272 CHAUCER. 



spare. How about the hiatus? On the same page 



I find, — 



" Kar I'Erceveske i estoit — 

 Pur eus beneistre' e enseiner." 



What was the practice of Wace ? Again I open at ran- 

 dom. 



" N'osa remaindre' en Normandie, 

 Maiz, quant la guen-e fu finie, 

 Od sou herneiz eu Puille' ala — 

 Cil de Baienes lungement — 

 Ne i\ 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 versification % Nay, why are we to sup- 

 pose that he followed them at all 1 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 

 versemakers. Chaucer's verse differs from that of Gower 

 and Lydgate 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 ve- 

 hicle. 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 " 1 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 ab- 

 sorbed under the same conditions, the same slurring of 



* Le Roman de la Rose, Tome II. p. 390. 



