The Prioress's Tale is a short one. Although written in seven-line stanzas, it is probably later than others in the same metre.
The Man of Law's Tale will be considered hereafter; and it will be shewn that it was written independently of other Tales.
The Monk's Tale is in a very peculiar metre, which appears nowhere else in Chaucer, except in the unoriginal poem called the ABC (probably written before A.D. 1369), and in some other of Chaucer's minor poems, such as the Former Age, Fortune, the Envoy to Bukton, &c.; so that, considered with reference to metre, this Tale may be of any date. The main part of it shews very little originality, and is clearly rather early than late.
§ 12. Having premised these considerations, it is easy to see that the metrical form suggests, to a useful extent, a possible distinction between the earlier and the later Tales. Nearly all of Chaucer's tales that are in stanzas are early, whilst all that are in decasyllabic couplets are late. We have seen that this is known to be true in the case of the Second Nun's Tale, that it is highly probable in the case of the Clerk's Tale (of which more hereafter), and there is nothing against it in the case of the Monk's Tale, written in the same metre as a poem which was probably his very first, or nearly so, if there be any truth in the statement that it was written for the use of the Duchess Blanche, who died in 1369. At the same time, it can be shewn that 'Palamon and Arcite' was written in stanzas, so that the present metre of the Knight's Tale presents no difficulty. Of course it will be understood that there is, in these stanza-tales, some of Chaucer's latest work, but I shall presently shew that this late work is easily picked out. I have already pointed out that the Prioress's Tale (of unusual brevity) is an exception to the general rule.
§ 13. The above distinction was suggested to me by the simple fact, that Chaucer cannot be proved to have used his couplets till he was well advanced in composition. Indeed, it has always been remarked that no English poet before him ever dreamt of such a metre, and it has been a source of wonder, for hundreds of years, whence he derived it. To say that it was derived from the French ten-syllable verse is not a complete solution of the mystery; for nearly all such verse is commonly either in stanzas, or else a great number of successive lines are rimed together. We have to discover a specimen of French ten-syllable verse in which only two successive lines are rimed together; and these, I believe, are very scarce. After some search I have, however, fortunately lighted upon a very interesting specimen, among the poems of Guillaume de Machault, a French writer whom Chaucer is known to have imitated[[88]], and who died in 1377. In the edition of Machault's poems edited by Tarbé, Reims and Paris, 1849, p. 89, there is a poem of exactly this character, of no great length, and fortunately dated; for its title is—'Complainte écrite après la bataille de Poitiers et avant le siège de Reims par les Anglais' (1356-1358). The first four lines run thus:—
'A toy, Henry, dous amis, me complain,
Pour ce que ne cueur ne mont ne plein[[89]];
Car a piet suy, sans cheval et sans selle,
Et si n'ay mais esmeraude, ne belle.'
The last couplet (the second line of which has two examples of the fully-sounded final e) is as follows:—