CHAUCER. 247 



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 conditions, the 

 same slurring of the 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 without sufficient fineness of sense to feel the 

 difference between Ben Jonson s blank verse and Marlowe 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 &quot; Pharisian.&quot; 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 alternation to the end, as to show that it 

 was done with intention to avoid monotony. Of feminine 

 rhymes we find ypocrisie, fame, justice, mesure, yglise. But 

 did Kutebeuf mean so to pronounce them ? I open again 

 at the poem of the Secrestain, which is written in regular 

 octosyllabics, and read 



&quot; Envie fet home tuer, 

 Et si fait bonne remuer 

 Envie greve , envie blece, 

 Envie con font charite 

 Envie ocist humility 

 Estoit en ce pais en vie 

 Sanz orgueil ere et sanz envie 

 La glorieuse, dame, chiere .&quot;* 



Froissart was Chaucer s contemporary. What was his usage? 



&quot; J avoie fait en ce voiaige 

 Et je li di, Ma dame s ai-je 

 Pour vous eu maint souvenir ; 

 Mais je ne sui pas bien hardis 



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



