250 CHAUCER. 



Tuo padre andar che tutti ha offeso tanto, 



E tu, sicura e lieta, senza noia, 



Mentre t aggrada, con noi resta in Troia.&quot; * 



&quot; Now was this Hector pitous of nature, 

 And saw that she was sorrowful begon 

 And that she was so faire a creature, 

 Of his goodnesse he gladed her anon 

 And said [saide] let your father s treason gon 

 Forth with mischance, and ye yourself in joy 

 Dwelleth with us while [that] you list in Troy.&quot; 



If the Italian were read with the same ignorance that has 

 wreaked itself on Chaucer, the riding-rhyme would be on its 

 high horse in almost every line of Boccaccio s stanza. The 

 same might be said of many a verse in Donne s satires. 

 Spenser in his eclogues for February, May, and September 

 evidently took it for granted that he had caught the 

 measure of Chaucer, and it would be rather amusing, as 

 well as instructive, to hear the maintainers of the hop-skip- 

 and-jump theory of versification attempt to make the elder 

 poet s verses dance to the tune for which one of our greatest 

 metrists (in his philological deafness) supposed their feet to 

 be trained. 



I will give one more example of Chaucer s verse, again 

 making my selection from one of his less mature works. 

 He is speaking of Tarquin : 



&quot;And ay the more he was in despair 

 The more he coveted and thought her fair ; 

 His blinde lust was all his coveting. 

 On morrow when the bird began to sing 

 Unto the siege he cometh full privily 

 And by himself he walketh soberly 

 The image of her recording alway new : 

 Thus lay her hair, and thus fresh was her hue, 

 Thus sate, thus spake, thus span, this was her cheer, 

 Thus fair she was, and this was her manere. 

 All this conceit his heart hath new ytake, 

 And as the sea, with tempest all toshake, 

 That after, when the storm is all ago, 

 Yet will the water quap a day or two, 

 Right so, though that her forme were absent, 

 The pleasance of her forme was present.&quot; 



* Corrected from Kissner, p. 18. 



