On the Scntcnce-Lejigtk in English Prose. 3 



stantial. Hence are they semicolon-clauses, — exactly such 

 as any writer since the invention of printing and punctuation 

 would have made them. 



But this natural subordination in which Chaucer everywhere 

 equals any modern appears in his poetry alone ; in his prose 

 the sentence-instinct fails him. No longer is there any sus- 

 pension of the circumstantial clauses, but all the sentences 

 are thrown together blindly, and often in co-ordinate form as 

 thus : "Certes," quod Melibee, "I se wel that ye enforce yow 

 muchel by wordes to overcome me in swich manere that I 

 shal nat venge me of myne enemys, shewynge me the perils 

 and the yveles that myghten falle of this vengeance ; but 

 whoso wolde considere in alle vengeances the perils and yveles 

 that myghte sewe of vengeance takynge, a man wolde nevere 

 take vengeance ; and that were harm, for by the vengeance 

 takynge been the wikked men dissevered fro the goode men 

 and they that han wyl to do wikkednesse restreyne hir 

 wikked purpos whan they seen the punyssynge and chas- 

 tisynge of the trespassours." With Spenser, who writes 

 almost as well in poetry as Chaucer, the case is even worse.^ 

 Strange enough is it that all the earlier great English poets 

 as a rule (save Milton) conform unerringly to the natural 

 sentence-form in meter, but when they lay verse-forms aside 

 write almost unreadable prose. With the exclusive writers 

 of prose, as we shall see, the case is often even worse. There 

 is clearly as yet no English sense of what a prose sentence 

 should be at all. That was to be painfully and wastefully 

 evolved in succeeding generations. 



^ Cf. the following average sentence from his View of the Present State of 

 Ireland: "These therefore, though poUicye would turne them backe agayne 

 that they might the rather consume and afifhcte the other rebells, yet in a pityfuU 

 commiseration I could wish them to be receaved ; the rather for that this base 

 sorte people doth not for the most parte rebell of himself, having noe harte ther- 

 unto, but is of force drawen by the graunde rebells into theyr actions, and carryed 

 away with the vyolence of the streame, els he should be sure to loose all that he 

 hath, and perhaps his life also ; the which nowe he carryeth unto them, in hope 

 to enjoy them there, but he is there by the strong rebells themselves soone turned 

 out of all, soe that the constraynte herof may in him deserve pardon." 



121 



