274 CHAUCER. 



If we try Philippe Mouskes, a mechanical rhymer, if 

 ever there was one, and therefore the surer not to let go 

 the leading-strings of rule, the result is the same. 



But Chaucer, it is argued, was not uniform in his prac- 

 tice. Would this be likely ? Certainly not with those ter- 

 minations (like courtesie) which are questioned, and in 

 diphthongs generally. Dante took precisely the same 

 liberties. 



" Faceo le stelle a noi pcrer piu radi," 

 " Ne fu per fantasia giamma; compreso " 

 " Poi rjt'ovve dentro all 'alta fantasia," 

 " Solea valor e cortesia trovarsi," 

 " Che ne 'nvogliava amor e cortesia." 



Here we have fantasl' and fantasia, cortesi' and cortesia. 

 Even Pope has promiscuous, obsequious, as trisyllables, 

 individual as a quadrisyllable, and words like tapestry, 

 opera, indifferently as trochees or dactyls according to 

 their place in the verse. Donne even goes so far as to 

 make Cain a monosyllable and dissyllable in the same 

 verse : — 



" Sister and wife to Cain, Cain that first did plough." 



The csesural pause (a purely imaginary thing in ac- 

 centual metres) may be made to balance a line like this 

 of Donne's, 



" Are they not like | singers at doors for meat," 



but we defy any one by any trick of voice to make it 

 supply a missing syllable fh what is called our heroic 

 measure, so mainly used by Chaucer. 



Enough and far more than enough on a question about 

 which it is as hard to be patient as about the author- 

 ship of Shakespeare's plays. It is easy to find all man- 

 ner of bad metres among these versifiers, and plenty 

 of inconsistencies, many or most of them the fault of 

 careless or ignorant transcribers, but whoever has read 



