202 CHAUCER. 



them ? I open again at the poem of the Secrestain, which is 

 written in regular octosyllabics, and read 



Envi fet home tuer, 



Et si fait bonn^ remuer 



Envie grew&quot;, envie blec^ 



Envi confont charity 



Envitf &amp;lt;?cist humility 



Estoit en ce pai s en vie 



Sanz orgueil ere et sanz envi 



La glorious*?, dame, chier* 



Froissart was Chaucer s contemporary. What was his usage ? 



J ayoL? fait en ce voiaig,? 

 Et je li di, Ma dam&amp;lt;? s ai-je 

 Pour yous eu maint souvenir ; 

 Mais je ne sui pas bien hardis 

 De vous remonstrer, dame chiere, 

 Par quel art ne par quel manier.?, 

 J ai eu ce comenc&amp;lt;?ment 

 De 1 amourous atouch^ment. 



If we try Philippe Mouskes, a mechanical rhymer, if ever there 

 was one, and therefore the surer not to let go the leading-strings 

 of rule, the result is the same. 



But Chaucer, it is argued, was not uniform in his practice. 

 Would this be likely ? Certainly with those terminations (like 

 courtesie] which are questioned, and in diphthongs generally. 

 Dante took precisely the same liberties. 



Fac^vz le stelle a n^z parer piu radi, 

 Ne fu per fantasztf giamm&amp;lt;zz compreso, 

 Pffi pwvve dentro all alta fantasziz, 

 Soleo. valor e cortesz trovarsi, 

 Che ne nvogliava amor e corteszVz. 



Here we have fantas? and fantasia, cortes? and cortesia. 

 Even Pope has promiscuous, obsequious, as trisyllables, indi 

 vidual as a quadrisyllable, and words like tapestry, opera, indif 

 ferently as trochees or dactyls according to their place in the 

 verse. Donne even goes so far as to make Cain a monosyllable 

 and dissyllable in the same verse : 



Sister and wife to Cain, Ca in that first did plough. 



The cassural pause (a purely imaginary thing in accentual 

 metres) may be made to balance a line like this of Donne s, 



Are they not like | singers at doors for meat, 



but we defy anyone by any trick of voice to make it supply a 

 missing syllable in what is called our heroic measure, so mainly 

 used by Chaucer. 



Enough and far more than enough on a question about which 



* Rutebeuf tome i. pp. 203 seqq. 304 seqq. 



