the authors of the Roman de la Rose ? Wherever you 

 open that poem, you find Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de 

 Meung following precisely the same method a method not in 

 the least arbitrary, but inherent in the material which they 

 wrought. The e sounded or absorbed under the same condi 

 tions, the same slurring of diphthongs, the same occasional 

 hiatus, the same compression of several vowels into one sound 

 where they immediately follow each other. Shakespeare and 

 Milton would supply examples enough of all these practices that 

 seem so incredible to those who write about versification with 

 out sufficient fineness of sense to feel the difference between 

 Ben Jonson s blank verse and Marlow s. Some men are verse- 

 deaf as others are colour-blind Messrs. Malone and Guest, for 

 example. 



I try Rutebeuf in the same haphazard way, and chance brings 

 me upon his Pharisian. This poem is in stanzas, the verses 

 of the first of which have all of them masculine rhymes, those 

 of the second feminine ones, and so on in such continual alter 

 nation to the end, as to show that it was done with intention to 

 avoid monotony. Of feminine rhymes we find ypocrisi^ fam^ 

 justice, mesure, yglis But did Rutebeuf mean so to pronounce 



* Le Roman de la Rose, tome ii. p. 390. 



