[126] Ed. by J. Schipper, Quellen und Forschungen, xx.
[127] In the ‘tumbling’—or, to use the German name, the ‘gliding’ (gleitend) caesura or rhyme.
[128] For the introduction and explanation of these technical terms cf. Fr. Diez, ‘Über den epischen Vers,’ in his Altromanische Sprachdenkmale, Bonn, 1846, 8vo, p. 53, and the author’s Englische Metrik, i, pp. 438, 441; ii, pp. 24–6.
[129] The occurrence of this licence in Chaucer’s heroic verse has been disputed by ten Brink (Chaucer’s Sprache und Verskunst, p. 176) and others, but see Metrik, i. 462–3, and Freudenberger, Ueber das Fehlen des Auftaktes in Chaucer’s heroischem Verse, Erlangen, 1889.
[130] We therefore hold ten Brink to be wrong in asserting (Chaucer’s Sprache und Verskunst, § 307, 3. Anm.) that no redundant or hypermetrical syllable is permissible in the caesural pause of Chaucer’s iambic line of five accents, although he recognizes that in lines of four accents Chaucer admits the very same irregularity, which moreover has remained in use down to the present day. Cf. Skeat, Chaucer Canon, Oxford, 1900, pp. 31–3, and Schipper in Paul’s Grundriss, ed. 2, II. ii, pp, 217–18. On this point, as also on several others, Miss M. Bentinck Smith, the translator of ten Brink’s work, is of our opinion (cf. her Remarks on Chapter III of ten Brink’s Chaucer’s Sprache und Verskunst in The Modern Language Quarterly, vol. v, No. 1, April, 1902, pp. 13–19). A contrary view with regard to ‘extra syllables’ in the heroic and the blank-verse line (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) is taken by A. P. van Dam and Cornelis Stoffel, Chapters on English Printing, Prosody, and Pronunciation (1550–1700), Heidelberg, 1902 (Anglistische Forschungen herausgegeben von Dr. Johannes Hoops, Heft 9), pp. 48–113.
[131] Cf. the lines from Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 31, quoted on p. 98.
[132] Cf. Parson’s Prologue, 42–3.
[133] In the reading of the Bible and Liturgy the older syllabic pronunciation of certain endings is still common, and it is occasionally heard in sermons, where a more elevated and poetical kind of diction is admissible than would be used in secular oratory.
[134] See ten Brink, Chaucer’s Sprache und Verskunst, § 260.
[135] Cf. Luick, Anglia, xi. 591–2.