CHAUCER. 241 



our language (better even than Coleridge s) are to be found 

 in Mother Goose, composed by nurses wholly by ear and 

 beating time as they danced the baby on their knee. I 

 suspect Chaucer and Shakespeare would be surprised into a 

 smile by the learned arguments which supply their halting 

 verses with every kind of excuse except that of being 

 readable. When verses were written to be chanted, more 

 licence could be allowed, for the ear tolerates the widest 

 deviations from habitual accent in words that are sung, 

 Segnius irritant demissa per aurem. To some extent the 

 same thing is true of anapa?stic and other tripping measures, 

 but we cannot admit it in marching tunes like those of 

 Chaucer. He wrote for the eye more than for the voice, 

 as poets had begun to do long before.* Some loose talk of 

 Coleridge, loose in spite of its affectation of scientific 

 precision, about &quot; retardations &quot; and the like, has misled 

 many honest persons into believing that they can make 

 good verse out of bad prose. Coleridge himself, from 

 natural fineness of ear, was the best metrist among modern 

 English poets, and, read with proper allowances, his 

 remarks upon versification are always instructive to who 

 ever is not rhythm-deaf. But one has no patience with the 

 dyspondseuses, the pseon primuses, and what not, with 

 which he darkens verses that are to be explained only by 



* Froissart s description of the book of traites amoureux et de 

 moralite, which he had engrossed for presentation to Richard II. 

 in 1394, is enough to bring tears to the eyes of a modern author. 

 &quot;Et lui plut tres grandement ; et plaire bien lui devoit, car il etoit 

 enlumine, ecrit et historie et couvert de vermeil velours & dis cloux 

 d argent dores d or, et roses d or an milieu, et k deux grands fremaulx 

 dores et richement ouvres au milieu de rosiers d or.&quot; How lovingly 

 he lingers over it, hooking it together with et after et! But two 

 centuries earlier, while the jongleurs were still in full song, poems 

 were also read aloud. 



&quot; Pur remembrer des ancessours 

 Les faits et les dits et les mours, 

 Deit Ten les livres et les gestes 

 Et les estoires lire afestes.&quot; Roman du Eon, 



But Chaucer wrote for the private reading of the closet. 



144 



